Marc Dietz, Director, IBM SmartCloud Solutions
By Marc Dietz
Traditionally relegated to back office IT managers reporting to the CIO, enterprise technology decisions are often made by a small subset of employees – generally not by executives closest to the business.
But cloud computing is changing all that.
Executives across the C-Suite are recognizing that they must reorient their businesses to become more competitive in a digital economy. This comes with a deeper understanding of how mobile and social technologies are reshaping the way people consume, disseminate and share information, and how the data generated from these applications is helping businesses transform their organizations and personalize their interactions with customers. New technologies – such as cloud computing – hold a new promise to open up powerful new lines of engagement.
But what truly excites these executives about cloud? Continue Reading »
Craig Sowell, Vice President, IBM SmartCloud
By Craig Sowell
With all the hype around cloud computing you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s reached saturation. The truth is, for enterprises, it’s just beginning to take hold.
Industry watchers tell us that public cloud services will reach $131 billion in 2013. By comparison, this year enterprise IT spending will reach $3.7 trillion. In other words, we’ve barely scratched the surface.
On Tuesday, IBM, already one of the world’s largest cloud computing vendors, announced an agreement to acquire SoftLayer, the world’s largest privately held cloud infrastructure provider.
The acquisition is intended to speed IBM’s ongoing focus the Fortune 500, which have yet to capitalize on cloud computing, as well as expand our reach to new clients including born-on-the-web companies. Continue Reading »
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 »
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. Continue Reading »
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IBM CEO Ginni Rometty
In these early days of the 21st 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.
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.
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Steve Hamm in
Like other media companies around the world, Australia’s Fairfax Media Limited is under pressure due to the fast-changing dynamics in publishing. But Fairfax isn’t taking those challenges lying down. The company, which is a leading media outfit in Australia and New Zealand, owns two of the most popular news Web sites in Australia. “We now have a business based around journalism that creates a large audience, and we hit that audience in print, online, tablet, smartphone and smart TV,” says Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood.
IBM CEO Ginni Rometty
Fairfax is a prime example of a company that has aggressively adopted technology to transform the way it does business and interacts with customers. Hywood was a featured speaker today at IBM’s CMO+CIO Leadership Symposium in Sydney, where IBM executives and clients interacted with nearly 100 chief marketing and chief information officers from Australia’s leading companies.
In a keynote address, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty told the audience that the explosion of data makes it possible for companies to address customers as individuals. “I think this will change the relationship you have with your customers fundamentally, no matter what industry,” she said. “And it will change the relationship between the CMO and CIO.”
Martin Kienzle, Ph.D, Electronics Industry Leader, IBM Research
By Martin Kienzle
At the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week, the hype wasn’t all about the latest smartphone or tablet launch. Exhibitors and attendees alike were abuzz about the rapidly evolving smarter home – a concept that calls for connecting not only your mobile device to the web, but your TV, fridge, washing machine, thermostat and even your carbon monoxide detector.
The analyst firm Parks Associates forecasts that more than 8 billion devices will be connected to the home network by the end of 2015. The breakthrough that’s driving this mass adoption – cloud computing. Cloud is quickly becoming the common platform to connect these disparate devices into an “Internet of Things.” Continue Reading »
Volker W. Fricke, Solution Architect, Telematics & Telemetry, IBM Germany
By Volker W. Fricke and Clay Luthy
What would Scotsman Robert Anderson say if he could comment on the history of electric vehicles? As the supposed inventor of the first vehicle with an electric motor back in 1836 he might have been a bit frustrated over the triumphal procession of the combustion engine for the last 100 years. However the progress and raising interest in electric mobility in the last couple of years might put a smile on his face.
Driven by technology breakthroughs, increasing oil prices and a raising environmental awareness, electric vehicles (EV) are moving into the center of interest for consumers, enterprises and governments. For example, the European Union (EU) has set an ambitious goal to reduce CO2 emissions by 60 percent by 2050.
Howard Bruck, CIO, Hudson Valley Bank
By Howard Bruck
Not since the availability of the ATM has the banking industry experienced such momentous change.
We are obliged to create products and services valuable to our customers doing their banking business on the internet and on mobile devices, all while maintaining responsibility for the highest levels of compliance and information security in environments we don’t always control.
This new world of the empowered customer has created a continual “when you want it, it will be there” customer mentality as the new reality of how they expect to interact with their financial institutions.
Continue Reading »
Kevin Thompson, Manager, Center for Applied Insights, IBM
By Kevin Thompson
While the 19th century experienced an industrial revolution that focused on manufacturing, the early part of this century is arguably about industrializing IT.
For the past 30 years, most enterprise organizations aiming to offer an application or IT solution have had to do much of the heavy lifting themselves – starting from scratch – building their own technology stack from the ground up and then managing everything in-house and on-premise.
Today, of course, those same organizations can procure computing resources and basic software services on-demand, expediting their go-to-market plans and minimizing both upfront and long-term costs.
Continue Reading »
