Yes, I’m a portal and collaboration guy so you may be wondering what I’m doing at a conference focused on commerce, middleware, and other plumbing. Truth is a lot of the people interested in plumbing have a huge need for portal and collaboration so I come to support Perficient as we talk to clients about the combined needs. I was here in time for the opening session so here’s the notes on IBM’s main themes this year. What’s interesting is that they chose to focus on outcome rather than functionality of specific products. It’s a rather refreshing approach because then you can focus on what’s important.
IBM 100 years
IBM is celebrating it’s centennial. 100 years on 100 seconds.
- Start with clocks, scales, and cheese slices
- type writer
- mainframe and punch card
- magnetic tape drive
- miles of cable
- radar
- computer chips
- fractals
- trips to the moon
- The first PC
- nano-scale computing
- Watson on Jeopardy
IBM at 100 is 100 years of what? Real transformation requires that you build clients confidence.
Pattern:
- instrument to help the beginning of automate.
- integrate to innovate. Pass the data and information around
- optimize to transform using the data and analytics
Example, Netherlands railways used historical data, weather, etc to figure out how to improve operating efficiency, increase fares, etc. They used iLog to do this.
Example: City of Madrid needed to improve emergency response capability. Sync not only people but processes and technologies across all the agencies. They are now 25% faster in responding to emergencies.
Example: In Italy, local fisherman use mobile devices to determine market prices and sell their fish. A local university helped start that.
Can you respond rapidly to changes in business needs?
Collaboration
Children’s Hospital Boston. Knowledge transfer hasn’t changed much in the past 100 years. He included a story of using an internet video link to educate a doctor on how to help a 5 year old girl in Guatemala.
Dr. Burns saw the adult learning cycle in the Master’s Golf site. He brought in IBM to explain his needs. There aren’t enough doctors and nurses in how to treat a critically ill child. The needs also change from resources limited environment vs a resources strong environment. He gives an example of a Buble CPAP treatment for infection. The doctor learned it from a facility in Kenya. The information was bottled up in her.
IBM create PICU Without Walls. It uses the adult learning cycle. It allows interaction via a social network. It allows videos to show how to do something. It’s a revolutionary approach to education.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indded, it’s the only thing that ever has” Margaret Meade
Innovation
Caterpillar is working on the following:
- Order to delivery
- Leadership development and recruiting
- Supply chain / low cost producer
- Product to services
- Collaboration
- Open infrastructure offering (cloud???)
The CIO quantified this:
OIO: save $30 million annualy
Warranty adminitration: $60 million annually (using iLog and another tool)
Order to Delivery / Finance: > $100 million annually
Smarter physical infrastructure: Well, it’s just big.
Quote: Culture eats strategy for lunch.
Growth in today’s environment means transformation is not optional.
Product
New announcement: IBM business process Manager. It combines Lombardi with WebSphere Process Server, and additional components to help enhance collaboration and a simple install.
New Offering: WebSphere ESB Registry Edition
New announcement: Version 8 of WebSphere Application Server. Java EE 6 support. Great feedback from open beta. New install manager automates install, test, migration, etc.
New announcement. Web 12.0 and Mobile feature pack making it easier to develop mobile apps.
New: IBM WebSphere Application accelerator. This hooks up with Akamai. Really cool.
New: Datapower appliances
New: hybrid cloud model support for use of on premise and cloud computing. IBM joined a new cloud standards customer council. Break through the hype to get to real and beneficial standards.
New: IBM Workload Deployer. Setup private clouds up to 60X faster.
Smarter Commerce Initiative: an end to end visualization and view to get closer to your customers.
