IBM (NYSE: IBM) is tired of playing nice when it comes to contract disputes, such as in a big contract with the state of Indiana, and after losing a recent fight for a $600 million CIA “cloud” computing contract to Amazon.
This week, Big Blue has unleashed a blunt, detailed-pack counterattack in the latest case involving Bridgestone. (The Tennessean reported the suit being filed on Tuesday/) The company said it had “experienced crippling defects that had a devastating impact” on its business.
“The system-wide failures of the IBM (system) in the first three months of 2012 completely disrupted every aspect of (Bridgestone’s) business operations — including sales-order processing, warehouse management, transportation management and logistics,” The Tennessean reported, citing the suit.
After Bridgestone filed the $600 million lawsuit, Big Blue saw red and fired back. In a blistering, extended response to the suit, IBM says “Bridgestown’s own errors” – including six CIOs over two years – “made this a troubled project.”
The IBM response is so detailed, so angry, that it makes for riveting reading. So WRALTechWire is reprinting it in full. IBM media representatives made the response available on Thursday evening.
Here goes:
“Bridgestone’s own errors …”
“The claims against IBM are exaggerated, factually wrong and without merit. From the outset of this project, Bridgestone failed to meet critical commitments upon which IBM’s performance depended. Ultimately, Bridgestone’s repeated failures had a significant impact on the project’s cost and schedule, and its decision to ignore IBM’s warnings and prematurely roll-out the implementation across its entire business negatively impacted its North America operations. Bridgestone has elected to bring this matter to court. IBM worked hard to make this a successful project and regrets a dispute with a client. However, IBM is prepared to vigorously defend itself in this matter and demonstrate that Bridgestone’s own errors made this a troubled project.
IBM has implemented thousands of successful SAP projects and is consistently rated by Gartner and other independent analysts as the premier SAP implementation firm. IBM will vigorously defend itself in this matter.
[Earlier this week], Bridgestone filed a lawsuit claiming breach of contract and fraud against IBM regarding a recent SAP implementation. These claims against IBM are exaggerated, factually wrong and without merit. From the outset of this project, Bridgestone failed to meet critical commitments upon which the performance of IBM’s obligations were predicated. Ultimately, Bridgestone’s repeated failures had a significant impact on the project’s cost and schedule, and its decision to prematurely roll-out the implementation across its entire business negatively impacted its operations.
• Bridgestone understood that this would be a challenging project. It had tried several times with other vendors and failed to upgrade its system. IBM was the only vendor to succeed in completing the upgrade to SAP.
• Notwithstanding the complexity of the project and its negative history, Bridgestone failed to staff the project with people who sufficiently understood its own legacy systems and could assist IBM in designing and converting them into a new SAP system. Throughout, Bridgestone lacked the necessary leadership to effectively manage the project; it replaced its CIO on six occasions in a 2 year period during the project term.
• Bridgestone failed to supply the necessary software, hardware and network infrastructure for the system to operate properly. In many instances, Bridgestone supplied inferior resources or no resources at all.
• After insisting that it have control over the design and final approval of the system, Bridgestone failed to timely approve those designs, failed to provide the necessary design documents for IBM to complete its work, and failed to conduct the required user testing necessary to understand how the system would work under real world conditions.
• IBM made concessions to Bridgestone for some problems that arose on the project and Bridgestone gave IBM a release. Bridgestone’s suit reneges on its release.
• Bridgestone ignored the clear and repeated recommendations from both IBM and members of its own IT staff to implement a staggered roll-out of the new system to mitigate risks to its business operations. Instead, Bridgestone’s management insisted on a “big bang” go-live in which all aspects of the SAP system were required to be implemented simultaneously, across all of its North American tire operations.
• Bridgestone continued to demand that the system be implemented in this manner and on the scheduled go-live date, even after IBM had advised, for a period of at least six months prior, that the go-live date was premature and therefore fraught with business risk. As the go-live date drew near, IBM urged Bridgestone’s management, in writing, to reconsider its decision. Bridgestone elected to proceed regardless of the identified risks, even after acknowledging that the system would fail to meet the go-live criteria that Bridgestone itself had set.
• At go-live, the system did experience some of the errors that IBM had predicted. In response, IBM provided extra personnel and resources to quickly address those errors and operations returned to normal. Since the implementation, Bridgestone has achieved record-setting financial results.
IBM has implemented thousands of successful SAP projects and is consistently rated by Gartner and other independent analysts as the premier SAP implementation firm. IBM will vigorously defend itself in this matter.
[IBM ARCHIVE: Check out more than a decade of IBM stories as reported in WRALTechWire.]
