On July 16, 2009, as IBM announced its results for the second quarter ending June 30, 2009, it sent the stock price shooting high, as the `Big Blue' had successfully beaten the Wall Street's expectations. But what the markets cheered more than that was the fact that the Armonk, New York-based company's robust performance came amidst a gloomy business environment that has characterized the business landscape globally in the wake of the ongoing economic slump, and many of its industry peers had declared disappointing results earlier and also the investors were not hopeful of any better results from other firms. This is not the first time that the Big Blue has done it. In fact, in several of the economic slumps in the past and when faced with challenges of its own making during the late 1980s and 1990s when it became too late to respond to dramatic changes in its business environment, it demonstrated astute resoluteness and dogged determination, which are now technology industry's folklore.

The strong results and an upbeat forecast for the full fiscal now place IBM in an envious position at a time when tech industry's near-term outlook remains gloomy amidst disappointing results from tech giants Microsoft to HP, Oracle to AMD, amongst others.

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