It was the company that introduced personal computers to the general public in the 1970s. It almost went belly-up in the early 1990s. Today, IBM is still standing and telling the world to get smarter with its “Smarter Planet” initiative.
From the first transistor, which was responsible for revolutionising the semiconductor industry, to the digital lifestyle adopted today, the world has become highly instrumented, interconnected and intelligent. According to IBM, there are about one billion transistors for each person and a billion devices connected to the Internet today.

But, it adds, something is missing from the picture — solutions to work smartly so that processes can be run smoothly without taxing the planet or its inhabitants. As their populations grow, countries will face road and network congestion, an inefficient food supply chain and expensive healthcare because these areas have yet to fully embrace the digital world.

Add to these a recession and the threat of global warming and everything points to the need for everyone to work smarter. This is the idea behind Smarter Planet — it covers vast areas such as traffic, healthcare, infrastructure and telecommunications.
IBM’s efforts to date include monitoring the Hudson River in New York for waste management and river preservation by using sensors and data analytics, and reducing traffic congestion in Stockholm through 18 control points for entry and exit to the city, powered by IBM solutions that automatically charge for congestion without stopping traffic. These are areas IBM had never ventured into before.

The banking industry has also benefited from the use of stream computing in collaboration with TD Bank of Canada. Stream computing analyses streams of data as they come in, not just structured data held in databases, and can analyse up to five million events per second.
But are these solutions new at all? Possibly not. IBM is essentially using its extensive suite of solutions and expertise of existing problems in a different way.

Manoj Saxena, vice-president of IBM global solutions and assets, explains, “We are taking what we have and then looking at the gap between what our vision is for Smarter Planet and what our capabilities are, and what needs to be enhanced. We are also looking at completely new areas like intelligence transport and risk management. For example, governments now have a new requirement for visibility by assessing the liquidity ratio of the banks so that they don’t end up with a crisis again. That’s a need for our business analytics to get smarter. So, we are doing it [Smarter Planet] as a combination of three things: things we already have, which are almost there; things that need to be enhanced; and things that are totally new to the world.”

For new areas, Manoj believes information-heavy industries will likely be the first entry points for the Smarter Planet initiative. Nicholas Donofrio, who held his first job at IBM for 43 years and is an IBM fellow, adds another perspective for going into new areas.
“We are not saying we know everything, but we always plug ourselves into the industries. Because they are very much like living organisms, they are always evolving. What you see today is going to look different tomorrow. But we have the knowledge and experience as one of the long-standing giants. That makes us different than others,” he says.

Going to the clouds
In keeping up with the latest demand for flexibility and agility, IBM has introduced its range of cloud computing solutions as part of its Smarter Planet initiative. Starting with a cloud desktop, businesses can now scale up their desktop needs according to demand and also reduce the workload of their information technology (IT) department.

Next up on the plate is a full cloud system called Cloudburst. IBM has now set up 20 cloud centres worldwide. The Wuxi municipal government in China and Wuxi Tai Lake Industry Investment and Development Co Ltd have signed an agreement with IBM for it to provide a cloud service centre for start-up companies in the city.
The centre will support the development activities of the start-ups, such as software development and testing on a pay-per-use basis. The centre, which is located in the Wuxi Tai Hu New Town Science and Education Industrial Park, will accommodate emerging software companies through a virtualised environment.

In Vietnam, an ambitious company called Vietnam Technology and Telecommunication, has gone one step further by providing all its services over the cloud. Using IBM Cloudburst, it aims to provide IT services such as virtual data centres and customer relationship management software to small and medium enterprises that possess little or no expertise in IT.

Willy Chiu, vice-president of Worldwide Cloud Labs and High Performance In Demand Solutions, believes businesses will take to the cloud solution. “Cloud computing can lead to a services-based economy, which is similar to that in developed countries. I see more businesses adopting a private cloud rather than public clouds. It is still a journey [cloud computing adoption], but you can see the return on investment in your bottom line,” he says. Cloud computing looks set to transform the way businesses are run. As for IBM, its near-death experience in the early 1990s, when analysts predicted the demise of Big Blue, might have taught it how to truly transform other businesses.

This article appeared in netv@lue2.0, the technology section of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 771 Sept 7 - 13 2009