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 »
Posted by
Steve Hamm in
By Steve Hamm
Steve Hamm, IBM Writer
In an event that some observers say marked a shift in the history of computing, China has for the second time placed a machine atop the list of the world’s highest-performing supercomputers. The MilkyWay-2 system was designed and developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology.
For a group of legislators and science and technology leaders gathered in Washington, D.C. today, the news of China’s triumph, which came on Monday, served as a wake up call about the importance of investing in national competitiveness. “American national security and competitiveness depends on the US not falling behind in this critical area of science and technology,” said Congressman Randy Hultgren (IL-14).
Hultgren was one of a group of Congressmen who are crafting the American Supercomputing Leadership Act, a bill aimed at funding research in high performance computing at the national laboratories. Yet it was clear from remarks made by a scientists and government officials at the event, “Cognitive Computing: A New Way of Thinking,” that for the United States to retain its leadership in computing a collaborative effort involving not just government but academia and industry will be required. Eric Isaacs, director of the Argonne National Laboratory, cautioned that science and research “should not be funded in stovepipes.” He called for the creation of co-design centers, where people from multiple government agencies, universities and private companies can work together on the most challenging problems facing humanity.
To read more about the era of cognitive computing, download a free chapter of the coming book Smart Machines, by IBM Research Director John Kelly, at http://www.cup.columbia.edu/static/cognitive
Christopher G. Pepin, Mobile Enterprise Services Executive, IBM MobileFirst
By Christopher G. Pepin
Using a mobile device is easy. Building a mobile enterprise that supports and secures hundreds, if not thousands of mobile devices, in your location and around the world, with limited staff and an increasing number of unauthorized equipment, is not.
To uncover what it takes to have a successful IT strategy on the mobile front, IBM and IDC have collaborated on a newly-published study, “Putting mobile first: best practices of mobile technology leaders.” The study is based on interviews with 361 IT executives in seven countries around the world and focuses on the adoption and benefits of mobile technologies in the enterprise. What exactly are mobile leaders doing to embrace mobile in the enterprise? Simply put, they’re planning, integrating, optimizing and managing their mobile infrastructures.
According to the study, mobile leaders are taking a strategic approach to planning mobile development and strategies, integrating mobile across the enterprise including monetization, optimizing mobile information technology infrastructure, and finally, managing mobile security. Continue Reading »
Posted by
Steve Hamm in
Thomas Malone, Prof. MIT
Thomas Malone, director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, is one of the leading thinkers in the realm of anticipating how new technologies will transform the way work is done and leaders lead. His 2004 book, The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life, helped thousands of executives and would-be executives see their organizations, and themselves, in startling new ways. As a result, many organizations are becoming more collaborative and democratic. Now, Malone is exploring how social business, data analytics and cognitive computing will transform organizations once again. Here, he talks about the revolution that is coming.
IBM: In your book The Future of Work, you talked about society being on the verge of a new world of work, a key element of which is decentralization of the organization. Since then, the social networking phenomenon has emerged and is sweeping not just popular culture but business organizations as well. How has this explosion of social networking affected your thinking? Continue Reading »
Jessica Carroll, Managing Director, Information & Digital Technologies, USGA
By Jessica Carroll
A nimble, dynamic infrastructure, with round-the-clock support, and an environment where you can deliver on your customer’s needs faster. This is what the smart CIO wants. The cloud promises all of these advantages (and more), but does it come through on the promise?
At the USGA we’re a case study in action. As a non-profit organization, our focus is not on technology or sales. It is on serving the game of golf and the growing universe of people who play the game or want to learn more about it. The cloud enables us to support this mission by focusing technology on these growth areas, rather than legacy IT utility services.
There’s no better place to see this than on usopen.com, the USGA’s online destination for the U.S. Open, golf’s national championship. With over 6 million visitors, over 83 million pageviews, and 1.3 million video streams across all platforms in one week alone, the infrastructure to serve up a high performing website is a brilliant case for using the elastic cloud. As we consider the hardware, bandwidth and manpower required to support this volume for one week of the year it’s obvious that the investment needed could not possibly make long-term sense for us. Continue Reading »
Posted by
Steve Hamm in
Steve Hamm, IBM Writer
By Steve Hamm
In the coming era of cognitive systems, fundamental changes will be required at each level of technology–from nanotechnology to the software programming layer. These shifts will require remarkable feats of science and engineering. Yet it’s possible that even greater challenges will come as we go about harnessing the new technical capabilities and using them to solve the world’s most challenging problems. So it will be essential for tech companies like IBM to form deep collaborative partnerships with organizations that possess domain expertise, including those in health care, financial services, media and government.
This was one of the messages delivered by John E. Kelly III when he spoke last evening at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. Kelly was interviewed by John Hollar, the museum’s president, in the institution’s Revolutionaries speakers’ series. Just minutes earlier, the two had participated in a photo-op in the museum’s new IBM Watson exhibit. IBM has donated the stage set it built for the Jeopardy TV quiz show, where Watson in 2011 defeated two past grand-champions.
Patty Fritz, Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Operational Excellence, UCB
By Patty Fritz
Despite afflicting 65 million people worldwide, including nearly 3 million Americans, epilepsy remains one of the least understood and most individualized chronic conditions. A recent special issue of the medical journal, The Lancet, highlighted the significant unmet medical needs in epilepsy and called on public health officials to treat this disease as a global health priority.
To address this pressing public health issue, global biopharmaceutical company UCB and IBM have announced phase one completion of a proof of concept project that will use Big Data and advanced analytics to potentially offer more personalized care to millions of people living with epilepsy.
Currently, a team of IBM researchers is poring through de-identified, anonymous data on more than 1.5 million U.S.-based epilepsy patients – approximately half those affected by the condition in our country – using machine learning tools and patient similarity analysis. The goal of the project is to demonstrate that an interactive system can be developed that translates massive amounts of patient data and scientific insights that healthcare providers can consult at the point of care to inform their treatment decisions. Continue Reading »
By Michael Karasick
Michael Karasick, Vice President and Director, IBM Research-Almaden
The world is on the cusp of a new era of computing, which we call the era of cognitive systems. New computer technologies are coming that will help people and organizations penetrate complexity and make better decisions. At IBM, we believe that this coming revolution in artificial intelligence has the potential to transform the way business is done and dramatically accelerate innovation. Cognitive systems will enable humans and machines to interact together and achieve things that neither could do on their own.
The victory of IBM’s Watson on the TV game show Jeopardy! was one of the milestones in this new phase of computing. Scientists at IBM and elsewhere are pushing the boundaries of science and technology fields ranging from neural networks to machine learning to create machines that sense, learn, reason and interact with people in new ways.
(IBM Research Director John Kelly is speaking about the future of computing today at 7 p.m. Pacific Time at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. His book about the new era, Smart Machines: IBM’s Watson and the Era of Cognitive Computing , will be published in the fall by Columbia University Press. To read a free chapter now, go to the Columbia University Press web site.
Marek Nowicki, PhD student in computer science at University in Toruń, Poland
Computer scientist Marek Nowicki was inspired to join IBM Research after discovering the “cool” work being done at the lab in Zurich. After applying for the IBM Great Minds Challenge, he got his opportunity. The Smarter Planet blog caught up with Marek recently to learn a little more about him, and check on his progress.
You’re doing some interesting academic work around Java and HPC. Tell us about it.
I’m a computer science PhD student studying at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. My thesis is about building a library called Parallel Computing in Java (PCJ). It enables Java to run successful on high performance computers (HPC). My goal is to make Java ubiquitous in High Performance Computing, which is challenging from both a technical and cultural perspective. 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 »
