Having just bought a set of small wooden steps from Ikea, I was surprised to see that the instructions included some specific advice to IBM Rational Software executives, after IBM bought rival Telelogic for $745m….
It’s the picture on the bottom right aimed at the Rational chaps, showing a man throwing himself off the steps straight out of a window: don’t do it! IBM might not let the Rational products die away!
I’m being flippant, clearly. Look at Informix — IBM spent $1bn on it back in 2001, and they’ve actually just come out with a new version, proving that investment goes on even after all this time. Not as much investment as goes into DB2 perhaps, but investment all the same.
Aside form the advice to the Rational team from Ikea, the leaflet that came with the steps had some other handy hints. The tall central picture suggests it’s not a good idea for paparazzi to buy two sets of steps and strap one to each foot in order to be more mobile when shooting pics over the heads of a crowd of people, though you can see why the idea has its pluses compared with the paps’ more traditional choice: a single step-ladder.
For the life of me I can’t work out what they mean with the drawing on the right of the man on stilts: a magnifying glass next to the steps. Do they mean, ‘study these steps very closely’? Or perhaps, ‘when using a magnifying glass to start a fire in the event of an emergency, why not choose a set of wooden Ikea steps as fuel rather than some boring old kindling’?
Maybe it’s not a magnifying glass after all. Perhaps it is a rolling pin right next to a large chocolate coin. Perhaps they’re saying, ‘if you can’t reach your kitchen table to easily roll out chocolate to make into extremely large coins, try standing on a pair of steps’. Genius.
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The other two I’ve shown are fairly straightforward. Above the magnifying glass picture is the ‘don’t attempt to use these steps as a taboggan on a snowy day, tempting as it may be’; and above and to the left we have ‘do not sink these steps into concrete stanchions and attempt to use as the supporting end-pillar of a beam bridge.’ Simple.
Our original coverage of the deal, ‘RequisitePro future in doubt as IBM buys Telelogic’ is here.
Follow-up article, ‘Does IBM-Informix say anything about IBM-Telelogic’ is here.
