This week, I’m at the IBM Impact 2011 conference in Vegas. Impact is IBM’s Websphere focused conference. I expect to hear a lot about BPM, SOA and Cloud, Cloud, Cloud.
Rocking opening band, including some iPad playing “strings”. The conference theme is Optimize for Growth. Deliver Results. Breaking the ice for the show is comedian Larry Miller.
Starting the IBM portion of the show are Nancy Pearson and Dave Farrell, tying the Optimize for Growth/Deliver Results theme with BPM, SOA, Cloud and Websphere.
This morning is about transforming your organization for growth, local transformation to enterprise-wide. This is achieving agility, starts with (as I always say) Visibility, includes Operational Dexterity and Process Integrity.
John Iwata, SVP Communications and Marketing, up to speak on IBM’s Centennial. ”100 years of transformation”. From cheese slicers and punch cards to Watson. Even transformation within a segment, 40 to 80 column punch card. Drowning in punch cards. Inspired by Bing Crosby pre-recorded radio show, IBM labs experimented with magnetic tape. One tape could hold 35K of punch cards. Customers did not immediately accept, “see and feel data on punch cards”. [Imagine Tweets via punchcards].
Iwata describing “civil war” within IBM set off by Tom Watson Jr’s announcement of S/360. Once delivered, customers again didn’t know what to do with the technological advance. Point here (my interpretation), transformation is hard, but worth it.
The possibility and need for transformation is acute. IBM has long-recognized that technology is moving out of the datacenter, to mobile and devices. ”Smart dust”. With this pervasiveness comes more data. With that data, can make the planet smarter.
In Fall 2008, set out to educate others, make others believe, in the opportunity of Smarter Systems of all types. However, belief is only the first step. Need to act on these beliefs. Behavioral scientists say this is a “lack of agency”. Iwata is leading to point that IBM will help us create agency.
Iwata calling out general pattern in transformation: Instrument to Manage, Integrate to Innovate, Optimize to Transform.
“Technology, even as powerful as Watson, is not enough.” Need leaders. Need to give people the knowledge and confidence to act. - Iwata
Dr. Jeffrey Burns, Chief of Critical Care, Children’s Hospital Boston is up now. He’s talking about caring for critical care American children as they are traveling outside of the US. Dr. Burns is discussing the gaps in information sharing and techniques to guide a doctor across the globe on a procedure they aren’t familiar with.
From a particular experience with a child traveling in Guatemala, Dr. Burns was inspired to take on the challenge of Medical Knowledge Transfer. The current system is very dependent on physical co-location and observation. It is also very random. What you see one day, is not guaranteed to be seen the next.
Adults learn by 4 learning styles: active experimentation, concrete experience, reflective observation and abstract conceptualization. Most people fall in a quadrant. We need to move people out of comfortable quadrant, through all 4. Forcing people through this cycle increases learning 25%.
Implementing this program within the hospital helped. But, wanted to extend this learning to the cloud. Inspired by his son playing an on-line game with local friends and global players, he got a “kernel of an idea”. Gaming embeds a learning experience.
Next, in visiting the Masters website, he could watch the live tournament, get a putting lesson and then simulate via an avatar. That site was “powered by IBM”.
Burns’ team tracked down the IBM team to tackle the needs of pediatric care: infrastructure, vaccinations and pediatric care. The solution though, needed to stretch from resource limited environment (3rd world) to resource rich environment.
Need to break information bottlenecks. How do you get knowledge from one country to another. The solution is “PICU Without Walls“. Cloud-based. Designed to create curricular maps. Designed with social networking baked in.
The PICU is designed to promote information-exchange from all remote locales.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
Marie Wieck, GM Application and Integration Middleware – “Change is everywhere. CIOs expect change in environments, can’t predict where it will come from”. Change, complexity and uncertainty is new normal. Embrace change. ”Make change happen, don’t let it happen to you.”
“Transformation is NOT optional”. Leadership support first, technology follows. Follows in talk too, citing WebSphere implementations related to transformation. This must be the “integrate to innovate”, part of the message.
IBM is announcing new delivery models: for mobile, for cloud and for appliances.
Wieck emphasizes Iwata’s earlier message (principles for transformation): Visibility, Operational Dexterity and Process Integrity.
Wieck asks the attendees: “Do you view market uncertainty as a risk? or an opportunity?”
New: IBM Business Process Manager: Lombardi + WebSphere Process Server + iLog + collaboration + simple install (6 clicks)
VP and CIO of Caterpillar, John Heller on Transformation at Caterpillar. Easy to make difficult decisions during hard times, harder to make difficult (transformative) decisions during good times.
83 year partnership with IBM. Caterpillar on physical infrastructure, IBM on digital infrastructure. Heller speaks to convergence of the two, physical and data with Smarter Planet, Smarter Systems.
We cannot ask enough questions to get the answers we need to know. Getting better answers for decision-making with tools such as iLog.
Focused on being the low-cost producer. Not interested in sharing their customer base. Calls out IBM’s transformation from Hardware company to Services company.
All innovation should be quantified. Open Innovation with IBM. Big win expected with Smarter Physical Infrastructure.
Innovation: Ideation, Adoption and Execution. 70% of transformations fail. ”Fact is: culture eats strategy for lunch”.
Heller is describing fleet of smart (huge) trucks that are part of smart mining operations. Focused on advanced condition monitoring.
Heller is big IBM advocate. Standing up for IBM’s partnership in transformation.
Marie Wieck is back. Integration is essential to driving innovation. CIOs are planning for 55% greater integration in their portfolios today. Not just integrating portfolios, but cleaning them up. Removing applications. Using SOA to drive these changes.
Announcing: New Websphere ESB registry offering.
Also, need to ensure your application infrastructure is intelligent. Reduce complexity. Raising the bar on Websphere, announcing version 8.0 of WAS, supports JEE 6. Extensions for Web 2.0 and Mobile.
More announcements: DataPower Appliances, Application Accelerator extension. Cast Iron for Cloud Integration. Oh, and here comes the Cloud Standards Customer Council. Also IBM Workload Deployer (more cloud). Finally, (I think) IBM Smarter Commerce portfolio. This is Websphere commerce + Sterling.
Quiz to audience: “Can you deliver new products and services quickly”? “Can you see across company & partners”? “Can you adapt your processes”? and a few more. Leading up to “Can you connect a smarter planet”? and “Can you make a difference”?
Bottom line: Transform to grow with Business Agility. (BPM, SOA, Cloud).
[Update on 4.12.2011: Realized I forgot my disclosures. IBM is not a client of Elemental Links. However, IBM invited me to attend Impact 2011 and arranged for my travel and lodging.]
