Lori Steele, General Manager, IBM Global Business Process Services
By Lori Steele
This week, C-suite attendees representing all aspects of technology-fueled commerce will be convening at the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Nashville. Among the participants will be L’Oréal USA, with whom IBM is working on a three-year project for procurement services supported by an advanced cloud analytics solution to help transform the way L’Oréal USA buys from its large network of North American suppliers.
Over the years, L’Oréal USA has rapidly grown through both acquisitions and organically through its existing brands. With the new market advancement, the company’s ecosystem of suppliers and vendors has grown exponentially. In order to continue to realize more savings from procurement, L’Oréal USA needed its procurement workforce compliant with its spending processes to attain the best buying advantage. Continue Reading »
Jim Smith, General Partner, Mohr Davidow Ventures
By Jim Smith
Take a second to think about how much of our daily activity takes place online. And I don’t just mean at work. In 2012, $225 billion of retail purchases happened virtually. In the U.S., 55 percent of us book worldwide travel solely through the Internet. Even our personal relationships, from organizing social activities to calling our relatives across the country and overseas, are maintained on the web. The rise of the Internet Revolution has had such a profound impact on our lives that most of us can’t even imagine how the world would revolve without it.
Many of the activities we perform online – whether staying on top of the 24-hour news cycle or managing our bank accounts – are made possible by the Internet’s open architecture. The Internet Revolution was catalyzed by the establishing and adopting of open standards. Linux, Apache, PHP: these are just a few examples of standards that made it possible for us to do almost anything online. Continue Reading »
Steve Hamm, IBM Writer
By Steve Hamm
Earlier this month, IBM opened the Nairobi IBM Innovation Center, the 41st center of its kind worldwide and the first in East Africa. This Innovation Center is a prime example of how IBM is helping to accelerate growth in Africa from the ground up with an ecosystem of highly skilled partners. IBM is working to support the growing network of entrepreneurs, academics, developers, and students by providing technology, business resources and a hub where they can come together to work with technology and business experts from around the world
But the opening of the NairobiIBMInnovationCenter is just the beginning of IBM’s work in the emerging ecosystem of tech and business in Africa.
To keep the conversation going and hear from expert voices, we will be hosting a Smarter Friday Facebook Chat this Friday, May 17th, from noon to 5 p.m. East Africa Time (4 a.m. – noon Eastern Standard Time). Continue Reading »
Jim Zemlin, Executive Director, The Linux Foundation
By Jim Zemlin
Businesses across China are adopting Linux at a brisk pace. According to the latest figures from the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker (Q4 2012), Linux growth in the country outpaces the worldwide average where share has grown from 9.2 percent to 33.2 percent over the past decade.
The reason? Globally, businesses like those in China are looking more closely at Linux for new computing workloads such as Big Data, cloud and mobile. Linux is an easier and more cost effective choice than other operating systems, like Windows or iOS. Plus, it already powers most devices and key infrastructures such as smartphones, sensors, data centers, social media sites, and even automobiles.
My organization – The Linux Foundation – recently surveyed over 1,200 businesses for our 2013 Enterprise End User Report. We found that 80 percent of enterprises have long term Linux commitments, 73 percent are using Linux to run mission critical applications, and 72 percent are planning to use Linux for Big Data. Continue Reading »
Karen Parrish, Vice President, Industry Solutions, IBM
By Karen Parrish
This week, professionals from around the world are attending eHealthWeek to discuss trends, innovations and solutions to address the ongoing challenges in healthcare. There certainly won’t be a lack of data and discussion about cost, wellness, aging populations and dealing with chronic conditions. While there are plenty of opinions, what’s missing from this deluge of points of view is a holistic approach to meeting needs of individuals – an approach IBM calls Smarter Care.
We’ve known for decades that health and social systems are interdependent and have a critical impact on each other. Yet the complex matrix of public and private stakeholders in the health and well-being of citizens still operate largely within silos, providing separate and disparate care. Continue Reading »
Jeanette Horan, CIO, IBM
By Jeanette Horan
Most CIOs will tell you that one of their top priorities is helping functions like sales, marketing, and HR stay agile, collaborative and equipped to make data-driven business decisions.
Take IBM for example. The information that IBM’s many departments need to do their jobs resides among more than one petabyte of Big Data (that’s one million megabytes). That’s a lot of data and business opportunities to be analyzed. For the past few years, IBM has called upon the cloud for business analytics to boost resource flexibility, departmental collaboration and enable faster, more informed business decisions.
At IBM we’ve been able to save $25 million over the past five years. Here’s what we’ve learned… Continue Reading »
Vince Ward, Project Officer at the Southern Housing Group
By Vince Ward
What started out as a community-based energy project on the Isle of Wight has morphed into a bona fide social movement.
Encouraged by the work of IBM Distinguished Engineer, Andy Stanford-Clark, who created a “smart” house that monitored, managed and optimized energy use, three years ago the Village of Chale created the Chale Community Project, which seeks, among other things, to reduce home energy costs by up to 50 percent. While the project has indeed raised awareness and helped residents lower costs, it has also had a serendipitous outcome – it has brought the community together.
From the very beginning of the Chale Community Project – during planning and roll-out phases – we worked on ensuring the local community was on board. Going from door to door, the team would communicate with residents about the plan of action, encourage participation and try to boost morale. Continue Reading »
Robert Fox, Global Telecom, Media and Entertainment Industry Leader
IBM Global Business Services
By Robert Fox
Cut throat competitiveness has been with the telecom industry since its inception nearly 140 years ago when Alexander Graham Bell beat Elisha Gray in a race to the U.S. Patent Office to lay claim to inventing the telephone.
Fast forward to today and we see a highly complex, competitive telecom environment where voice services have taken a back seat to a growing range of data-intensive services such as streaming music, radio and video, high definition video, online gaming and social media.
Transporting all of this data through their networks is resulting in shrinking margins and network congestion for the carriers. But don’t hang up on them yet! Mindful of protecting customers’ privacy and preserving their trust, many of the carriers are annonymizing their data, or offering opt-in programs, as they start to embrace and leverage advanced analytics for competitive advantage.
A new IBM study on how telcos are using Big Data highlights this trend: 85 percent of the respondents indicate that the use of information and analytics is creating a competitive advantage for them – a 124 percent increase in the last two years. Continue Reading »
Mike Ray, Vice President, Business Integration & Transformation, Integrated Supply Chain, IBM
By Mike Ray
It started 40 years ago, before it was trendy or being taught in business school.
Thomas J. Watson, Jr., IBM Chairman at the time, said: “We accept our responsibilities as a corporate citizen in community, national and world affairs; we serve our interests best when we serve the public interest…We want to be in the forefront of those companies which are working to make our world a better place.” That was 1969.
IBM’s values shape and define our company and permeate all of our relationships; between our employees and our shareholders, our clients, the communities where our employees live and work, and among our network of suppliers. Continue Reading »
Laurie Williams, Professor, Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University
By Laurie Williams
According to a recent IBM Tech Trends report, both educators and students view security as extremely important. In fact, 56 percent of students and 44 percent of educators ranked it as one of the top three issues the IT industry will face over the next two years. In addition, a UK government report said that it may take 20 years to address the current cybersecurity skills gaps.
To help try and change that, North CarolinaStateUniversity is partnering with IBM to help better prepare the next generation of engineers with a secure-by-design focus and curriculum.
Why dedicate so many resources to building cybersecurity skills? The world operates with interconnected systems and as technology progresses these systems will only proliferate. The linchpin to success in securing these systems is in the design stage – not at the end of the process. Continue Reading »
