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.

Cloud computing is now at this same inflection point. In Silicon Valley and other hotbeds of innovation, the idea of an open-architecture cloud is becoming a reality. This will be transformational on a level equal to that of the Internet.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Open cloud computing will provide the infrastructure that supports our increasingly interconnected world. And as collaboratively driven technologies such as OpenStack, Quantum, Ceph and Swift establish open standards in the cloud, the pace of technology innovation will become even more rapid. These standards will unlock boundless opportunities for startup and large companies alike, as well as the individuals they serve.

So get ready. Once this revolution ignites, things that seem futuristic today will rapidly move from theory to reality – dramatically impacting our daily lives. The open cloud will serve as the catalyst for many things, big and small, that today may seem impractical or unimaginable, but tomorrow will be pervasive.

Take, for example, the sensor in the tire of your car. Today, it tells you if the tire needs air. Tomorrow? Powered by open cloud computing, that sensor will be able to not only tell you that the tire is going flat, but will check your dealership’s inventory. The dealership may, in turn, talk to the smartphone connected to your car, checking your calendar to install a replacement. This is only the start of what’s possible once as the open cloud lifts off.

Open Standards enable essential powerful computing capabilities at entrepreneur friendly cost points, and reduce the high licensing and operating expenses that closed software and hardware solutions impose. The open cloud provides startups the reach, speed, and scale that support entrepreneurial creativity and agility. It is the canvas for developing the revolutionary mobile, social and big data technologies that will change our world.

Next generation cloud standards are breaking the chains of high-cost, difficult-to-use networking, database and storage technologies. They provide the framework for entrepreneurs to build analytic platforms that will enable vastly more effective and personalized healthcare, widespread demand response systems that will lower energy consumption, and advanced and broadly adopted video communications that will more tightly connect us with friends and family.

Startups not only use open technologies to redefine the world of what is possible, but also serve as the incubators of new technologies that enable the next wave of startups. As open standards in the cloud take hold, a tremendous stream of innovation is gathering speed. This will not only ignite future technology waves, but will transform daily lives the world over.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, cloud computing, IBM SmartCloud, IBM Smarter Planet, innovation, Open Standards, OpenStack, Smarter Cloud

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…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Standardized cloud services boost resource flexibility

The cloud standardizes the way computing resources are made available and enables complex organizations to consolidate a plethora of different products into one consistent model.

IBM now uses fewer than five standardized business intelligence tools for the more than 200,000 IBMers who call upon its analytics cloud. This has not only helped IBM cut significant costs, but has also afforded us immense resource flexibility, as the company is now enabling our teams to be more productive and manage fewer computing resources.

Look to analytics for small wins to drive big victories

Whether you are IBM, a big bank or a startup, all of your company programs must contribute to the bottom line. The only way your workforce can drive revenue growth on a consistent basis is if they can make fast, informed business decision backed by solid data.

IBM’s marketing organization, for example, has cloud-based software to manage and integrate cross-company marketing campaigns (and the sales leads that follow) across digital, social, mobile and traditional marketing channels.

This approach has helped us increase direct interactions with first time customers by 32 percent. IBM has also increased customer responses to our marketing outreach tenfold while running fewer campaigns, illustrating the targeted effectiveness that data driven insight can deliver. These types of internal metrics have helped me drive new value and forge a closer relationship with our CMO.

Get more advocates by asking the right set of business questions

So how do you start?  One way to increase the relevancy of the CIO office is to ask critical business questions like, What are your business objectives with this project?  And, What are the key performance indicators?

For IBM, this meant identifying specific goals and obstacles. So, if a marketing manager in a local country wants to minimize “spray and pray” emails in favor of more targeted offerings, we’ve got to ensure customer profile data is up to date and readily available. By revealing the key performance indicators and starting with the end objective in mind, IBM’s technology office is now joined at the hip with its marketing leaders.

IBM can cite how a game-changing technology like cloud-based analytics is playing a key role in breaking down business silos. And for me personally, driving new value and tighter collaboration with my peers inside the business is a metric I (and any CIO) would be proud to sign up for.

Technorati Tags: Big Data analytics, CIO, cloud analytics, cloud computing, IBM smarter cloud, IBM Smarter Planet, Smarter Cloud

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.

At North Carolina State University, my students are focusing on healthcare systems, specifically building and analyzing electronic medical record applications. The students leverage IBM AppScan to test these applications for potential vulnerabilities. Critical cyber systems must inspire trust and confidence. They must predictably protect the integrity of data and resources as well as the privacy of data owners, and perform securely, safely, and reliably.

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to collaborate with IBM researchers to identify common themes and pinpoint some of the major challenges academic institutions are facing in relation to building next generation cybersecurity skills. Four common trends were identified:

1.)    Information security is increasing in relevance. No longer just a highly-specialized area, information security impacts people every day. It has become personal in an interconnected world that’s reliant upon smart phones, social media, e-commerce and cloud services. In other words, information security impacts us every day.

2.)    Increasing attention and demand from students, private industry and government agencies. More and more industries, from banks and financial services companies to aerospace and defense firms, as well as healthcare providers, are seeking graduates with specialized security skills. Training an expert cybersecurity workforce is now a national priority for many countries.

3.)    The field of cybersecurity has significantly expanded with more domains to secure and more ways to attack. This means more to teach and to learn. Today, attacks are extremely hard to detect; attackers are stealthier and more evasive. In response, academic programs are expanding beyond traditional areas like cryptography and countering sniffing and denial of service attacks. Cybersecurity education now covers new areas like cyber-physical attacks, the protection of heterogeneous systems and real-time security data analysis.

4.)    Academic programs are evolving from teaching purely the principles and theory of security to focus more on the practices. This is largely driven by the demands of industry and governments, as well as by students who want to focus more on real-world problems and practical challenges.

While these may be the four common themes we identified, in reality it will take all of us to create a more secure future.

______________________________________

Laurie Williams is a Professor in the Computer Science Department of the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University (NCSU). Her research focuses on software security particularly in relation to healthcare IT; agile software development practices and processes; software reliability, software testing and analysis; open source software development; and broadening participation and increasing retention in computer science. Laurie has more than 170 refereed publications.

Laurie received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Utah, her MBA from Duke University Fuqua School of Business, and her BS in Industrial Engineering from Lehigh University.   She worked for IBM Corporation for nine years in Raleigh, NC and Research Triangle Park, NC before returning to academia.

Takreem El-Tohamy, GM, IBM Middle East and Africa

By Takreem El-Tohamy

There’s a wonderful word in Swahili that I think expresses one of the imperatives for the future of Africa. The word is “harambee.” It means pulling together, collaborating and supporting each other. I believe that one of the key factors in the ability of African countries to create sustainable and equitable economic growth will be the emergence of innovation ecosystems. Harambee perfectly captures an essential element of such ecosystems—the ability of institutions and individuals to pull together and build a mutually supportive environment.

Innovation ecosystems are complex organisms that are difficult to create yet tremendously powerful when they work. Think Silicon Valley. They require a melding of all of the capabilities of governments, businesses, financiers, universities, and individuals. Together, these organizations and individuals provide the web of support that makes it easier for startups to launch and grow quickly, and for established companies to innovate more aggressively. With that kind of support, African entrepreneurs and businesses will find it easier to produce new products and services, or even create whole new industries. You can think of an innovation ecosystem as a collective intelligence—harnessed for the good of society.

IBM is committed to helping Africa build successful innovation ecosystems. The latest sign of this willingness is our new IBM Innovation Center in Nairobi, Kenya. It’s a place where people from established companies, universities and startups can tap IBM technology and expertise to help them create solutions to the country’s business and societal challenges. We’re dedicated to helping Kenya fulfill its Vision 2030, which provides a strategy aimed at helping large numbers of Kenyans emerge into the middle class. Here’s a video about the center..

Click here to view the embedded video.

Our company has been doing business in Africa since 1921, when we helped out with the South African census. Today, we are expanding rapidly. We have offices in more than 20 African countries, including South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco and my native Egypt. The company has helped deliver everything from online banking and dependable mobile phone services to technologies for improving city services and government transparency.

In 2012, IBM established its first research laboratory in Africa—in Nairobi. It’s one of only one dozen such labs worldwide. Here’s a video about the impact we believe the Nairobi lab will have across Africa.

Click here to view the embedded video.

My IBM colleagues and I understand that expanding in Africa comes with a unique set of challenges. Our company must aid in building the capacities of Africa’s people and institutions—including knowledge, technology infrastructure, business sophistication and governance. These are the underpinnings of innovation ecosystems.

What’s the key role for IBM in Africa? To help feed the momentum. As a strategic partner with governments, universities, established businesses and startups, IBM can provide a wealth of technology know-how and problem-solving expertise that helps kick start initiatives and accelerate the speed of change.

Africa is coming into its own. The spirit of harambee is helping to drive progress. And IBM is dedicated to helping African countries, companies and individuals achieve their aspirations.

——————-

Here’s an IBM Blue Paper about what it takes to build innovation ecosystems in Africa.

Technorati Tags: africa, IBM

James Kobielus, Senior Program Director, Big Data Evangelist, IBM

By James Kobielus

Big Data is a bit like our solar system. It’s a brilliant system of information and analysis that emerges from the inchoate gas, dust, rocks and crystals known as “data.” Cloud computing is the galaxy wherein the stars, rocks, and particles exist and interact.

To play this analogy out, data scientists would be the astronomers. They’re the ones who explore the spinning, interconnected, system, much of which consists of scattered matter that we lump together under the term “unstructured.”

But what exactly is a data scientist? Simply put, the data scientist is among the most important developer in Big Data. The discipline includes statistical analysts, data miners, predictive modelers, computational linguists, and other professionals whose job is to find deep insights in large, complex data sets. You can’t unlock the full value of Big Data in your business if you don’t bring together your best and brightest data scientists and give them the tools they need to do their job with maximum productivity.

While you don’t need a Ph.D. in statistics to be a data scientist, you do need curiosity, intellectual agility, statistical fluency, research stamina, scientific rigor and a skeptical nature. You must also be articulate, because no one will accept the validity of the patterns you surface if you can’t explain clearly how you built your model, what variables and data you used, or what the results truly mean in the context either of some business problem or scientific endeavor.

Though some in the industry are concerned about a shortage of business-oriented data scientists, research shows the opposite. Smart people are flocking to the data-scientist profession in greater numbers to advance their careers and to be leaders in solving complex global issues. And academia is responding with new coursework and programs designed to train and educate the next generation of technorati.

For example, IBM’s data scientists are using Big Data analytics to help manage precious water resources in South Africa, Florida, Indiana, and many more places. Eoin Lane is a Smarter Water architect who’s working on finding other ways that data and technology can solve water problems around the world.

Another IBM scientist, Michael Haydock, Chief Scientist, IBM Global Business Services, is helping retail brands forecast sales trends up to 4 times more accurately using 22 years of historical data. IBM researchers at the IBM Customer Experience Lab have launched a prototype technology called the Virtual Closet, which uses data to customize recommendations for customers based on items they’ve recently purchased or shown interest in.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, Big Data analytics, cloud computing, data scientists, IBM Smarter Planet, research, smarter analytics, Smarter Cloud

Lisa Seacat DeLuca, Software Engineer, Advanced Cloud Solutions; IBM Master Inventor

By Chris Nay

FYpacW4XW
ZYVW4Vpac
FFpacD3TW
ZYVWMVT
FYTW4XC
YFpacW4XW
pacFpacV5TW

Notice a pattern in these codes? Don’t feel bad if you don’t. They’re from 1994’s “Pac Man 2: The New Adventures.” The kids playing the game in the mid-1990s knew that they unlocked hidden levels, but probably didn’t notice a pattern either. But 12 year old Lisa DeLuca did. To the point she could correctly predict, and enter the next code without playing the game.

“Figuring out these codes made me think: I want to be around this kind of thing [when I grow up],” Lisa said.

What that “thing” turned into almost 20 years later is programming and patenting at IBM. Today, Lisa is a two-time Master Inventor with more than 300 patents filed, working on next-gen cloud applications for IBM’s Advanced Cloud Solutions.

Seven years in the making

Lisa had yet to file a patent when she joined IBM’s Austin lab in 2005 to develop Java applications (this after two summer internships with the company; one in Rochester, MN and another in Raleigh, NC. The old cliché “I’ve Been Moved” even applies to students!). While some of her fellow interns tried, the whole process seemed intimidating. And at a giant company, where do you start?

Lisa’s
Patent Prowess

315 patents filed

102 patent plateaus

79 patents issued

“When I moved to Austin, a group of Extreme Blue alumni met a couple times a month to brainstorm about patents – from ideas to patent, to figuring out how to patent something. When I discovered that I just needed to fill out a three-question form to pitch an idea to IBM’s patent review board, I thought ‘I can at least do that.’ So, I submitted an idea,” Lisa said.

Her idea for “output styling in an IDE console” went over so well that the review board accepted it after her first in-person pitch. So put patent number 8,302,070 on the resume, right? Not so fast. Putting the “patented” stamp on a console that looked like a browser window, so that developers could apply some HTML-like stylings such as different colors and fonts to their code, would have to wait, and wait, and wait some more.

After the positive review in August of 2005, the board officially accepted it in July, 2006 (when #8,302,070 became officially protected). If that seemed to take a while, the US Patent and Trademark Office didn’t issue the patent until 2012! Their usual turnaround is a mere four years.

“Looking back, I was actually lucky. For the board to accept a first ever invention idea pitch is not that common. Knowing what I know now, I made a lot of mistakes in how I wrote it up.  The best way to learn, however, is to jump in head first,” Lisa said.

Patience and planning pays off 314 more times

Just like those old Pac Man codes, Lisa started to figure out how to pattern her work and interests into patents. Here are a few things she’s learned over the last few years and hundreds of patent board pitches.

• Do your homework. Find out if something else has parts of y

  Advancing the Cloud

  Lisa is on a team looking at new ways for businesses to use the cloud. Their Cloud First Factory, built on top of OpenStack, lets users develop their own solutions in the Cloud.

  Cloud meet mobile

  The team also started building mobile cloud apps for their development and test environments. The apps utilize command-line interfaces so that users can download private keys to their mobile device and manage their cloud instances.
  “We’re now working on how to visualize big data that’s stored in the cloud – that can be shown and analyzed over mobile,” Lisa said.

  our idea, or if it’s completely taken. Then, you can use these other ideas to defend your new idea and become a subject matter expert.  A good inventor does this prior art search.  A great inventor modifies their invention based on what they find to make their original idea even stronger.

• Form brainstorming groups with colleagues. A diverse perspective on a challenge can often spur new ways to solve a broader problem.

“I had gotten to know several colleagues over patent brainstorming conference calls well enough to invite them to my wedding. These were people I had not met in person – and they all came!” Lisa said.

• Don’t take it personally. Disconnect yourself from your idea when you’re defending it. Review boards are looking for ideas that may be valuable to the company; a rejection is not an indictment on you.

• Join the experts. Sit in on your company’s patent review board meetings as an evaluator. Get to know what they are looking for in patent write ups and defense pitches. Doing this will help you better understand the process.

• Be patient, but don’t wait. Be patient with individual filings, but try to have as many ideas in the different phases of review so you don’t watch the clock.

Lisa, now based on the East Coast, is the first woman to reach IBM’s 100^th patent plateau – a point system that rewards patent filings and issuances. And at 30 years old, maybe the youngest. “I made reaching the 100^th plateau a goal. But when it happened and the balloons and confetti didn’t fall from the ceiling, I thought ‘well, I’ll just keep thinking of new patent ideas,’ but without a specific number of filings or plateaus in mind.”

“Ok, it would be nice to reach 200.”

Technorati Tags: cloudcomputing, invention, mobile, OpenStack Foundation, patents

Craig Sowell, Vice President, IBM SmartCloud and Managed Services Marketing

By Craig Sowell

As we come to recognize the power of mobile, social and Big Data to deliver new forms of innovation and drive growth, a common, unifying element is the cloud.

Cloud computing is changing the way we live and do business. From how we enjoy music and movies to how we speed our transportation. Just look at how cloud is enabling innovation for Drivewyze, a company that provides a service for truckers that is comparable to the E-ZPass electronic toll-collection system available in 14 states from Indiana to Massachusetts.

But instead of speeding up congestion at tollbooths, Drivewyze enables truckers to avoid lengthy stops at the weigh stations where commercial truckers are required to check in. What makes this possible is enabling tablets, smartphones, or other in-cab devices with transponder-like functionality provided by the cloud. 

In a very real sense, cloud provides the platform that supports the reach, speed and scale required by the rise of mobile, social and Big Data.

The cloud essentially provides access to power and capabilities that are otherwise inaccessible. We see this in enterprises that essentially eliminate the compute boundaries of their data centers, or those that access the new services required to rapidly compile and process data. The benefits of cloud all come down to access – services and capabilities placed at the fingertips of business and IT users. When this happens, the way people work, as well as the relationship between individuals and their enterprises, is transformed.

A pattern we’ve seen emerging from successful cloud adoptions such as Drivewyze is the presence of two key factors, which you might think of as the yin and yang of cloud. The first factor is the reinvention of key business processes, revealed through a transformation at the user level. When cloud is adopted in a meaningful way, users become more productive and customers engage at a richer, deeper level.

The second factor is the emergence of a new breed of designers and developers who are enabled by truly “intelligent cloud platforms” that allow for the creation of composable cloud services. In other words, services can be drawn from any manner of partner and provider with little regard for traditional boundaries. This newfound creative freedom enables developers to create new applications and services.

Think about the marketer who can now, thanks to cloud computing, access vast pools of real-time data generated by her firm’s demand generation activities. Imagine the marketer’s ability to search and identify a predefined campaign performance service that leverages cloud-based resources to quickly process that data. The marketer is thus empowered to make rapid strategic decisions about marketing investments. This ability to “compose” by the user, based on a catalog of cloud services, is truly revolutionary.

Of course, the business user transformation requires an orchestration of creative developers and intelligent platforms. To a developer, the cloud platform becomes a palette of sorts. With a powerful set of resources and best practices, developers can focus on creating unique interactions that engage and stimulate the actions of end users and customers.

If you’d like to discuss this further, join my colleague, Ric Telford, for a Facebook chat on cloud computing this Friday, April 26, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. ET.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, Big Data analytics, cloud computing, IBM Smart Cloud, IBM SmartCloud, innovation, mobile computing, social business

Charaka Kithulegoda, CIO, ING DIRECT

By Charaka Kithulegoda

It’s estimated that there are more smartphones on the planet than humans. By 2016, more than 10 billion smartphones will be in use around the global. And Canadians are leading that growth, with more than half of Canadian smartphone users banking from their mobile device – and that number grows even higher when looking at those between 18 – 34 years of age.

Our customers expect to be able to connect with their friends and family, browse and shop and of course, bank from their mobile devices. As the mobile marketplace continues to grow and expand, mobile banking is not just a convenient option for our clients, but a must have. So how do we provide our customers with easy access to their money at any time, wherever they are?

Working with IBM, ING DIRECT Canada has developed a long-term, secure strategy around our mobile architecture supporting multiple devices. This has allowed us to fast-track the delivery of mobile banking applications for all mobile devices. For example, our iPad application, developed with IBM, has a dashboard view that users can customize based on their frequently-transacted activities.

But we not only embraced mobile banking, we took it a step further and embraced social banking – providing our customers the ability to bank and transact from wherever they are and this includes social applications like Facebook and Twitter.

Our Facebook application, for instance, makes banking easy and secure. Customers can go from chatting with friends to checking out their accounts with the click of a key. Our customers were already logged onto Facebook, interacting with friends and family. Why make our clients log out, just to log back into our mobile site? Instead, we made it easy for our customers to bank where they already are.

Social banking has also helped us encourage our customer to save, through a program called Small Sacrifices. In a recent survey, we found that 52 percent of Canadians said that if they were able to better visualize what foregoing their daily, weekly and monthly spending on non-essential purchases looked like, they would save them over the short and long term, they would change their spending habits.

With client preferences at the heart of our business, we helped our customers visualize how cutting out everyday indulgences, — i.e. Small Sacrifices — could lead to big savings over the long term. It’s simple, but very effective. First, users choose what small sacrifice they can make, like passing on a daily coffee purchase. Then users decide which goal to redirect the money to, like their retirement fund or savings account. Once the user specifies how much money they spend on their average, Small Sacrifices creates a chart illustrating how much could be amassed in five- and 25 years by saving that amount weekly. The next time a user is tempted to spend on their non-essential purchase, they can choose to instead redirect that money to a savings or retirement account with one simple click.

At ING DIRECT, we understand that mobile technology is here to stay. It’s changing how we live our lives by helping make everyday tasks easier and more convenient.

Clients are telling us what they want and how they want to use our products and services. We have embraced this rapid evolution by providing open and engaging solutions that offer immediacy and simplicity through a highly contextual experience.　

Technorati Tags: IBM Smarter Planet, mobile applications, mobile banking, mobile computing, smarter banking, social banking, social business, social media

Ben Goldhirsh, CEO, GOOD

By Ben Goldhirsh

Cloud computing is the new mantra for small businesses looking to go green.

That’s important because IT’s carbon footprint has been expanding. Between 2011 and 2020, carbon emissions for worldwide information communication technology (ICT) equipment and services are expected to double from 2 percent to 4 percent of total emissions, according to market research firm Verdantix.

Becoming a green business means more than just eliminating paper. It is about eliminating waste and reducing energy consumption. One easy step towards “going green” and significantly decreasing your carbon footprint is to eliminate or reduce energy-consuming on-premises equipment and move your IT to the cloud.

Cloud computing, storing and accessing data and software from remote servers, is changing the way the world does business. The cloud can be accessed from anywhere there’s an Internet connection. The cloud allows increasing amounts of Big Data generated from mobile devices and social channels to be captured, stored and continuously updated in one, central location. This dramatically reduces a business’ power consumption and in turn, energy bills.

When small companies run their own servers, idle time is a considerable problem. Small companies never use 100 percent of their computing power 100 percent of the time – it’s not even close. Most of the time, the server is idle, using power while not doing anything productive. Cloud technology means small companies use only the technology and energy they actually need. In other words, Cloud computing allows small, green businesses to work more efficiently and become even more eco-friendly.

In the U.S. alone, cloud computing will reduce carbon emissions by almost 86 million metric tons per year by 2020, generating a potential energy savings of more than $12 billion/year. Businesses, both established and start-ups, large or small can all go cloud, and go green, at the same time.

For example, large companies moving to the cloud can reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions by 30 percent. Small businesses save even more energy than their larger counterparts – up to 90 percent.

To help spur wide adoption of these technologies, cloud providers, and more specifically managed service providers, are uniquely positioned to assist small businesses in devising and implementing a Green IT strategy. Guidance from local technology providers goes a long way to help shape sustainable, socially responsible – and profitable – green businesses.

Gartner predicts the worldwide cloud computing market will grow to more than $14 billion in 2013. This growth indicates the small businesses that make up 65 percent of the total business community are actively pursuing cloud computing as a way to keep costs down, improve processes and transition to a mobile workforce.

In addition to the green benefits of cloud computing, such services are also lowering the barrier to entry into business for many SMBs, such as eliminating the need to establishing expensive in-house IT capabilities. Also, cloud computing levels the playing field and enables start-ups and SMBs to act like, and operate like, organizations of much greater size and scope.

With SMBs serving as the growth engine for many countries, cloud computing can spur the growth of local industries and local economies in environmentally friendly ways.

Technorati Tags: cloud, cloud computing, green cloud, ibm cloud, IBM Smarter Planet, smarter systems, SMB, start-ups

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty

In these early days of the 21^st century, Big Data, analytics, cloud, mobile and social technologies are transforming our world.  This new era of computing provides the instrumentation, interconnection and intelligence that make it possible to build a smarter planet. But, in order to do so, countries, cities, corporations and individuals need to rethink how they go about achieving their goals. Watch this video of IBM CEO Ginni Rometty laying out her vision of the path forward at the Council on Foreign Relations–and her Q&A session with the audience. Join the conversation here and on Twitter at #IBM and #CFRlive. Here’s the speech.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Join us tomorrow to discuss how enterprises can take advantage of today’s cutting-edge technologies to become more competitive. IBM social business leader Jen Okimoto will lead a Smarter Friday chat on IBM’s People for a Smarter Planet Facebook page from 8:00 AM-2:00 PM ET. IBM social business evangelist Sandy Carter will host a #P4SPchat from 12:00 PM-1:00 PM ET on Twitter.

Technorati Tags: Council on Foreign Relations, Ginni Rometty