Last week IBM reached it's all-time high (and today we are breaking new records). Over the weekend I wondered how IBM and Microsoft compare as we are often pitted against each other in the Enterprise 2.0 space. Now I wanted to compare how the two companies have fared in the past years.
I'm assuming that Microsoft is using Sharepoint internally, although I couldn't find any information on it. I know, of course, for a fact that IBM is using Lotus Connections internally. But assuming Microsoft does use Sharepoint internally as their Enterprise 2.0 platform, can we look at the stock price of both companies and see what's better? I thought it would be an interesting exercise.
So I headed over to CNNMoney to get a comparative stock price chart and annotated it to approximate the releases of Lotus Connections (originally out in 2007) and Sharepoint. I had to approximate since the chart wasn't specific on the timeframes (ie. months are hard to determine).
Here's the result:
Now you may be wondering why I didn't start in 2007. CNNMoney only gave me an option for 3 year and 5 year. The 5 year comparison (starting from late 2006) is even more favorable towards IBM, putting IBM at almost up 60% while Microsoft is down 20% for the same time period!
I'm just saying... 