Yes, their start in virtual machine was their CP67/CMS. The CP67 abbreviated "control program 360/67" and was written at their Cambridge Scientific Center in Boston as an interactive computing tool for development of operating systems. The CMS abbreviated "conversational monitor system" or, if you will, the command line interface to CP67. So CMS had a command IPL or "initial program load" which was software for the big red button on the front of an actual machine. The 360/67 was a 360/65 'tweaked' to have virtual memory. At one point for a demonstration they ran CP67 on CP67 on ... CP67 on the 'bare metal' seven levels deep -- it still actually ran. Eventually the 'system administration' advantages of virtual machine were noticed, and CP67 became VM/370. Some years later I got a dial up terminal and used CP67/CMS to write PL/I software to schedule the fleet at FedEx -- pleased the BoD and saved the company.

IBM did try with several projects and products cheaper than their 'big iron' mainframes: They had small versions of System 360, e.g., 360/40 with 64 KB of main memory and some still smaller. They had a rugged minicomputer sometimes used as a communications node/router. They had their System/38 that was 'friendly' and made relational database easy for some small/medium businesses; the S/38s were popular with hospitals that shared their applications software freely. Then of course they did the IBM/PC with PC/DOS they got from Microsoft and 8088 they got from Intel.

Yes, at that point and for some years later IBM had essentially everything in computing, e.g., even ran all of the Internet under a contract from the NSF. IBM had an amplifier that could wrap around an optical fiber and amplify the signal without detecting it and re-transmitting it.

But, right, IBM blew it. They had annual technology appraisals that gave them excellent projections about the future. They did take microprocessor lithography very seriously, in a sense more seriously than anyone else, still, in that they got a cyclotron as an X-ray source for making fine lines on silicon; the rest of microelectronics is still working with extreme ultra-violet and not as short as X-rays. They were into AI (a group I was in), wareable computing, etc. They did some very high level work on disk subsystems with some tricky optimization for placement of physical records based on access data.

But IBM didn't take personal computing or TCP/IP anywhere nearly seriously enough. In a sense, they missed what Gates saw -- put a PC on each desk of the developed world.

One reason Gates was right IBM should have seen quickly enough -- the PC blew away the old typewriters, including IBM's best efforts at typewriters.

So, IBM wanted to continue selling to their usual customers their usual way, suits to suits from the IBM branch offices. They knew plenty well enough, essentially from the first Intel chips, that microprocessors would challenge the existing approach to 'big iron' System/370 processors, but they neglected to see the implications. Or, now can buy an AMD FX-8350 processor, 64 bit addressing, 8 cores, 4.0 GHz standard clock speed, quantity one, for less than $100, and that puppy is, in historical terms, one HECK of a processor for one astoundingly low price per computer instruction per second.

So, along rushed Intel, Microsoft, Gateway, Dell, etc. The Intel 386, etc. architecture was serious, no toy, and by Windows NT Microsoft was well into operating systems essentially as serious as IBM's 'big iron' MVS (multiple virtual storage).

Then along came, right, TCP/IP and Cisco. IBM should have seen that the future of digital communications was end to end reliability of TCP instead of hop by hop reliability of IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture); indeed, major parts of IBM did very clearly and explicitly see this point. Still, for the product line, IBM was painfully slow to embrace TCP/IP, even when IBM was running ALL of the Internet.

And for 'workstations', e.g.. Sun, IBM tried with Power; there for Unix they tried with AIX.

At times IBM did begin to see the future, e.g., had an early Web browser, had Prodigy with Sears for on-line shopping and 'social computing' along with, again, the whole Internet. So, those efforts should have given IBM Netscape, Amazon, and Facebook -- if IBM had been wide awake and trying hard. They should also have had Intel, Microsoft, and Apple. For Apple, did I mention wearaable computing? Uh, don't forget Cisco; long IBM was making the core chips for both the Cisco and Juniper routers; IBM had the catbird seat over digital communications and the Internet but still didn't see them clearly.

By 1994, the word in the meeting room across the hall from the CEO's office in Armonk, as IBM was no longer making their revenue projections, was "God ceased to smile on IBM". In three years IBM lost $16 billion and went from 407,000 employees down to 209,000, and has had lots more shrinkage since.

IBM often wanted to regard itself not as an electronics company or a computer company but a marketing company. Well, as the market for computing changed, good shot a the biggest change in a market in all of history, IBM continued to do well understanding the electronics and computing but not the market or marketing. Net, IBM really blew it, really fumbled the ball, dropped the ball, tripped over the ball, fell on the ball, and ended up face down. IIRC one IBM CEO those days got some stock options and left worth about $125 million -- 'chump change' for what IBM missed from Netscape, Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Amazon, etc. Chump change.