

IBM's Reinvention Should Inspire Flat Pharma Businesses - tokenadult
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davechase/2012/03/25/ibms-reinvention-should-inspire-flat-pharma-businesses/

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dalke
Speaking of IBM and pharma industry; in 2007 AstraZeneca selected IBM's
services unit to provide internal IT support, with a 7 year, $1.4 billion
deal. In 2011 AZ decided to kick them out, because of years of
dissatisfaction.

Was this dissatisfaction due to 'IBM['s successful] shift from a product-
centric culture to a customer and service centered company'? Was it due to
AZ's inability to think of themselves as being in the 'disease management' or
even 'disease prevention' business?

Or was it due to upper management reading too many articles in Forbes and
deciding they needed to get rid of internal IT staff to focus on core
competencies? I'm leaning towards the latter.

(The ever increasing difficulty of developing new drugs plays a larger role
than any of these.)

