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The Story of a Business Deal Gone Historically Wrong

There are countless success stories of entrepreneurial innovations and ventures, some from years back, and some more recently. Especially when a company is as big and as internationally recognized as IBM, the stock of good stories is endless. But amidst those stories there are a few bad ones – stories of failures and debacles. These bad-ending stories deserve to be told just as the good ones, because there is as much to learn from mistakes as from successes.

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt IT

Anthony Vandewerdt, an IT professional and a storage blogger based out of Melbourne, Australia recounts one such story involving a botched business deal, a ship full of photocopiers and IBM. Here is a sneak-peak of the story.

In 1981 IBM Office Products Division (popularly known as OPD) made one of the most spectacularly bad deals in IBM history. A deal that spawned a product that IBM could barely sell and was forced to withdrew in less than 2 years.

To find out what really happened, check out Vandewerdt’s blog- “Remembering when a camera company took IBM to the cleaners.

About the author

Sulagna Saha

Sulagna Saha is a writer at Gestalt IT where she covers all the latest in enterprise IT. She has written widely on miscellaneous topics. On gestaltit.com she writes about the hottest technologies in Cloud, AI, Security and sundry.

A writer by day and reader by night, Sulagna can be found busy with a book or browsing through a bookstore in her free time. She also likes cooking fancy things on leisurely weekends. Traveling and movies are other things high on her list of passions. Sulagna works out of the Gestalt IT office in Hudson, Ohio.