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 »
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Deepak Advani, General Manager, Cloud and Smarter Infrastructure, IBM
By Deepak Advani
The Internet Age has made it possible for dramatic amounts of information to be available at our fingertips. And as capacity expands and accessibility grows, we push ever closer to the Internet-of-things, where our physical and digital worlds are tightly coupled and leveraged.
With the ability to generate, share, store and access increasing amounts of data – Big Data – the challenge soon becomes one of management and analysis. Left alone, the mountains of seemingly disparate information are useless. But when mined intelligently, they become treasure troves of insight that can unlock benefits, such as improved customer service, equipment-saving predictive maintenance, and new business opportunities, to name a few. Continue Reading »
Christian Bieck, IBM Institute for Business Value, Insurance Leader
By Christian Bieck
The most urgent and strategic initiative that I currently discuss with insurers is that of “Customer Centricity.” That’s because a lot of insurers are having a hard time understanding their customers, many of whom are becoming multi-modal.
A multi-modal customer is one who interacts with a provider through a variety of modes – or interaction points – i.e., face-to-face, phone, websites or aggregators. Often, a multi-modal customer will not purchase a product or service from the interaction point they used to collect information and gather a quote.
Finding success in today’s environment means that insurers must present the right data, information and offers to the right customers, at the right time, and through the right interaction points – many of which are digital.
(Fourth in a series in support of Big Data Week.) Continue Reading »
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Andy Stanford-Clark, IBM Master Inventor
Andy Stanford-Clark, an IBM Master Inventor who lives in the United Kingdom, jokes that his goal was “world domination” in 1999 when he and Arlen Nipper of Eurotech invented a protocol aimed at greatly improving machine-to-machine communications. This was at the time when another British technology pioneer, Kevin Ashton, coined the term “Internet of Things” to describe how the Internet could be connected to the physical world via a vast network of sensors. Stanford-Clark believed that his protocol, now called MQ Telemetry Transport, or MQTT for short, would enable organizations to quickly and affordably gather, integrate and make use of all of that sensor data. It would be an essential underlying technology for the Internet of Things. Continue Reading »
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David McQueeney, Vice President, Technical Strategy and Worldwide Operations, IBM
By David McQueeney
Five years ago, IBM launched its Smarter Planet initiative, describing the era in which we currently live and operate in as the “Era of Smart,” one marked by forward-thinking leaders in business, government and society capitalizing on smarter systems to achieve economic growth, operational efficiency and sustainable development.
Since 2008, we have moved beyond the world of programmable systems to our first steps in cognitive systems – systems that exploit large data sources and can “learn.” Our Watson system may highlight this new way of operating best. For the first time, a computer has the ability to consult a broad range of human language resources, learn from historical training data, and answer surprisingly complex questions. We are forced to rethink how computers can work with humans on complex tasks, by showing the world a system that is able to respond based on what it ‘knows’ – facts and information and training – rather than simply what words match in a simple search.
(Third in a series in support of Big Data Week.) Continue Reading »
Timothy J. Wholey, Global Leader, Aerospace & Defense Industry, IBM Global Business Services
By Timothy J. Wholey
We live in a world that’s exploding with data. From smartphones and social networks, to airplane instrumentation and atmospheric readings, we capture more data, more quickly than ever before. It’s estimated that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated on the planet every day.
This incredible amount of data creates challenges and opportunities for organizations, particularly in the aviation industry, because of the volume and variety of data it generates. Air traffic demand is expected to triple over the next 20 years, with passenger aircraft and fleets doubling during that time.
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First in a series in support of Big Data Week) Continue Reading »
Terry F. Yosie, President and CEO of the World Environment Center
By Terry F. Yosie
Environmental issues are big, thorny problems. Scarcities in water, food and raw materials are too complex for any single company or non-governmental organization to solve on its own. In order to make a difference, it’s necessary to collaborate with like-minded partners to achieve shared goals.
Collaboration is a normal feature of customer-supplier relationships, government-business partnerships and initiatives with universities and other partners. It’s also typical for organizations looking for new business models that can sustain profitability while addressing societal needs, natural resource management, product and service innovation, and differentiation of brand value, to name a few. Collaboration can spur organizations to redefine their business purpose by utilizing society as another kind of R&D lab for innovation. Continue Reading »
Dr. Anna Topol, CTO, Energy and Utilities, IBM
IBM today christened a new generation of technology innovators, naming 66 new Distinguished Engineers from across the company. The DE rank recognizes people for their outstanding technical accomplishments, as well as their potential for breaking new ground in key areas such as cloud and mobile computing, Big Data analytics, social business, and many more.
This year’s class includes Dr. Anna Topol, IBM’s Chief Technology Officer for the Energy and Utilities sector. A native of Poland and mother of two young boys, Topol holds a doctorate in physics from the State University of New York Albany College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering and has earned nearly two dozen patents. She joined IBM in 2001. The Smarter Planet editorial team recently sat down with Topol for an inside chat with one of the company’s newest DE’s.
Smarter Planet: Where do you see the biggest potential for breakthroughs in your current area of specialization?
Anna Topol: There is a lot of innovation happening in the energy and utility sector. What has been learned from other industries such as telecommunications and retail, where the use of data analytics has had transformational benefits, is now being applied to help us be smarter about how we generate, consume and conserve energy. Right now, there is a focus on automation and the use of smart meters, devices and sensors. For energy consumers, this translates into a decrease in change-related outages through increased efficiency and reduced mean time to repairs. Continue Reading »
Clyde Pereira, IT Committee Co-chair, The Consumer Goods Forum and Director of Digital Strategy, Coca-Cola Hellenic, Austria
By Clyde Pereira
Informed, empowered, and demanding social-media savvy consumers. They’re here to stay – and no one has been more affected by them than those working in the consumer goods and retail manufacturing industries.
While we often point to the Internet as the underpinning of the empowered consumer evolution, thanks to a number of external factors – such as the increased use of mobile devices, social media, Big Data and the interconnectivity of all of our devices – today we must also look at cloud computing as another major force adding to the “consumer power” phenomenon. But cloud’s new reach doesn’t stop there.
In fact, recent research by IBM indicates that while 16 percent of the global sample of business leaders surveyed were already using cloud capabilities for sweeping innovation (such as entering new lines of business or reshaping an existing industry) within the next three years, 35 percent intend to use it to transform their business models. Continue Reading »
Dr. Trevor Davis, Consumer Products Expert, IBM Global Business Services
By Dr. Trevor Davis
Today, smart retailers are using sentiment analysis and social listening to keep one step ahead of trends as they develop – identifying which trends have staying power, when to act on them, and how to use them to their best advantage.
Some social media trends come and go in a day. Some can remain unnoticed for years until they spring into public consciousness and everyone realises that the trend had been there all along – suddenly, like the exclusive model of automobile you just bought, ‘it’ is everywhere.
Some trends, like ‘steampunk,’ take decades to build momentum and make the break into the mainstream. Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. What is steampunk and why should you care?
Steampunk is usually defined as a sub-genre of science fiction that concentrates on alterative world stories inspired by the technology, clothing and social mores of Victorian society. The stories of Jules Verne and H G Wells are often cited as inspirations. If you are a film fan you may have had a taste in the Will Smith movie “Wild, Wild, West” with steam-powered machines set in the Old West. Maybe you were in New York at Christmas 2011 and saw Macy’s holiday window dressed by designer Paul Olszewski in steampunk style.
Click the image to view an infographic of the Birth of a Trend.
