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Karl Roche in
Back in June I mentioned how Coventry was running the worlds first city-wide Jam to open up a conversation with residents and business to find innovative ways to make the city smarter.
A month on and 2,000 posts later, IBM and Coventry are teaming up to make the ideas raised in CovJam real and transforming Coventry over the next 30 years.
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jamesmathewson in
Editor’s Note: Following is an essay co-authored by Bob Sutor, vice president of open source and Linux for IBM, and Jean Staten Healy, director of cross-IBM Linux strategy for IBM. It describes the central place Linux plays in building a smarter planet, and builds on a presentation about the role of Linux in Smarter Systems, which the two IBM executives gave at the recent Red Hat Summit.
What do you think about when you read or hear the word “smart” when it is applied to computers? How about a supercomputer? If any machine is smart, a supercomputer is, right?. According to a study released by the University of California at Berkeley in May, 2010, 470 of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world run Linux, the open source operating system. That’s 91%. Evidently the people who decided to use Linux for these computers were pretty smart too.
As we think about all the ways where we can work together to create a Smarter Planet, Linux has a very natural role. First, Linux runs on more kinds of hardware than any other operating system. So if we are talking about tying together disparate systems to deliver better, more accurate, and more predictive health care, Linux can power the hardware and software to maintain the information repositories, do the data mining, and perform the analytics. That is, Linux can help provide the intelligence we will need and expect in our complex and sophisticated 21st century systems.
Linux runs on the smallest devices all the way up to the fastest supercomputers, as noted above. Linux today powers smart phones, Netbooks, laptops, desktops, and servers in datacenters, but also home automation and many embedded systems. Linux will be at the heart of smart electrical grids that allow utilities to reduce waste, remotely manage and monitor use, and help reduce costs to consumers. Linux will increasingly be part of the instrumentation that provides the data we will use to tune and optimize not just our electrical grids, but also our water systems, supply chains, and factories, to name a few examples.
As the data is collected from the sensors, Linux can help ensure that it goes where it needs to go to do the most good. In order to reduce pollution, cars need to be inspected and kept off the roads until they are compliant with emission standards. Linux can power websites where citizens can pay fees and schedule inspection appointments in a low friction manner. Then once the inspections are complete, Linux systems can push the data to local and regional authorities, but also to repositories and software that measure not only compliance but perform data analysis. This will yield important information to further improve the system, and reduce pollution even more. Our systems need to be more interconnected, and Linux can help them be so.
Linux is global and supports many languages and locales. The tools needed to create a Smarter Planet must run in the heterogeneous environments that we have today. Linux is a big part of how we instrument, interconnect, and derive intelligence from the information around us. As we optimize the systems we have today and develop entirely new ones to solve problems in better ways, don’t be surprised to see Linux inside.
Dr. Robert S. Sutor: Vice President, Open Source and Linux, IBM Software Group
Jean Staten Healy: Director, Cross-IBM Linux Strategy, IBM Systems and Technology Group
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open source video, online video platform, video solution IBM and BCBSMA Deliver New IT SolutionThe healthcare industry looks dramatically different than it did a year ago, giving rise to new opportunities for improvement all around—from how doctors capture and share medical information to how health insurance companies manage their costs. IBM is at the epicenter of this transformation working with many of the major hospital systems and a large number of health insurance providers to navigate a new landscape and deliver on the promise of “Smarter Healthcare”.
Today, IBM is announcing it has been tapped by another major health plan organization, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA), to revamp its entire information technology (IT) infrastructure, encompassing everything from data center management to overseeing the applications portfolio. Central to the project is the primary member Web site, bluecrossma.com that is designed to provide BCBSMA’s nearly 3 million members fast and secure online access to claims and general healthcare information. The new agreement is expected to generate approximately $16 million annually in savings for BCBSMA.
“The big driver for choosing IBM was the breadth and depth of capabilities IBM brings to the table,” said Bill Fandrich, chief information officer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. “The IBM team proved over and over again their ability to bring different products and integrate them onto one platform. IBM provides a lot of flexibility for us to leverage IBM’s partners, whether it’s for development or whether it’s for other product capabilities. It’s very important in this day and age when we’re trying to bring solutions to the market that we have an IT provider that’s looking at things from the lens of what we need, not just at what they can sell us.”
BCBSMA is among several major health plan organizations that have recently turned to IBM. Kaiser Permanente last year tapped IBM to deploy smart systems and activate its highly sophisticated global delivery network to provide patients, members and physicians real-time access to medical data and tools whenever and wherever they need it. Similarly, IBM is working with National Account Service Company LLC (NASCO) to manage its entire IT system as well as work with IBM Research to modernize its claim processing system. IBM is working with CIGNA in a multi-year strategy to place an entirely new focus on improving customers’ experience, including tapping customer information to make interactions with the company more personalized. More recently, IBM signed a deal with athenahealth Inc., a leading provider of Internet-based business services for physician practices. IBM will enable athenahealth to focus its resources on simplifying and improving administrative and reimbursement processes while reducing staff workload, allowing physicians to focus on delivering higher quality care to their patients.
The work that IBM is doing is hardly limited to the healthcare in the US. For example, in China, by integrating data from health records that combine Eastern and Western medicine and applying sophisticated analytics, doctors and nurses at Guang Dong Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine can figure out which treatment plans and techniques from each approach work best for specific diseases and medical conditions. In Italy, the Rizzoli Institute is transforming treatment of hereditary bone disease by using analytics while Europe’s non-profit research alliance EuResist Network GEIE, is working with IBM to improve treatment for HIV patients using a prediction engine that simulates the intervention of HIV treatment drugs within the human body.
While other companies are making claims about helping shape the future of healthcare, IBM is actually doing it. IBM is making systems “smarter” for healthcare payers and providers as they are faced with new pressures to improve efficiency and create new business models to serve their clients while holding the line on costs. IBM is helping companies transition from outdated IT environments to more modernized systems capable of analyzing data and predicting errors, as well as integrating data so doctors, patients and insurers can share information seamlessly, securely and efficiently. IBM is creating a smarter, more connected healthcare system that delivers better care for everyone involved.
Watch VideoHow do you involve thousands of people in shaping how a city should be run? In a word, Jam.
Coventry City Council in the UK is running the first city based Jam, to take the conversation beyond city leader to its citizens. Why? Because none of us have all the answers. Pulling from a wider pool of people, experiences, backgrounds and expertise will give Coventry an edge in finding out what it needs to provide to its people and business.
Image via Wikipedia
Coventry CC is calling their event the CovJam, and it will be taking place on 29 and 30 June and 1 July.
It looks to be a great event for the people in and around Coventry (or even from Coventry) to shape the way they live. A real step on the way to building a smarter city in the heart of the UK.
If you would like to be one of those taking part, please e-mail:communications@coventry.gov.uk with the subject line “CovJam”
What’s a Jam?
A Jam is an online discussion (think brainstorming on an epic scale) around a group of pre-selected themes, that an organisation wants to find innovative answers to. Within the themes there are many discussions happening at once. The event is driven by specially invited subject matter experts, stakeholders and hosts, that help highlight interesting and valuable contributions from people like you and me, taking part in the Jam.
As you may know we have had lots of Jams in IBM, its become part of the culture and especially this version which is a mini-Jam, essentially a more focused Jam with fewer themes.
This Jam will be covering the following themes:
- The rebirth of Coventry: The urban design for a future city. What do we do to the centre of Coventry to make people want to live here, work here, shop here, socialise here?
- Sent to Coventry: Be inventive. What does Coventry really want to be known for?
- Aspiring Coventry: Yes we can! Aiming high and fulfilling our potential. How can the people of Coventry believe in themselves and their city?
- Community Cohesion: Getting on together and celebrating diversity. As the city continues to grow and change, will it remain relaxed and at peace with itself with its citizens feeling a strong sense of place and able to get along with each other
- Citizens in the driving seat: The relationship between the state and the individual
Good luck to everyone taking part – Jams are usually a blast.
More details on the Coventry CC web site.
Posted by
Karl Roche in
How often have you been told to ’stop doing that’ because x,y and z is bad for you? Plenty, if you’re anything like me.
We get these sorts of messages everyday with the earliest examples usually from our parents and schools. It’s a common theme throughout life that usually continues after school into work. Quite honestly, people stop listening, especially when the reason for not doing something isn’t adequately conveyed.
If we take the environment, which probably contains the largest number of groups telling people to stop doing this, that or the other, people begin to push back. People don’t like being told what not to do. Even reasonable people think that being told not to drive but use public transport when it will take them longer and will cost them more is just crazy – they want the alternative to be better.
So lets flip it. Lets ’start’ something. Today in London, IBM announced that it will be the exclusive partner for a nine day summit in September 2010 called surprisingly, START. It aims to explore what business can do for sustainability and what sustainability can do for business. In many ways it is just a start. Even though it is an event, START is also a national (UK) initiative of the The Prince’s Charities Foundation will continue way past September and a street in London coming to communities across the UK.
Over nine days, IBM summit at START will bring together a brains trust of thought leaders to come up with ideas that organisations can sign up to because it makes sense for them and their business – not just the environment. All the ideas, findings and debates will be published online. Each day will focus on a different topic, such as new skills, the future of cities, energy and transport. You can see that in all cases that no single organisation or government is responsible for everything within these topics, it requires a number of bodies to come together and work together. So the summit will try to build a community of collaboration, discuss ways we can all work together to make stuff really happen, to make the alternative better than what we have now.
At the launch in London today, Steven Leonard, Chief Exec for IBM UK said, “the challenge [is] bringing all the necessary constituents together to develop and deliver more complex solutions to make the world – literally work smarter.”
Collaboration between organisations, public and private, is essential to make this initiative work. I for one am excited about the opportunities that this could bring up, such as the need to develop new skills myself and the push it will give to widen the use of social tools within business. Is it going to be easy? No. Will it all happen in 9 days? I very much doubt it, but there needs to be a point where we say, things have to change and we mark the beginning with this event.
But before the event we have a few weeks, time in which partners and invited companies will be starting to collaborate using our collaboration tools. So that the final agenda for each day will be built on the basis of the combined expertise. Essential to begin as you intend to go on.
Caroline Taylor, VP leading Project Start in IBM raised an essential point at today’s launch about the next generation: “If sustainability is about securing the future, young people are that future, and they will be vital in ensuring we define genuinely 21st century and forward thinking solutions.” Day 4 and 5 are devoted to new skills and starting young.
It’s not all work, work, work…there will also be a 12 day public festival that apart from being great fun will also give clear, simple and positive ideas on how people can start doing things that will help them lead a sustainable future. There will be plenty of big names in attendance, including two of my favourite comedians, secret gigs, mystery artists and a host of other good stuff.
Where’s this all happening? IBM summit at START will be hosted in Lancaster House, The Mall, London, September 8th – 16th. with the START garden party happening right next door in Green Park. Hopefully we will also be able to broadcast large parts of the business event over Livestream, no doubt we will have more updates here.
Prince of Wales (centre) at the launch of the "IBM Summit at Start" which will be held over 9 day in September 2010
The Start founding partners include: IBM, B&Q, Virgin Money, M&S, Asda, EDF Energy, Addison Lee, BT Group plc and Waitrose. Full list of supporting organisations on the web site.
Read more about IBM Summit at Start.
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by Cary Barbour, IBM
IBMers are a proud lot for many reasons. One of the things that makes me proud to be part of this organization is the impact that we have in our communities, and our company’s overall social responsibility. In fact, citizens in general – and IBM employees in particular – are becoming more and more interested in their communities and societal engagement. A company that’s dedicated to making a difference and being a responsible corporate citizen is a company that more people are interested in working for and staying at.
But IBMers are not the only ones who value these traits – others are impressed by them too, and that’s helping to boost our brand equity. As many of you have seen, IBM was recently selected as #2 in BrandZ’s ranking of the Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands for 2010. Sure, some of the criteria used to rank companies are not surprising: building trust, making a brand personal, using heritage to create authenticity. Those make sense and they’re hugely important. But the things that resonate most with me might not be quite as intuitive when it comes to brand equity – citizenship and corporate social responsibility.
In a tight economy like the one we’ve been in for the past couple of years, corporate giving and philanthropy tend to be some of the first casualties. As companies around the globe have struggled through one of the toughest recessions on record, a lot of them have dialed down or entirely stopped community donations and volunteering programs. But not IBM.
Corporate social responsibility and community engagement are part of IBM’s nearly 100-year history. Our focus has always been on innovation that matters for our communities, helping IBMers feel fulfilled and developing the next bench of leaders. It’s our business culture and our community culture.
See IBM’s VP of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs, Stan Litow, speak about this value to communities, employees and brand equity here.
The Corporate Service Corps is a perfect example of how IBM employees are engaging in communities, feeling more fulfilled in their jobs and enhancing their leadership development. This program is taking what’s at the heart of our Smarter Planet strategy and enabling groups of highly talented employees from a range of countries to volunteer their time and travel to emerging markets to help improve economic development, government services, and stimulate job growth.
There are three main advantages to programs like this. They benefit the cities in these emerging markets by helping them to leverage intelligence and improve critical systems such as transportation, water, food safety, education and healthcare. They benefit the groups of IBM volunteers by building their teaming abilities, providing a cultural learning experience, and offering a chance to broaden their skills and test them out in emerging markets.
And for IBM, which has created this program to enable this expert volunteerism, it provides an enormous benefit by building bridges between high-talent employees and important urban centers around the world and developing the type of leadership to help the company lead globally in the 21st Century.
With programs like this, we’re not just tossing our spare change back to the community, with the only goal being generosity. But rather we are taking what is most valuable to the IBM company – our innovation technology and the skill and talent of our people – and contributing it into the communities we live and work in. IBM’s overall approach to philanthropy goes beyond simple check writing and harnesses our company’s industry leading technology, the talents and passions of IBM employees, and our Smarter Planet vision. That’s one of the reasons we keep talented employees around, and it’s one of the reasons I’m proud to be an IBMer. It’s also helping to build our brand equity around the world, as more and more people see the value we’re creating in our communities.
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Karl Roche in
Later this week IBM opens a new lab in United Kingdom. Manchester to be precise.
Rod Adkins, Senior VP, Systems and Technology Group, traveled to Manchester (at the risk of being stranded thanks to the ash cloud) to cut the ribbon and welcome the lab into IBM.
Manchester Lab in the heart of the city
The lab creates systems software for the Power system, focusing on privacy, virtulisation and opimisation – so clients can manage workloads and reduce storage costs.
The IBM Lab has its origins in Transitive, a spin-off company from University of Manchester, acquired by IBM in 2009 and many of the Engineers are former graduates of the University. The acquisition formed part of IBM’s ongoing strategy to help clients optimise the efficiency and productivity of their computing infrastructure and improve the utilisation of the servers that run them.
I spoke to a couple of the guys at the lab last week who are looking forward to the new challenges and opportunities that being part of IBM brings. They are already working with teams across the globe, so this is no outpost but a core part of our integrated team that is working on enabling better and quicker systems migration and consolidation.
So tomorrow I’ll be taking a train up to Manchester to see the guys and video a few of them, hopefully if I get time I’ll post a couple before the event tomorrow.
Lots more on the website about Smarter Systems.
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George Faulkner in
In our latest video, we wanted to address a few of the basics behind IBM’s smarter planet strategy. We interviewed three IBMers, featured in the video above – in order of appearance: Mike Wing, Andy Stanford-Clark and John Tolva – and asked them to talk about what Internet of Things, System of Systems, and Smarter Planet mean to them. We tried something new with this video, interviewing these gentlemen, then animating around some excerpts from the audio captured.
Although Internet of Things and System of Systems are not IBM-bred concepts, they help to explain a great deal about what is happening now where the digital world meets the physical and intellectual. An excerpt from the film:
Michael Wing: “Over the past century but accelerating over the past couple of decades, we have seen the emergence of a kind of global data field. The planet itself – natural systems, human systems, physical objects – have always generated an enormous amount of data, but we didn’t used to be able to hear it, to see it, to capture it. Now we can because all of this stuff is now instrumented. And it’s all interconnected, so now we can actually have access to it. So, in effect, the planet has grown a central nervous system.
Look at that complex set of relationships among all of these complex systems. If we can actually begin to see the patterns in the data, then we have a much better chance of getting our arms around this. That’s where societies become more efficient, that’s where more innovation is sparked.
When we talk about a smarter planet, you can say that it has two dimensions. One is to be more efficient, be less destructive, to connect different aspects of life which do affect each other in more conscience and deliberate and intelligent ways. But the other is also to generate fundamentally new insights, new activity, new forms of social relations. So you could look at the planet as an information, creation and transmission system, and the universe was hearing its information but we weren’t. But increasingly now we can, early days, baby steps days, but we can actually begin to hear the planet talking to us.”
Watch VideoSewage and wastewater: not the most appealing things to consider, yet consider them we must, because many of today’s aging water and sewer infrastructures are, quite literally, coming apart at the seams. As with most problems, ignoring this one doesn’t make it go away, either. Spills, leaks and overflows are becoming all too common: wasting water, spewing pollution into rivers, lakes and oceans, harming wildlife and the environment, and presenting an enormous threat to public health.
Yet in many places, water remains an afterthought. Communities often resent water restrictions, not understanding the need to conserve. And while upgrades or repairs to existing systems may seem expensive, the stakes are too high to ignore: this map neatly shows that nearly half of the world’s population faces a water shortage. And this one shows the widespread reach of groundwater contamination. None of this is going to change by itself.
On its website, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Water notes that given the scarcity of freshwater supplies and the intrinsic value of our water resources, water should be recognized as a precious commodity and protected…and goes on to say that because water is considered common property that belongs to everyone and no one, it is subjected to exploitation and misuse.
Many communities face significant challenges when it comes to managing aging water and sewer infrastructures. But since we at IBM began to explore how we could apply advanced analytics and other technologies to help create sustainable water systems, we’ve found a growing number of people ready to think differently about the value of water, ready to meet those challenges head on. Our collaboration with the city of Dubuque, Iowa, continues with the rollout of a smart water meter pilot that will let customers see trends in their water use and help them to conserve. And in Sacramento, California, we’re helping two agencies – the Sacramento Area Sewer District (SASD) and the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District (SRCSD) — improve water quality and help prevent sewage spills.
SRCSD treatment process
The SASD manages wastewater collection services for more than one million people in the Sacramento region via a complex system that includes 52 miles of forced mains and pressure systems, 3,000 miles of gravity sewers, and 279,000 service level connections.
And the SRCSD, which treats wastewater from the SASD along with other regional wastewater collection agencies, runs a state of the art treatment plant comprising nearly 100 miles of pipeline and 20 pump stations. On an average day, the plant moves and treats approximately 165 million gallons of wastewater—enough to fill a football field 40 stories high.
SRCSD plant control center
Keeping track of all those moving parts – not to mention maintenance records, service calls, compliance reports and so on – was once a major headache, to say the least. Now, we’re helping these agencies collect, analyze and share data in real time so that they can identify and prevent emerging problems before they happen. That’s pretty cool.
In these cities and in many others around the world, we’re finding advocates, collaborators and partners who are ready, willing and able to make significant changes in the name of sustainability and environmental stewardship. Because truly, it’s not a choice, it’s an imperative.
by Sharon Nunes
Have you ever thought that one day you might turn on a faucet and no water would come out? Did you ever consider that getting a glass of water from a restaurant could cost money? While these scenarios might seem far-fetched today, a water crisis is looming — and if we don’t get serious about smarter water management, it can – and will – become a reality.
The world’s population tripled in the 20th century, and according to the World Water Council, the use of renewable water resources has grown sixfold in that timeframe. Within the next fifty years, the world population is expected to increase by another 40 to 50 percent. This population growth – coupled with industrialization and urbanization – will result in an increasing demand for water. But overall, little has been done to address this crucial issue. Consider the Clean Water Act of 1972. Although it was put into place to create an era of technological innovation, the promise is still largely unfulfilled.
In his recent speech ushering in the Decade of Smart, our chairman, Sam Palmisano, pointed out that applying smarter technologies to drive cost out of legacy systems and institutions—doing more with less—would be critical to near-term and long-term economic prospects. He emphasized that we need to do more than extend the useful lifetime of our infrastructures – we must ensure that next-generation systems are inherently more efficient, flexible and resilient.
Up to 50 percent of usable water is lost due to leaky pipes. To put this into perspective, imagine that when you fill up your car with gas, half of that gas drips to the ground, wasted, instead of flowing into your tank. The good news is that there are many ways to extend the useful lifetime of our water infrastructures around the world – and to look at water management in new ways and build new, smarter systems that take into account the true value of this critical resource.
For example, IBM is working with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) to provide deep insight into the management of their water supply and usage so they can improve the quality of their water while reducing the costs associated with minimizing pollution. SFPUC, which treats an average of 80-90 million gallons of wastewater per day during dry weather and up to 370 million gallons of combined wastewater and storm runoff per day during the rainy season, is working with IBM to develop smarter management of the city’s 1,000 miles of sewer system and three treatment facilities.
We are also working with water utilities around the world – in Europe, Australia, China, Japan, to name a few – to help improve the availability and quality of drinking water and to help add efficiency to the management of water management systems.
With advances in technology—sophisticated sensor networks, smart meters, deep computing and analytics—we can be smarter about how we manage our planet’s water. We can monitor, measure and analyze entire water ecosystems, from rivers and reservoirs to the pumps and pipes in our homes. We can give all the people, organizations, businesses, communities and nations dependent on a continuing supply of freshwater—that is, all of us—a single, reliable, up-to-the-minute view of the way we use water. And by doing so, we can help build a sustainable, smarter planet.
Sharon Nunes is vice president of IBM Big Green Innovations, a portfolio of environmentally-focused initiatives at IBM.
