Random encounters can provide unexpected illumination. If you are the type of person who just starts talking to strangers anywhere anytime, as I am, the conversations that ensue can relate to your work a suprisingly high percentage of the time.

And so it went with a conversation I had with at a recent college football game in San Diego. The game itself wasn't very good, with the local lads getting a sound beating from the opening kickoff, so our conversation quickly turned from discussions of the size of today's offensive linemen and defining the modern-day intentional grounding rule to a sudden segue into the future of IBM, prompted by the question, "what do you do when you're not watching college football?"

It turns out that my seat mate was a sales manager for IBM Global Services, "the other IBM" as it's billed these days. "We've got to do something," he said. "Oracle announces a new acquisition almost every week, it seems, and (IBM is) just standing still."

But there's been a flurry of recent announcements by Blue, I countered, including news of a passably major acquisition, that of DataPower. "Not enough," he said. "(Oracle's) Larry Ellison has said the industry is in a major consolidation phase, and he's doing everything he can to make sure this is so. But IBM is just standing around, waiting for the market to come to it."

I found this viewpoint to be quite interesting, given that IBM has been among the more active companies in recent weeks, even though it hasn't tried to swallow a truly major company, despite endless rumors that it will do so some day. The trouble with these rumors, besides the obvious fact that they're rumors, is that IBM's history is not one of major acquisition.

Other than the Lotus exception (which probably proves the rule) many, many years ago, Blue is not known to go out and try to rip the heart out of the industry by buying a DEC, say, or a Compaq, a JD Edwards, a PeopleSoft. Instead, the company consistently tries to be all things to all people and win the game by sheer size and by industry-leading support.

Most recently, IBM has been promoting itself as a friend to the open-source community, through the Apache Foundation and with major announcements aimed at the Eclipse Foundation and at the storage community. The company's efforts are seen by many as nothing more than the big wolf trying to control thing by donning some open-source sheep's clothing, but nevertheless, IBM is opening itself to tremendous potential levels of input (and criticism) from all quarters with this activity, which is hardly the behavior of the secretive, closed culture associated with the company for many years.

IBM is by far the leader in web services, and has an advantage in the burgeoning SOA segment within that market. That is the topic of primary importance to this magazine and our readers. So a breakdown of how the company is faring in each of its business aspects is not totally relevant in these pages. But WebSphere developers need to remain confident that the company behind the technology will remain very strong in coming years.

Unbelievably, IBM looked a lot like a dying company a decade and a half ago. But it has rebuilt its image, remained strong across the board. It's good to know that at least one IBM exec is restless, that he wants the company to do more. This spirit is what keeps great companies great. But the company is hardly standing still. It seems as if the recent tide of announcements will keep rolling in over the months to come.

Now, if we could just do something about that lack of pass protection in San Diego...