World’s First Hard Drive

The December 2012 theme for The Greater IBM Connection is ‘corporate history’, and Paul Lasewicz, IBM Corporate Archivist, will be sharing with us some of the highlights from IBM’s history.

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IBM laboratory at 99 Notre Dame Street, San Jose, the birthplace of the world's first hard disk drive.

IBM laboratory at 99 Notre Dame Street, San Jose, the birthplace of the world’s first hard disk drive.

Walking in footsteps of IBM giants – very cool!  Seventy years ago, in 1952, IBM opened a small research lab in a small, non-descript building on a side street in downtown San Jose. Four years later, the work of the IBM team at 99 Notre Dame, led by Rey Johnson, resulted in the world’s first hard drive, revolutionizing computing and jump starting the storage industry.  Today 99 Notre Dame is a county court.  But the connection to its historic past is evident and celebrated. A plaque honoring that past on the sidewalk outside, and inside there’s a small but well done exhibit explaining the significance of the work that was done there. Interestingly, the current use of the structure means that in order to see the exhibit, visitors have to go through a metal detector – so you know the security there is top notch!

Early RAMAC prototype. Note the horizontal alignment of the disks.

Early RAMAC prototype. Note the horizontal alignment of the disks.

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Paul Lasewicz, IBM Corporate Archivist

Paul Lasewicz, IBM Corporate Archivist

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For More Information:

IBM Connects Electric Vehicle Charging Stations in Europe

b2bmarketplace2

IBM (NYSE:IBM) today announced a project that will simplify electric vehicle (EV) charging and payment for consumers, regardless of their location. The operational demonstration, called the B2B Marketplace will allow energy providers, car manufacturers, and charging point owners to share and integrate services on one common IT platform. This will create a network of EV charging services that are compatible regionally in Europe with the aim of increasing electric vehicle adoption.

IBM is one of 43 partners in Europe involved in the Green eMotion project, including energy providers, electric car manufacturers, as well as cities and research institutions, working to enable electromobility across Europe. Similar to the recently announced project with ESB Networks IBM is helping to improve power grid reliability, encourage EV adoption amongst consumers, and address the challenges of financial and billing settlement – by combining cloud and analytic capabilities.

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For More Information:

–Posted by Julie Yamamoto, Program Manager, The Greater IBM Connection

World’s First Smartphone = Apple or Android? Think again….

The December 2012 theme for The Greater IBM Connection is ‘corporate history’, and Paul Lasewicz, IBM Corporate Archivist, will be sharing with us some of the highlights from IBM’s history.

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IPhone and IBM Simon

IPhone and IBM Simon

Twenty years ago, a small team of IBM engineers from the IBM PC company’s advanced technology group in Boca Raton was assembled to create a new mobile device that combined a computer with a cell phone. It was called a personal communicator – we know it today as a smart phone. The team was given a very short deadline – less than four months. A true skunkworks project, they were freed from IBM’s normal product development processes. Even so, they were hard-pressed to meet the deadline, working 80 hours weeks. Somehow they made it, and the prototype debuted at Comdex that fall. The operational prototype, innovatively called the IBM Personal Communicator, was large and heavy – a first iteration of a new technology that embodied many technical compromises. But it worked, and was the hit of the show. Industry representatives lined up three deep to see it, and it made the front page of the next morning’s USA Today Money Section. The enthusiastic reception convinced IBM to turn the device into a product, which was marketed by Bell South in 1993 as the IBM Simon – the world’s first smart phone.

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Paul Lasewicz, IBM Corporate Archivist

Paul Lasewicz, IBM Corporate Archivist

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For More Information:

IBM’s 5 in 5: Welcome To The Era of Cognitive Systems

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On December 17th, 2012 IBM (NYSE: IBM) unveiled the seventh annual “IBM 5 in 5″ (#ibm5in5) – a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years. This year’s 5 in 5 are:

Touch: You will be able to touch through your phone (Story Map, Video, Blog Post)
Sight: A pixel will be worth a thousands words (Story Map, Video, Blog Post)
Hearing: Computers will hear what matters (Story Map, Video, Blog Post)
Taste: Digital taste buds will help you to eat smarter (Story Map, Video, Blog Post)
Smell: Computers will have a sense of smell (Story Map, Video, Blog Post)

The IBM 5 in 5 is based on market and societal trends as well as emerging technologies from IBM’s R&D labs around the world that can make these transformations possible.

–Posted by Julie Yamamoto, Program Manager, The Greater IBM Connection

Smarter Transformation: What I’ve Learned from a Decade of Change

Author Linda Sanford, Vice President, Enterprise Transformation

by Linda Sanford

Over the past decade, IBM has taken a systematic approach to transformation and has dramatically reshaped the company.

Since I’ve been helping lead that effort, I’m often asked by clients for advice on how to transform successfully. I certainly don’t have all the answers, but there are a few things that most organizations can start doing to create a smarter enterprise.

Read the rest of Linda Sanford’s post at Building a Smarter Planet. A Smarter Planet Blog.

Polycom Teams with IBM Research on Cloud/Video Capabilities

Polycom announces co-development Initiative with IBM Research to deliver secure, next-generation innovations and accelerate cloud-delivery of video collaboration applications

from albawaba.com

Polycom, the global leader in open standards-based unified communications, UC, today announced an initiative with IBM Research to co-develop next-generation innovations that are designed to further accelerate cloud-delivered video collaboration applications to support key vertical and social uses. Under the initiative, Polycom will work with IBM Research to explore and develop technologies that leverage the Polycom RealPresence Platform and real-time video capabilities in the cloud, as businesses are increasingly evaluating Video-as-a-Service, VaaS, offerings through private, public and hybrid cloud models.

Polycom and IBM Research are working to ensure Polycom RealPresence video solutions perform optimally in the most rigorous cloud environments to provide the highest levels of security, performance, and reliability, even when systems need to rapidly scale up and down. The companies plan to further develop interoperability between standard and non-standard video environments, including social video applications, to serve organisations requiring face-to-face video meetings regardless of network, platforms, devices, or protocols. This initiative will put special emphasis toward video-enabled mobile social collaboration. The two companies have already worked on a number of initiatives to integrate video, mobile, and social platforms.

Leveraging their development efforts, Polycom and IBM Research plan to create industry solutions that focus on cloud-delivered Communications Enabling Business Processes, CEBP – business activities achieved more effectively through certain communications applications. The combination of leveraging rich presence as well as advanced routing and interoperability creates new possibilities in various industry segments such as insurance, call centers, surveillance, and more. This initiative is designed to broaden the use of RealPresence video solutions and is an important testimony to Polycom’s focus on driving video ubiquity.

“At its heart, this collaboration with IBM is about laying the foundation for more RealPresence innovation in the cloud.  Working with IBM, we’re taking a world-class solution and co-developing technologies to help customers – who are increasingly looking to the cloud for video collaboration applications – better communicate, collaborate, and be more productive,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, President of Products and Services, Polycom.  “Customers who choose Polycom will always be at the forefront of the industry because we’re pushing the boundaries of collaboration forward to ensure our customers have the best solutions, both today and in the future. Our work with IBM is yet another step forward in achieving Polycom’s goal of connecting anyone across any environment on any device.”

“Together with Polycom, we can help customers prepare for the future of this industry, whether they choose premises-based video solutions or private, public, or hybrid cloud delivery models,” said Ken King, vice president of business development for IBM Research. “Ultimately, it’s about helping Polycom develop new, innovative video products on a cloud computing platform that creates solutions across various industry verticals. By co-developing with Polycom, we can help customers collaborate and make decisions more quickly.”

The co-developed solutions will be rolled-out in future Polycom RealPresence video collaboration solutions, including for enterprises interested in private or hybrid clouds or through service providers who will deliver VaaS offerings through public clouds to businesses of all sizes.

Today’s announcement builds on the existing Polycom and IBM global partnership which includes product integrations as well as offerings that help customers to deliver, install, integrate, and maintain standards-based Polycom video solutions into unified communications environments.

BusinessWeek: The Family Doctor: A Remedy for Health-Care Costs?


How making primary-care physicians the center of America's health-care system could drive down costs

Interesting story in BW that includes some discussion around IBM's patient centered medical home model. Here's an excerpt:

This
medical home may sound like the "gatekeeper" model of the 1990s, a
managed-care creation that was all about holding down costs. But
advocates say the new concept is designed to help patients, not
insurers. It's more like doctoring 1950s-style, when a Marcus Welby
figure handled all the family's medical needs. This time it's juiced up
with digital technology.

It
also represents a politically painless way to streamline a disorganized
and wasteful system that chews up a crippling 18% of the U.S. gross
domestic product. That burden is felt particularly by private industry,
which covers 60% of the nation's insured. Since most businesses try to
ferret out waste and disorganization in their own operations, the
medical home is a concept they can embrace in good conscience.

One of the biggest advocates is IBM (IBM),
which shelled out $1.3 billion last year on health benefits for its
U.S. employees and retirees, equal to one month of the company's net
income. Dr. Paul H. Grundy, 57, who holds the unusual title of director
of health-care transformation for IBM, is a medical-home evangelist who
led the company to start the Patient-Centered Primary Care
Collaborative, a coalition of some 500 large employers, insurers,
consumer groups, and doctors. Part of his goal, he says, is to show
that "employers can drive the medical-home idea as buyers of care."

Jackhed09 Jack Mason, Strategic Programs & Social Media
IBM Global Business Services
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

Building the Smarter Enterprise with Business Analytics & Optimization


IBM’s new service line Business Analytics and Optimization is capturing information and turning it into intelligence. It’s identifying patterns faster, pulling insights from noise, converting data into action, analyzing, optimizing, mitigating, finding and preventing. Business Analytics and Optimization is helping people predict with greater confidence.

For more, see the Smarter Enterprise channel on the Smarter Planet site on Tumblr.

Jack Mason
, IBM Global Business Services
Strategic Programs & Social Media

IBM gets some well-deserved attention from the media

It seems like I can’t open a magazine or business newspaper these days without hearing about some of the industry-leading things IBM is doing.  After living through the news that IBM was a “dinosaur” and “elephant”, it’s  a welcome change.

BusinessWeek (May 29, 2009, Page 22), in an article Real Disease, Virtual Help,  highlighted the role IBM is playing by donating to researchers and governments, including Mexico, a program that can simulate the outbreak of a pandemic flu in more than 100 cities. And IBM is working with medical researchers at the University of Texas in an effort to use the World Community Grid to find flu drug treatments.

And Time Magazine has just posted an article, The Reasons Behind Google and IBM Being Ahead of the Competition, praising IBM’s announcement of stream computing advances including the pronouncement that “The new software is unique and does not appear to have any direct competition.”

And it was just a couple of months ago that Fast Company magazine (March 2009), which tends to pay more attention to the giant killers than the giants in business and industry, picked IBM as #19 in its list of 50 most innovative companies (page 72).

Keep dancin’ IBM. Showing business and social leadership while the world economy is struggling makes this former IBMer smile.

Larry07 SD Larry Phipps, a greater IBMer (Kansas City, Washington DC, Bethesda, Atlanta, White Plains, Somers 1969-1992)

Small Change Leads to BIG CHANGE – IBM Corporate Service Corps in Emerging Markets

IBMGhanaSlideshowAfter another disappointing week of streaming news about bailouts and leadership decisions flashed in front of us that are painful symptoms of so much that MUST change, I was moved by the corresponding good news headline:

IBM Selects 200 New Global Leaders for the Corporate Service Corps to Tackle Socioeconomic Problems in Key Emerging Markets

The story reads: “Two hundred of IBM’s future leaders from nearly 40 countries will participate for international assignments to emerging markets in 2009 as part of the company’s Corporate Service Corps program, part of the Global Citizen’s Portfolio initiative announced by CEO Sam Palmisano.”

What made this good news so meaningful was the slideshow story told by Charlie Ung, 8-year IBMer from Canada about his four week experience traveling to Accra in Ghana, West Africa. It says more than any words I could write:

http://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/ghana_presentation.html

What I’ve always loved about IBM remains the same.
They do stuff. They inspire us to do it too. They are on it. Not perfect perhaps, but like everything else, in its cracks, new LIGHT emerges always moving to something higher. Sam Palmisano made sure of it when he put his fingerprint on the future with IBM’s commitment November 6, 2008 in a speech describing THE SMARTER PLANET.

The Greater IBM Connection?…
It felt good today to be reminded by the GOOD NEWS above. Another plus was finding out about it on Twitter from GIBMer Jasmin Tragas, IBM Australia (Wonderwebby) It is still another example of the goodness that comes from our Greater IBM Connections across the world. Jasmin reminded us all today in one of her tweets, ”Give, give, give. Without take. Learn how Jasmin is setting the example in her own words and in a creative visual exhibitat the Women’s Gallery at the Global Dialogue Center — changing lives for women in the Philippines. Then you are invited to GIVE, GIVE, GIVE. Like Charlie Ung told us in his story from Ghana…

…Maybe that’s the key:
small change that leads to big change.”
  

Tell us what small changes you are leading. Spread the good news!

Best…
Debbe

Dk010109-recollectionDebbe Kennedy
Contributing Author
Greater IBM Connection Blog
Founder, President & CEO
Global Dialogue Center and
Leadership Solutions Cos.
author, Putting Our Differences to Work
Video Book Review by futurist Joel A. Barker
IBMer 1970 – 1991 L.A.; Anchorage; Seattle; San Francisco
www.globaldialoguecenter.com


GroupCHAT-smONLINE EVENT: You’re Invited!
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