IBM Turns 100: Will Other Tech Companies Last That Long???

It's great & good to hear as well. It was not a surprise since IBM was the one who brought computer to the mainstreams. It will be a tough task for the tech giants to last this long in this most happening and most competitive days.

Brand has survived, not the company or the management. Remember it was taken over by Lenovo recently - a chinese firm? And for any brand to achieve a 100 years of survival takes a lot of input in terms of value and innovations. IBM seems to have done just that. Ask to your questions regarding whether MS, Google or Apple can reach such milestones, why not. All these companies are known for their adaptability and speed of response while in crises. So I do not think why they should not make it. 

Good post Mr. Sreenivas. No one can have cake-walk in technology space, including IBM.  How IBM struggled in 80s, you know, please read an article by Mr.Shayne Nelson, Data Warehouse Architect:
"During the Eighties IBM had plenty of time to regret its
decision to publish the BIOS of the XT PC. This decision
created a prosperous industry of clone-builders, and led to a
wonderful flourishing of inventiveness and ingenuity as
geniuses world-wide began cutting off a slice of the growing
PC market for software and hardware, but all this money was
going into non-IBM pockets. IBM PCs TOO SLOW?


Ironically, IBM found itself unable to compete effectively in
its own market. As a conservative company, it had always
opted for SAFE over FAST, RELIABLE over FLASHY, and this cost
IBM plenty of sales. The clone-builders lost no time
bringing out faster machines than you could buy from IBM,
often at prices below those of IBM's slow machines, and ran
away with a large share of PC sales. Would your rather have
a slow machine with IBM on the front of it or a fast machine
with COMPAQ on the box? Most people wanted the faster
machine, especially when it was cheaper than IBM's hardware.

IBM looked at Apple, prospering with its proprietary and
secret operating system, (Apple had earned over a billion
dollars in 1982!) and had second thoughts about its own
generosity in making public the secrets of the XT's design.
Well, it's never too late, IBM decided, and in 1986 closed
down production of its line of AT computers and announced a
new line of PCs featuring IBM's new MICROCHANNEL
architecture."

By the end of the Eighties, IBM had, for the first time in
its seventy-year history, finished a year in the red, and
was forced to lay off staff. The Microchannel strategy had
been IBM's Waterloo.

Tail between its legs, IBM backed out of a dead-end street of
its own making, and quietly rejoined the open-standard
industry to which it had given birth in 1980. Within a few
years of the launch of Microchannel, IBM woke up from the
Microchannel mirage and began offering PS desktop machines
which looked like the Microchannel machines but which, under
the hood, used the old, public domain, XT/AT architecture.
IBM even repented to the extent of putting much better
monitors on its PCs, and people began to buy them once again.