IBM to Acquire SoftLayer to Accelerate Adoption of Cloud Computing in the Enterprise

IBM to Form New Cloud Services Division

IBM has announced a definitive agreement to acquire SoftLayer Technologies, Inc., the world’s largest privately held cloud computing infrastructure provider. The acquisition will strengthen IBM’s leadership position in cloud computing and will help speed business adoption of public and private cloud solutions. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“As businesses add public cloud capabilities to their on-premise IT systems, they need enterprise-grade reliability, security and management. To address this opportunity, IBM has built a portfolio of high-value private, public and hybrid cloud offerings, as well as software-as-a-service business solutions,” said Erich Clementi, Senior Vice President, IBM Global Technology Services. “With SoftLayer, IBM will accelerate the build-out of our public cloud infrastructure to give clients the broadest choice of cloud offerings to drive business innovation.”

Why did IBM make the move to acquire SoftLayer? Get the story.

Infographic: Smart Cloud Milestones

 

About IBM Cloud Computing

IBM has helped thousands of clients adopt cloud models and manages millions of cloud- based transactions every day. IBM assists clients in areas as diverse as banking, communications, healthcare and government to build their own clouds or securely tap into IBM cloud-based business and infrastructure services. IBM is unique in bringing together key cloud technologies, deep process knowledge, a broad portfolio of cloud solutions and a network of global delivery centers.

For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/smartcloud. Follow on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ibmcloud and on the blog at http://www.thoughtsoncloud.com.

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- Posted by Regan Kelly

Dublin, Ireland Adopts Smarter Approach on Its Road to Recovery

Ireland’s capital, Dublin, is one of the oldest in Europe. Because its city council wants to maintain the city’s historic fabric, city policy today prevents new roads from being built in some of the most historic areas. But with traffic congestion worsening, the city sought an efficient solution to its traffic woes. To that end, it’s partnered with IBM to collect and analyze data to help tackle its congestion, all part of a push towards making Dublin a Smarter City.

Ireland’s capital: an IBM Smarter City testbed

Today, journey information is released and updated by Dublin city council every minute, enabling residents to go online and find the quickest route to their destination. In addition, research is being conducted in Ireland on similar problems that might be tackled by joining up existing databases. The work is part of IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative, part of which emphasizes applying analytics to solve pressing problems. Read more in The Guardian.

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- Posted by Regan Kelly. Part of our June 2013 theme on the environment and sustainability.

June 13 Event: IBM Watson – Beyond Jeopardy!

Interested in Watson and the supercomputer’s future? Then Don’t miss this webinar Thursday, June 13, 2013, at 1 pm ET/12 noon CT/11 am MT/10 am PT/5 pm GMT.

In 2011, IBM introduced Watson, a computer system capable of quickly and precisely answering natural language questions with accurate confidence estimation. In February of that year, Watson won a victory against the world’s best Jeopardy! players in a formal contest that was aired on national television.

That public performance heralded a future where we can efficiently tap into the wealth of knowledge buried in text and other unstructured data sources. IBM is now exploring new applications of the Watson technology including clinical decision support in healthcare.

Thursday’s webinar will cover:

• Architecture of the Watson Question Answering System
• Using the Apache UIMA framework for building natural language processing systems
• How IBM is addressing new challenges for Watson in the healthcare domain

Presenters are Adam Lally, Senior Technical Staff Member in the Watson Technologies department at IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center; and Dr. Will Tracz, Lockheed Martin Fellow Emeritus and Chair of ACM SIGSOFT. Learn more and register.

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Related:

Watson at Your Service: The IBM Watson Engagement Advisor

IBM’s Ginni Rometty Reveals Watson’s Future

 

- Posted by Regan Kelly

Why the World Thirsts for Smarter Water Management

Whether too much or not enough, the world needs a smarter way to think about water

Around the world, one in eight people lack access to safe water supplies.

That’s 884 million people. The planet is thirsty. Not just for a drop to drink, but for information about how we can be smarter about water in the first place.

The world’s water system  is vulnerable. Essential for health, food, energy, manufacturing and transportation, the global water system is suffering from stress, deteriorating quality, aging and insufficient infrastructure. Managing this critical resource requires a smarter approach to deliver improved outcomes across the water management lifecycle. Using information and analytics, governments, cities, utilities and businesses must take immediate action to deploy a smarter approach to water management to solve the world’s water crisis.

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 and actionable view of water use.

But that’s just the first drop. Learn what IBM is doing to address this global issue.

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Related:

Visit the interactive Smarter Water experience

The Sights and Sounds of Smarter Water: check out the video playlist

Get  the report: Fixing the Future – Why we need smarter water management for the world’s most essential resource

Solutions

The CreekWatch App: Snap a photo, save a stream

IBM Turns Its Ads into Urban Furniture

Making communications useful – taking utility to the streets

Outdoor IBM ads now do double duty for urban residents.

When walking around in a city, have you ever needed a ramp for your luggage (or bike), or shelter from a sudden downpour, or just a place to sit down to tie your shoe? IBM believes that because city life can be inconvenient, cities should be designed with the needs of ordinary citizens in mind.

The company has now applied the idea of utility to the traditional outdoor ad. A new series of outdoor ads today double as functional surfaces for the “People For Smarter Cities Project.” The campaign’s goal, created in collaboration with Ogilvy & Mather France, is to encourage both forward-thinking citizens and local leaders to consider how to make their neighborhoods smarter and, therefore, better. Read more and see a photo gallery of the outdoor ads/urban furniture, in this story by Jennifer Miller at Fast Company.

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Related:

What is a Smarter City? IBM is working with cities around the world to use advanced technologies, like analytics, to help identify ways to tackle urbanization challenges, improve sustainability and deliver better services to their citizens.

Follow IBM Smarter Cities on Twitter: @IBMSmartCities

SmarterCities Tumblr

How to make YOUR city smarter

Welcome to the SmarterCity: Watch a Documentary and a TV Spot

 

The Cognitive Computing Era: IBM’s Vision for the Future

IBM Fellow Kerrie Holley

Computers won’t replace doctors, traffic analysts, or meteorologists anytime soon, but their real-time analytical capabilities can provide essential information to help people employed in these (and many other) fields make better, smarter decisions.

IBM today is testing its powerful cognitive computer systems – computers modeled on the human brain — around the world. The company sees a confluence of factors — Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud, or “SMAC” — that will combine with cognitive systems to have a major impact on 21st-century business, government, and society in general.

In a phone interview with InformationWeek, IBM research fellow Kerrie Holley gave an high-level overview of IBM’s take on SMAC, machine learning, and the sensor-driven Internet of Things, all expected to play starring roles in the new era of cognitive computing. Read more in this article in Information Week.

Related:

Meet IBM’s Watson Engagement Advisor

SMAC

All about Watson

New CAI Study on Smarter Policing

- from the IBM Center for Applied Insights

Police agencies, wherever they are, have some things in common: they are sworn to keep those they serve safe and secure, an essential prerequisite for a stable and prosperous society. And regardless of where an agency serves, in a cosmopolitan North American city or in a fast-growing population in South Asia, digital information sources and social media generate a great deal of data to be mined, plus new ways to engage with the community.

To justify investments in technology, though, police in rapidly developing economies must build a business case that is relevant to their situation and challenges. This study – based on data relating to 56 police agencies from around the world and the communities they serve – suggests the potential returns for rapidly developing economies can be dramatic. The study identifies four distinct profiles of police agency in rapidly developing economies and shows that each should prioritize different investments and anticipate different profiles of agency and societal benefits. Get the study.

Download the infographic

Infographic: What Inspires IBM Fellows to Build the Future?

What inspires IBM Fellows to build the future? In their own words:

Related:

The World Is Our Laboratory: IBM Research

Like IBM Research on Facebook

Follow IBM Research on Twitter: @IBMResearch

Meet the Class of 2013: Eight new Fellows join a distinguished tradition of
excellence and innovation

IBM To Open Watson to Indian Startup Ecosystem

IBM will open its powerful cognitive computing system, Watson, to startups in India and the world soon.

Watson is the artificial intelligence computing system that rose to fame in 2011 when it beat the best of human competitors in the complex quiz show Jeopardy! in the US. The computer uses natural language processing capabilities, machine learning , and the vast quantities of data fed into it to directly and precisely answer questions posed in everyday human diction in seconds.

Speaking to TOI in Bangalore , Manoj Saxena general manager for Watson solutions at IBM, said, “We are opening up Watson for other people to write applications and sell the apps as their own. We want to build an ecosystem around Watson. IBM’s India Software Lab has initiated talks with some startups. India has a huge developer community, so our initial focus will be the US and India.” Last year, IBM established a Watson software and services team in its Bangalore facility, the first such outside the US.

Read the complete article on Times on India.

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Related:

• IBM CEO Ginni Rometty Touts Watson, New ‘Golden Era of Technology’ (greateribm.wordpress.com)
• Watson at Your Service: IBM Unveils the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor (greateribm.wordpress.com)
• IBM’s Ginni Rometty Reveals Watson’s Future (greateribm.wordpress.com)

- Posted by Khalid Raza

IBM, an Early Adopter Since 1927

IBM President Thomas J. Watson Sr placing trans-Atlantic call in 1927

The theme for May 2013 is ‘Emerging Trends’

When one thinks about emerging trends in business operations, it’s easy to forget that things that we take for granted today were once considered new and innovative. Traditionally, IBM has been an early adopter of any practice that would improve business efficiency.

For example, when AT&T inaugurated the first trans-Atlantic radiophone service between the United States and Europe on January 7th, 1927, IBM was one of the very first companies to place a call that day, relaying a message from our New York offices to our London operations.

In a letter to employees published in Business Machines, IBM’s primary internal publication, IBM President Thomas J. Watson Sr., wrote that this was “an unusual opportunity to be again among the pioneers in the utilization of a new and meritorious time-, labor- and money-saving device. Our appreciation of this new method of trans-Atlantic communication has two contributing causes—the fact that we always welcome, and are among the first to adopt, appliances which aid business, and the fact that our worldwide business in fifty-four different countries of the earth often demands a rapid exchange of messages.”

A focus on continuous improvement is not a modern trend – it’s an IBM cultural trait!

by Paul Lasewicz,
IBM Corporate Archivist

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• For more on IBM History:  http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history
• For more on IBM at 100 Years:  http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/
• For more on IBM’s History of Innovation:  http://www.research.ibm.com/featured/history/