Cleveland Clinic, IBM Tap Watson To Boost Patient Care

Details of Cleveland Clinic/IBM Research Collaboration

The move is part of an ongoing collaboration between Cleveland Clinic and IBM Research to develop new medical technologies based on Watson.

Eric Brown -- research director of Watson Technologies -- said that the collaboration already has made several improvements to help Watson "handle more and more complex problems in real time and partner with medical experts in a much more intuitive fashion."

Lerner College of Medicine -- a collaboration between Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University -- now will test the two new tools. 

Details of Tools

The first tool, called WatsonPaths, uses spoken language to consult with patients and help solve medical conundrums by drawing from Watson's vast amount of stored medical research. For now, Lerner is determining the best way to use the tool for educational purposes.

Meanwhile, Watson EMR Assistant is designed to help providers analyze EHRs. Lerner has been testing the technology for about three weeks.

Reaction to Initiative

Neil Mehta, director of education and technology at Lerner, said the new Watson developments are promising, but more work needs to be done before Watson can act as a physician's assistant. He noted that it is "important to do appropriate studies before using Watson in patient care" (Soder, Crain's Cleveland Business/Modern Healthcare, 10/15).

Link :  http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2013/10/18/cleveland-clinic-ibm-tap-watson-to-boost-patient-care

Smart Machines: IBM's Watson and the Era of Cognitive Computing

We are crossing a new frontier in the evolution of computing and entering the era of cognitive systems. The victory of IBM’s Watson on the television quiz show Jeopardy! revealed how scientists and engineers at IBM and elsewhere are pushing the boundaries of science and technology to create machines that sense, learn, reason, and interact with people in new ways to provide insight and advice.

In Smart Machines, John E. Kelly III, director of IBM Research, and Steve Hamm, a writer at IBM and a former business and technology journalist, introduce the fascinating world of “cognitive systems” to general audiences and provide a window into the future of computing. Cognitive systems promise to penetrate complexity and assist people and organizations in better decision making. They can help doctors evaluate and treat patients, augment the ways we see, anticipate major weather events, and contribute to smarter urban planning. Kelly and Hamm’s comprehensive perspective describes this technology inside and out and explains how it will help us conquer the harnessing and understanding of “big data,” one of the major computing challenges facing businesses and governments in the coming decades. Absorbing and impassioned, their book will inspire governments, academics, and the global tech industry to work together to power this exciting wave in innovation.

Author: John E. Kelly III, Steve Hamm

Publisher: Columbia University Press (10/15/2013)

IBM's New Computer is Powered by "Electronic Blood"

A supercomputer that is fueled with blood? It's coming! IBM scientists have created a new supercomputer inspired by the human brain and is powered by what they call "electronic blood."

Patrick Ruch and Bruno Michel of IBM Research lab in Zurich, Switzerland, wanted to "fit a supercomputer inside a sugarcube." But in order to do that, they'd have to model it after the human brain, which is 10,000 times more dense and efficient than any computer today. "The brain uses 40% of its volume for functional performance - and only 10% for energy and cooling," said Michel to the BBC. Compare that to the world's fastest current supercomputer, which uses 99% of its volume devoted to cooling and powering, and only 1% for processing information. The human brain is made possible, Michel added, "because it uses only one - extremely efficient - network of capillaries and blood vessels to transport heat and energy - all at the same time."

So, the pair have created a "bionic" computing architecture, which uses "electronic blood" of charged electrolytes to provide fuel and cooling to computer chips.

By : Alex Santoso

Link :  http://www.neatorama.com/2013/10/18/IBMs-New-Computer-is-Powered-by-Electronic-Blood/#!lYE8z

Watson Goes Live at Cleveland Clinic

IBM and the Cleveland Clinic have been working for the past year on a Watson-related project with the goal of co-developing a diagnostician supercomputer capable of supporting medical training and patient care. That effort has resulted in two new products that IBM will spend the next three years field testing at Cleveland Clinic. Watson is a pizza box-sized, artificially intelligent supercomputer created by IBM that uses natural language processing, a database of more than 200 million pages of structured and unstructured content, and sophisticated algorithms to solve complex problems. Watson rose to fame in 2011 when, during a three-day appearance on Jeopardy, it beat former Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

In February, IBM announced that it had partnered with Memorial Sloan Kettering to add 600,000 pieces of medical evidence, 1.5 million patient records, two million pages of text from medical journals, 25,000 medical training cases, 1,500 lung cancer cases, and nearly 15,000 hours of clinician-led fine tuning of its medical decision accuracy. The effort was undertaken in preparation for Watson’s first foray into healthcare.

Shortly after, Watson was implemented at the Maine Center for Cancer Medicine and WestMed in New York, where researchers worked to refine its algorithms so that it could begin supporting oncologists by creating probability-based lung cancer treatment plans. For this project, Watson was taught to analyze treatment options and present them to physicians in order of their probability for curing the patients cancer, and with the option of excluding treatments that the patient’s insurance would not cover. During this time, researchers were also teaching Watson how to scan through EHRs and pull out important information.

Now, IBM researchers are expanding Watson’s footstep in healthcare at the Cleveland Clinic. The Watson program at Cleveland will focus on validating two new products: Watson EMR Assistant and WatsonPaths. The Watson EMR Assistant project will provide researchers an opportunity to further refine Watson’s ability to comb through electronic medical records and mine them for valuable diagnostic information.

WatsonPaths is a project focusing on showing clinicians how Watson came to the conclusion that it did so that clinicians can easily understand the information in the broader context of medicine. Eric Brown, IBM Research Director of Watson Technologies explains, "On Jeopardy! it was not necessarily critical to know how Watson arrived at its answer. But doctors or domain experts in any field will want to understand what information sources Watson consulted, what logic it applied, and what inferences it made in arriving at a recommendation."

Over the next three years Watson will gain the ability to support diagnostic decision-making at the bedside. The goal of the program at Cleveland Clinic is to build a digital assistant that can present doctors with key information from within a patient’s medical record and propose a diagnosis based on probability and science.

If successful, Watson may prove to be a valuable tool in helping address the physician shortage because doctors would likely be able to see more patients if relevant data was able to be automatically extracted from the chart, analyzed, and presented in this way. Optimizing Watson to be able to integrate with the myriad of EHR systems installed across the nation is one major roadblock researchers have identified in scaling Watson commercially. Another is earning the trust of patients and physicians alike.

By : Lt. Dan
Link : http://histalkmobile.com/watson-goes-live-at-cleveland-clinic/

IBM unveils computer fed by 'electronic blood'

IBM has unveiled a prototype of a new brain-inspired computer powered by what it calls "electronic blood".

The firm says it is learning from nature by building computers fuelled and cooled by a liquid, like our minds.

The human brain packs phenomenal computing power into a tiny space and uses only 20 watts of energy - an efficiency IBM is keen to match.

Its new "redox flow" system pumps an electrolyte "blood" through a computer, carrying power in and taking heat out.

 

A very basic model was demonstrated this week at the technology giant's Zurich lab by Dr Patrick Ruch and Dr Bruno Michel.

Their vision is that by 2060, a one petaflop computer that would fill half a football field today, will fit on your desktop.

"We want to fit a supercomputer inside a sugarcube. To do that, we need a paradigm shift in electronics - we need to be motivated by our brain," says Michel.

"The human brain is 10,000 times more dense and efficient than any computer today.

"That's possible because it uses only one - extremely efficient - network of capillaries and blood vessels to transport heat and energy - all at the same time."

IBM's brainiest computer to date is Watson, which famously trounced two champions of the US TV quiz show Jeopardy.

The victory was hailed as a landmark for cognitive computing - machine had surpassed man.

The future of computing? IBM's model uses a liquid to deliver power and remove heat

But the contest was unfair, says Michel. The brains of Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter ran on only 20 watts of energy, whereas Watson needed 85,000 watts.

Energy efficiency - not raw computing power - is the guiding principle for the next generation of computer chips, IBM believes.

Our current 2D silicon chips, which for half a century have doubled in power through Moore's Law, are approaching a physical limit where they cannot shrink further without overheating.

Bionic vision

 

"The computer industry uses $30bn of energy and throws it out of the window. We're creating hot air for $30bn," says Michel.

"Ninety-nine per cent of a computer's volume is devoted to cooling and powering. Only 1% is used to process information. And we think we've built a good computer?"

"The brain uses 40% of its volume for functional performance - and only 10% for energy and cooling."

Michel's vision is for a new "bionic" computing architecture, inspired by one of the laws of nature - allometric scaling - where an animal's metabolic power increases with its body size.

An elephant, for example, weighs as much as a million mice. But it consumes 30 times less energy, and can perform a task even a million mice cannot accomplish.

The same principle holds true in computing, says Michel, whose bionic vision has three core design features.

The first is 3D architecture, with chips stacked high, and memory storage units interwoven with processors.

"It's the difference between a low-rise building, where everything is spread out flat, and a high rise building. You shorten the connection distances," says Matthias Kaiserswerth, director of IBM Zurich.

But there is a very good reason today's chips are gridiron pancakes - exposure to the air is critical to dissipate the intense heat generated by ever-smaller transistors.

Piling chips on top of one another locks this heat inside - a major roadblock to 3D computing.

IBM's solution is integrated liquid cooling - where chips are interlayered with tiny water pipes.

The art of liquid cooling has been demonstrated by Aquasar and put to work inside the German supercomputer SuperMUC which - perversely - harnesses warm water to cool its circuits.

SuperMUC consumes 40% less electricity as a result.

Liquid engineering

 

But for IBM to truly match the marvels of the brain, there is a third evolutionary step it must achieve - simultaneous liquid fuelling and cooling.

Just as blood gives sugar in one hand and takes heat with another, IBM is looking for a fluid that can multitask.

Vanadium is the best performer in their current laboratory test system - a type of redox flow unit - similar to a simple battery.

First a liquid - the electrolyte - is charged via electrodes, then pumped into the computer, where it discharges energy to the chip.

 SuperMUC uses liquid cooling instead of air - a model for future computer designs

Redox flow is far from a new technology, and neither is it especially complex.

But IBM is the first to stake its chips on this "electronic blood" as the food of future computers - and will attempt to optimise it over the coming decades to achieve zettascale computing.

"To power a zettascale computer today would take more electricity than is produced in the entire world," says Michel.

He is confident that the design hurdles in his bionic model can be surmounted - not least that a whole additional unit is needed to charge the liquid.

And while other labs are betting on spintronics, quantum computing or photonics to take us beyond silicon, the Zurich team believes the real answer lies right behind our eyes.

"Just as computers help us understand our brains, if we understand our brains we'll make better computers," says director Matthias Kaiserswerth.

He would like to see a future Watson win Jeopardy on a level playing field.

Other experts in computing agree that IBM's 3D principles are sound. But as to whether bionic computing will be the breakthrough technology, the jury is out.

"The idea of using a fluid to both power and cool strikes me as very novel engineering - killing two birds with one stone," says Prof Alan Woodward, of the University of Surrey's computing department.

"But every form of future computing has its champions - whether it be quantum computing, DNA computing or neuromorphic computing.

"There is a long way to go from the lab to having one of these sitting under your desk."

Prof Steve Furber, leader of the SpiNNaker project agrees that "going into the third dimension" has more to offer than continually shrinking transistors.

"The big issue with 3D computing is getting the heat out - and liquid cooling could be very effective if integrated into 3D systems as proposed here," he told the BBC.

"But all of the above will not get electronics down to the energy-efficiency of the brain.

"That will require many more changes, including a move to analogue computation instead of digital.

"It will also involve breakthroughs in new non-Turing models of computation, for example based on an understanding of how the brain processes information."

By : James Morgan
Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24571219


 

IBM's Global CxO Study Shows That You Irrefutably Live In The Age Of The Customer

Yesterday, Forrester released two important reports: one on the business masteries you need in The Age Of The Customer and one on the Business Technology you need to succeed in it.

Serendipitously, IBM this week released its global study of 4,183 CxOs from around the world. The title? The Customer-activated Enterprise. The study carries irrefutable evidence that we already live in the age of the customer, which we define as “a 20-year business cycle in which the most successful enterprises will reinvent themselves to systematically understand and serve increasingly powerful customers.” Here’s my analysis of IBM’s data:

• First, CxOs see customers are a critical influence on their company’s strategic vision and business strategy. Over half of global CxOs place customers ahead of all other influencers except the C-Suite itself as a strategic influence on the firm. And they don’t mean the company’s perception of what customers need. They mean customers themselves: eighty-two percent of CEOs believe they include customers in defining new products and services today. That’s a ubiquitous desire, folks: CEOs want customers themselves to define the firm’s new products and services.For CMOs and CIOs, this desire means that it’s time to go beyond social listening and customer feedback programs to instead place customers front and center in your ecosystem of existence. You need to become customer-obsessed. Invite customers to see your product operations, get their buy-in on product enhancements, give them immediate feedback that their help has translated into something positive.
• Second, CEOs rank technology factos above all other external forces in shaping their organization’s future (see Figure 1). CEOs place technology factors first. CMOs and CIOs rank market factors first ahead of technology factors. Now we see the challenge facing CIOs and CMOs: Who’s right? Well, customer-obsession says that you are all right. Customers come first. So CMOs and CIOs are right. And only business technology — which we define as “technology, systems, and processes to win, serve, and retain customers” can help you acknowledge your customers’ power and surpass their expectations. So CEOs are right, too. Maybe more right ;-).
• Lastly, customers live in the physical world, and they want your company to be there, too. Eighty-seven percent of CMOs expect to integrate every customer touchpoint through a coherent digital strategy within five years — but only 16% do so today. So there’s huge work to do here. Customers expect you to unshackle your digital services from a browser and deliver them directly into their physical context and moments of need — what we call mobile engagement. Mobile devices and connected products are the carriers of your digital strategy into the physical world. But the strategy itself — to engage customers directly and immediately in their moments of need — will be meaningless unless your customers are involved. Once more, you will need to embed business technology and in particular new systems of engagement into your customer-obsession.

At Forrester, we have been analyzing the role of customers in marketing (harnessing the Groundswell of social media), product development (co-creation), and employee productivity (Empowered employees, BYOD, and consumerization) for over 10 years. But in the age of the customer, we are all just getting started to even know that we need new business disciplines for customer-obsession and for business technology.  At least we won’t be bored. We will all learn to live in the interesting times of ever-rising customer expectations.

By: Ted Schadler
Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/forrester/2013/10/11/ibms-global-cxo-study-shows-that-you-irrefutably-live-in-the-age-of-the-customer/

IBM touts prototype software to manage cloud, virtual bandwidth

IBM researchers say they have developed software that will automatically direct users to the most bandwidth when accessing a cloud computing or other virtual system.

According to the IBM patent on the software, it works by looking at the virtual machine data located in the management information database of a network switch. "A management entity, such as a provisioning manager, determines the amount of network bandwidth being utilized through each of the first and second Ethernet links and the amount of network bandwidth being utilized by the Internet Protocol addresses attributable to each of the virtual machines. Accordingly, one of the virtual machines may be migrated from one compute node to another compute node coupled to an Ethernet link having a greater amount of unutilized network bandwidth. Virtual machines may be dynamically migrated in order to provide each virtual machine with a required amount of network bandwidth," IBM stated.

In other words as network bandwidth rises and becomes constrained in one node, the system will automatically reassign some of the VMs to another node with network bandwidth capacity available.

IBM says the software would be best for applications that experience dramatic or unexpected peaks and valleys in demand for services, such as:

• Online retailers and auction sites that endure spikes in activity at different times of the day, various days of the week, and during holiday seasons and special promotions;
• Search engines, which must respond to surges in activity on a multitude of topics at any time, driven by popular culture and current events;
• Government and news media Web sites, where local, regional, national and international developments and crises ranging from elections, to conflicts, to natural disasters can drive traffic without warning; and
• Online sites for major sporting events that encounter unpredictable demand from fans for stats, videos and other content during live competition.

IBM says the system works with Linux, Windows, CentOS, and UNIX, and a variety of hardware platforms, including IBM System x racks and BladeCenter, PureFlex, and Power Systems.

While there are many approaches to enabling virtualization in a cloud, most focus on the issues of CPU and memory utilization and optimization. But even if those functions are managed effectively, overall system performance can be impeded by restricted network bandwidth. By focusing on the networking aspect of system optimization and virtualization, this invention removes a roadblock to overall system efficiency, allowing processing, memory and networking all to work at their top levels, IBM stated.

By: Layer 8

Link: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/84008

Bolsters Cloud Portfolio with SoftLayer Integration

Building on its $2 billion acquisition of SoftLayer, IBM today announced a series of new offerings that fuse together high value cloud and analytics capabilities to further help clients drive business transformation and growth.

IDC MarketScape vendor analysis model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. The Capabilities score measures vendor product, go-to-market and business execution in the short-term. The Strategy score measures alignment of vendor strategies with customer requirements in a 3-5-year timeframe. Vendor market share is represented by the size of the circles. (Credit: IDC)

As part of this expansion, IBM is announcing new social business and mobile offerings for its 100+ software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution portfolio, integrated cloud capabilities with SoftLayer assets and new expert integrated systems for hybrid cloud computing environments. 

With today's news, IBM is also announcing a series of global clients that are turning to IBM's cloud capabilities as a transformative growth engine in their industry. These include Surfline Communications, a telecommunications provider in Ghana; and TienPhong Commercial Joint Stock Bank, one of the leading financial institutions in Vietnam. 

In the new era of computing, the opportunity for cloud is growing exponentially. In fact, 60 percent of all enterprises are predicted to adopt some form of cloud computing this year, according to Gartner Research.  In addition, GigaOm Research forecast $158 billion in global cloud computing investment by 2014. 

SoftLayer Infrastructure as the Foundation of IBM Cloud Portfolio 

Since its recent acquisition, SoftLayer has already added 1,600 new clients to its existing roster of 21,000 clients in 140 countries. SoftLayer infrastructure will be the foundation of IBM's cloud portfolio.  

IBM is beginning to shift its cloud portfolio to SoftLayer infrastructure -- first among many of these shifts includes the IBM Social Learning platform, a first of its kind social enablement platform that is part of its Smarter Workforce portfolio and is already in use under the name OpenPediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital with 420 hospitals in 78 countries on six continents.  

Today, IBM is announcing that is it commercializing the IBM Social Learning platform on SoftLayer technology to apply it across a variety of industries, such as retail, energy and utilities, government, healthcare and automotive. Now this unique combination of SoftLayer assets and IBM's cloud capabilities, built on open standards, is able to offer organizations the ability to share knowledge and expertise through real-time videos via a hybrid cloud computing environment. For example, doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital can share training videos with clinicians halfway across the globe to demonstrate the latest life-saving techniques in child care. Planned to be available in December 2013, this new platform will be delivered as a service to clients.  

Additionally, IBM's recent acquisition of Xtify, a leading provider of cloud-based mobile messaging tools that help organizations improve mobile sales, drive in-store traffic and engage customers with personalized offers, will also run on SoftLayer technology in the future. 

"We believe cloud is going to be a transformational engine that is driving growth for our customers,” said Dennis Quan, Vice President, IBM Cloud Infrastructure Services.  IBM. “With today’s latest offerings, IBM is continuing to move its cloud strategy forward by helping put the tools for business innovation directly in the hands of leaders tasked with reshaping their organization’s vision.” 

SaaS Innovations for Social Engagement, Mobile Crowd-Sourcing and Retail Merchandising 

Building on more than 100 SaaS applications delivered to clients today, IBM's new SaaS offerings being rolled out today are customized to meet the specific needs of lines of business leaders such as Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs), Chief Human Resource Officers (CHRO) and Chief Information Officers (CIOs) spanning all industries.    

Adding to its Smarter Workforce portfolio, IBM today is also launching the new IBM Mobile Feedback App, a cloud-based mobile application that allows human resources professionals and line of business executives such as sales, marketing or research to quickly plug into the opinions and ideas of employees.  Executives can use this feedback to make informed decisions on productivity, retention rates, and employee engagement.  

Available now, a new IBM Survey Analytics application uses text and visual analytics to automatically extract and display over one million pieces of anonymous unstructured data derived from employee surveys, including more than 4.2 million employee comments collected annually through surveys conducted by Kenexa.  It then provides findings via a sentiment "heat map" of trends broken down by employee segments, which allows executives to tap into the pulse of their organization to improve performance and morale. 

In addition to the new software and services, IBM also recently announced the availability of IBM SmartCloud for Social Business on SoftLayer’s industry leading infrastructure in a new Amsterdam data center. Today more than 9,000 cloud clients, including Sika AG and SafeGuard World International, and 75 percent of the Fortune 100 are transforming their business operations with IBM enterprise social software. 

New additions to IBM's retail merchandising cloud include a new capability to help multi-channel and pure play retailers increase sales and profitability, while maintaining a competitive price position.  Merchandisers using IBM's DemandTec solutions can now benefit from automated updates to pricing delivered online or in-store. This new flexibility enables merchandisers to easily and rapidly respond to competitive price changes, providing both a better customer experience and improved control over pricing strategies. 

With this release, IBM also expands its cloud capabilities for digital marketers and merchandisers with real  time personalization to help organizations improve customer engagement and drive revenue. Analyzing multiple factors, such as the products digital consumers are browsing for and adding to their carts, the solution provides insights. to the marketer and delivers real-time, personalized cross-sell recommendations to the consumer.  Innovations to IBM's cloud marketing suite also include the ability to deliver promotions to consumers when most effective such as live on the site or via email after they've left. 

New IBM Systems and Solutions for Private and Hybrid Cloud Deployments  

New systems and solutions being introduced today can also help clients and managed service providers (MSPs) build private and hybrid clouds to get the most out of social, mobile and Big Data workloads. These include new IBM PureFlex Systems and IBM Power Systems solutions that provide the flexibility clients need to quickly deploy clouds and cloud services. The PureFlex System - Express, available as a single chassis configuration only, offers an affordable entry price point suitable for small and midsize businesses. The PureFlex System - Enterprise, with selectable rack offerings, is designed for scalable cloud deployments with built-in redundancy for resilient operation. Both systems support all Power processor and x86-based compute nodes. The PureFlex Solution for SmartCloud Desktop Infrastructure is optimized to deliver superior performance and flexibility to meet clients’ unique desktop virtualization business needs. IBM also announced that its software patterns for PureApplication System, which are designed to radically streamline the set-up and management of hardware and software resources, can now be deployed on SoftLayer. 

Additionally, new Power Systems solutions to further support hybrid cloud environments and simplify clients’ ability to adapt to emerging business needs at a lower cost with greater flexibility compared to commodity servers based on decades old, PC era design. The new Power Systems Solution Edition for Service Providers enables fast go-to-market with a pre-built, pre-installed cloud solution based on OpenStack for SmartCloud Entry and PowerVC. IBM PowerVC offers leading virtualization to improve resource utilization and agility for OpenStack implementations. The new IBM PowerVP is a virtualization performance tool that helps clients respond to business needs faster by providing real-time insight into their virtualization performance through graphical display. For clients seeking open cloud environments, the new Power Integrated Facility for Linux enables clients to better exploit the reliability, scale and performance of enterprise class Power servers to improve quality of service and reduce the cost of managing their Linux ecosystem. In addition, IBM is also announcing support for OpenStack across all models of PureApplication System, including new models of PureApplication System on Power to enable lower entry points starting at 32-cores. 

IBM Cloud Capabilities Helps Drive Client Transformation 

TienPhong Commercial Joint Stock Bank (TienPhong Bank), one of the leading banks in Vietnam, is using IBM cloud solutions to expand its business operations, drive growth and deliver a variety of new customer services. These capabilities are being applied to its core banking upgrade, mobile apps and e-banking services to target the individual consumer and bring better customer service. As a result, it has seen a 50 percent increase in the number of customers in less than one year.  

Additionally, Ghanaian telecommunications provider Surfline Communications has selected IBM cloud solutions to help expand its mobile data services throughout the country. As a recent entrant into the competitive telecommunications landscape in Ghana, Surfline announced the first commercial deployment of a 4G LTE network in parts of Western and Central Africa earlier this year. Working with IBM's cloud capabilities, Surfline is able to provide excellent service deliver to customers, improve operational efficiency, and increase its return on investment. 

About IBM Cloud Computing 

IBM is the global leader in cloud with an unmatched portfolio of open cloud solutions that help clients build, rent or tap into cloud capabilities. No other company has the ability to bring together unique industry knowledge and unmatched cloud capabilities, that have already helped more than 20,000 clients around the world. Today, IBM has more than 100 cloud SaaS solutions, 37,000 experts with deep industry knowledge helping clients transform and a network of more than 25 global cloud delivery centers. Since 2007, IBM has invested more than $6 billion in acquisitions to accelerate its cloud initiatives. Most recently IBM acquired SoftLayer with more than 21,000 clients in 140 countries to further build out its IaaS portfolio with an easy and secure on ramp to cloud integrating IBM SmartCloud. 

By: IBM News Release

Link: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/42146.wss

IBM Buys Xtify in Mobile Commerce Play

The acquisition looks like an excellent deal for both companies. IBM will expand its mobile infrastructure offerings. And joining an organization of IBM’s size and influence should help ensure that Xtify's technologies reach a far wider customer audience than if the company had continued going it alone, said analyst Charles King.

Big Blue is pushing deeper into the Cloud-based mobile messaging space. IBM has acquired Xtify, a mobile messaging tools provider that helps enterprises improve mobile sales, drive in-store traffic and engage customers with personalized offers. Financial terms were disclosed. 

Xtify lets digital marketers create content-rich, in-app mobile messaging and push notifications to spur mobile application usage. Mobile applications can increase in-store traffic and improve mobile sales while fostering brand loyalty. 

"With the increase of mobile devices, organizations across all industries are anxious to develop a mobile approach to engage their customers," said Kevin Bishop, IBM vice president for digital marketing. "The acquisition of Xtify provides new ways for our clients to foster a direct, one-to-one communication channel with their customers." 

The Mobile Opportunity

 

As IBM sees it, mobile communication channels are completely transforming the way that organizations interact with their customers. Consumers expect personalized messages and promotional offers based on expressed interests and shopping and browsing habits. 

With the Xtify acquisition, IBM aims to give marketers a new opportunity for client engagement anytime, anywhere, as consumers traverse across multiple digital channels, browsing in stores, shopping on mobile Web sites or other online channels. 

IBM did its homework and offered research from Gartner to further prove out its reasoning for the acquisition. The market research firm predicts that worldwide mobile payment transaction values will reach $235.4 billion in 2013, a 44 percent increase from 2012. These increases will continue at a 35 percent annual growth rate culminating in a $721 billion market with 450 million users by 2017. 

What’s more, a new IBM Institute for Business Value study confirms that leading organizations have seen clear benefits in their mobile investments to date: 73 percent have experienced measurable results from their mobile initiatives versus 34 percent of all other companies in the study. Further, 81 percent stated that mobile capabilities are fundamentally changing the way their organizations do business. 

An Excellent Deal

 

IBM said the buy would help extend its mobile capabilities to digital marketers across all industries ranging from retail to citizen engagement in the public sector through cloud-based services. Specifically, IBM will integrate the tech into its Smarter Commerce initiative, providing campaign creation, personalized content, dynamic real-time segmentation and analytics for all mobile devices and browsers. 

One feature of Xtify’s cloud-based campaign management platform that IBM called out was notifications to mobile consumers when new content and promotions are available. The idea is to help businesses deepen connections with their customers. 

We caught up with Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, to get his thoughts on the acquisition. He told us the acquisition looks like an excellent deal for both companies. 

“IBM is certainly expanding its roster of mobile infrastructure offerings and Xtify should help bolster solutions and services related to mobile advertising, marketing and payments,” he said. “Along with the monetary benefits Xtify will realize from the deal, joining an organization of IBM’s size and influence should help ensure that the company’s technologies reach a far wider customer audience than they would have if the company had continued going it alone.”

By: Jennifer LeClaire
Link: http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=89922

Transform Your Organization into a Mobile Enterprise with IBM Worklight

This IBM® Redbooks® Solution Guide focuses on the business transformation to mobile devices. Mobile applications are not a luxury anymore. Providing apps to connect immediately to customers, employees, and partners has become a necessity for companies to keep pace with competition and the rapidly progressing business environment. Much like technological advances of the past (such as the Internet, email, and e-commerce) access to business applications from a mobile device has transformed from an indulgence to an expectation.

The mobile enterprise offering from IBM is called IBM MobileFirst. IBM MobileFirst takes advantage of this mobile trend and is an end-to-end solution to facilitate your platform and application development, mobile security, mobile device management and analytics. IBM MobileFirst supplies all key elements needed for a successful mobile enterprise implementation and consequently customization.

An essential part of this integrated package is the application platform, IBM Worklight®, which provides application development, testing, management, security, and on-premises or managed service delivery. Creating and deploying a new mobile solution involves many groups, both inside and outside of the enterprise, such as employees, customers, and partners. To successfully establish end-to-end solutions, these components need to be determined and addressed (see Figure 1).

 
Figure 1. Mobile solution overview

Did you know?

• 91% of mobile users keep their device within arm's reach100 percent of the time
• 75% of mobile shoppers take action after receiving a location-based message
• 96% year to year increase in mobile cyber Monday sales from 2012 through 2013

Business value

The proliferation and the pace of mobile devices require businesses to be able to respond with agility to upcoming technological improvements, such as new devices or operating system releases. IBM Worklight uses open standards, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and solutions such as Apache Cordova, Eclipse Foundation, and the Android and Apple SDKs. This provides flexibility in implementing your mobile communication channel and can reduce the time-to-market for a new version of an application that supports a newly released device.

Many business opportunities and challenges cannot be solved with prepackaged off-the-shelf software. This kind of software is designed to solve a particular general business need with limited flexibility in terms of customizing the application to satisfy individual business cases. IBM Worklight, instead, provides a set of tools to be customized to the individual business needs of your company, such as improving customer relationship, reducing paper-bound work, or intensifying marketing activities, and allows developers to build solutions even to the most unique requirements. IBM Worklight helps your enterprise reduce the effective distance to your customers and to engage your user base to accelerate real mobile interaction and communication..


Solution overview

The IBM mobile solutions portfolio provides key elements of a mobile application platform with the management, security, and analytics capabilities necessary for a successful deployment of mobile technologies. With the IBM Worklight mobile application platform offering, you are able to develop, run, build, and manage mobile applications..

Building mobile applications with IBM Worklight

Because of the pace at which variations between mobile devices are being introduced and the constant growing consumer demand, the IBM MobileFirst platform is built upon agile software development methodology. By using the SCRUM methodology, for example, a small set of features can go through the complete development lifecycle, including planning, implementation, and quality assurance, and can be delivered to users rapidly. In this way, mobile customers, partners, and employees get engaged with mobile applications and are able to execute the desired actions.

During application development, IBM Worklight separates the roles of native developer, hybrid developer, and web developer through its tooling. This helps to split the workload when a broad set of requirements requires expertise in UI, device capabilities, application logic, and so forth.

Actively seeking feedback about a new application or version through a pilot or beta group is a good way to ensure that your initial release does not fail and cause negative perceptions of your company. Gathering feedback is made easier by using an application store such as IBM Worklight Application Center, which enables you to offer a pre-release version of an application to a limited set of users.

• If you are developing your organization’s first mobile application, you can find valuable early planning information at the following location: http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/raw14302usen/RAW14302USEN.PDF
• Learn more about the IBM Mobile Development Lifecycle Solution:
  http://www.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/imdls/

Connecting and running mobile applications

Most mobile applications connect to enterprise back-end services to provide any possible user-related function. Almost no mobile applications run strictly offline without any connection to an enterprise system at all. IBM Worklight eases the integration and communication to back-end services, for example by push notifications, such as news application alerts, which send information to mobile devices even if the application is not being used. IBM Worklight includes a unified framework that enables the developer to send push notifications to each mobile platform without knowing the targeted device or platform details (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Unified Push Notification Architecture in IBM Worklight

An offline-enabled mobile application can be used when a mobile device lacks connectivity, but some functions might be limited. Therefore, when creating an offline-enabled mobile application, storing information on the mobile device that can help preserve its functionality in offline mode is very useful. IBM Worklight includes a data synchronization feature, called the JSON store, which provides a pattern for data exchange. After enqueuing each operation in offline mode, those operations are transferred to the server and performed against the source data when a connection becomes available (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Offline data access and data synchronization using a JSON store

In addition, IBM Worklight simplifies version management and mobile application compatibility through application server communication. Using this server, IBM Worklight can determine the availability of a newer version of the application and is able to automatically push updates and upgrades to the latest version of an application.

Solution architecture

IBM Worklight consists of five core components. Each component provides a specific set of functions and supports a different stage in the lifecycle of a mobile application (Figure 4).

• Worklight Studio: An Eclipse-based development environment with a rich set of tools for developing cross-platform applications
• Worklight Device Runtime: A runtime environment with consistent application programming interfaces (APIs) that can work across different mobile platforms to access native device functionality and integrate with existing services and security
• Worklight Server: A runtime server that enables secure access to enterprise services, application version management, unified push notifications, and direct application updates
• Worklight Console: A web-based user interface for real-time analytics, push notification authoring, and mobile application version management
• Worklight Application Center: A private, cross-platform mobile application store that is tailored for the specific needs of an application development team 

Figure 4. Worklight architecture overview

Usage scenarios

There are several possible usage scenarios in the mobile application field. The following paragraphs describe the process that Fictional Airline Company A, a fictional enterprise, follows as it expands into the mobile space.

Airline Company A decided to launch a single, business-to-employee application for luggage tracking. This application would enable customer service representatives (CSRs) to view the current location of a passenger’s luggage at any time. The usage scenario is as follows: A passenger travels from one city to another with one stop in between. Because of unforeseen problems at Stop 1, the bag is not transferred to the new airplane. Thus, the passenger contacts a CSR. The CSR is able to search for the location of the luggage by scanning the bar code on the passenger’s luggage receipt or, if scanning fails, uses the device’s keypad to enter the luggage identifier number manually (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Usage scenario: Airline industry

To select the appropriate mobile platform, Airline Company A must define its mobile strategy.

Mobile device selection

To reduce the initial investment, Airline Company A uses the bring your own device (BYOD) policy and has its CSRs run the new mobile application on their personally owned mobile devices. Most employees own Apple iOS or Google Android based mobile devices, so the initial application will support only these two platforms. In addition, the luggage tracking application will depend on using the native camera and geo-data applications present on most mobile devices.

Mobile applications

The initial luggage tracking application is developed using a hybrid development approach. The following factors contribute to this decision:

• With a hybrid approach, the airline company can create the mobile application using existing skills in web application development, reducing development time and costs.
• This approach will allow the luggage tracking application to run on the required platforms; platform-specific capabilities, such as the camera or location services, can still be accessed without the cost of maintaining two separate native applications.
• The web portions of the mobile application can be updated using the Direct Update feature of Worklight, without requiring users to reinstall a new mobile application..

Mobile integration

Airline Company A investigated its existing IT infrastructure and determined that some of the data that will be required by the mobile luggage tracking application, such as luggage identification and passenger information, is already available in existing systems. So a new integration layer will be created to access this existing data and impose strict guidelines on its use.

Mobile operations

The airline company’s IT department decided that mobile applications will access back-end services through the integration layer, using the existing security infrastructure. Authentication will be verified against the company’s directory service using an IBM WebSphere® DataPower® XG45 appliance. The mobile application platform will assist Airline Company A's mobile team in regulating the release and update cycle of mobile applications. Support for users of the mobile application will be provided using a built-in feedback mechanism. Users will use the feedback mechanism to submit written questions that will be routed to the existing IT support team.

Mobile application platform

When their mobile strategy is defined, Airline Company A is ready to select a mobile application platform. Airline Company A selected IBM Worklight as its base for the Mixed Mobile Application Platform (MMAP), primarily because Worklight features and capabilities support development, integration, and operations.

From a development perspective, Worklight offers these benefits:

• Fast and easy development of hybrid applications through IBM Worklight Studio.
• Applications run on multiple platforms using the IBM Worklight Device Runtime component.
• Enrichment of mobile applications with native components such as platform specific UI widgets .
• Graphical, rich text editor in IBM Worklight Studio to easily develop mobile application’s user interface and possibility to integrate third-party libraries, such as jQuery Mobile and Dojo Mobile.
• Easy creation of the integration layer with the adapter editor in IBM Worklight Studio.
• Early and comfortable testing by integrated test server and mobile device simulator in Worklight.

From the integration perspective, Worklight offers these benefits:

• Easy integration of business services and connections to existing enterprise services with Worklight adapters
• Flexibility to integrate with a company’s existing security infrastructure by security features, such as Lightweight Third Party Authentication (LTPA) and custom security mechanisms
• Support of lightweight data interchange formats, such as JSON to reduce the size of the data
• Unified cross-platform notification feature to send notifications to all devices that have the mobile application installed

From an operational perspective, Worklight offers these benefits:

• Internal application store to distribute mobile applications to the employees
• Central management of mobile apps by rolling out updates and remotely disabling outdated versions
• Integrated Application Center for collecting feedback from users
• Reporting and analytics capabilities to determine usage of individual functions within an application
• Integration with data caching products to allow temporary storage of data in the MMAP

Integration

The IBM MobileFirst architecture is open and extensible by design, enabling organizations to choose the solution that integrates with their existing environment and solves their most pressing business needs. In addition to meeting mobile-specific requirements, the portfolio enables more rapid integration between social and cloud services and back-end technologies that help secure and manage strategic business processes by IBM WebSphere Cast Iron® Hypervisor and IBM WebSphere DataPower.

IBM WebSphere Cast Iron Hypervisor Edition

WebSphere Cast Iron Hypervisor Edition is a virtual appliance for service integration. It provides connectivity to a variety of cloud-based and on-premises applications, databases, web services, messaging systems, and other endpoints. WebSphere Cast Iron Hypervisor Edition uses a configuration approach in which integration projects are configured instead of programmed. With a configuration approach, mobile applications can be connected to back-end systems without requiring a developer with programming knowledge to do it. Instead, you build the necessary integration flows using a graphical development environment in WebSphere Cast Iron Studio. Transforming data from its original format to another format can be done using a basic drag-and-drop method in the WebSphere Cast Iron Studio graphical mapping editor (Figure 6).

Figure 6. WebSphere Cast Iron Studio graphical mapping editor

IBM WebSphere DataPower

IBM WebSphere DataPower appliances are designed to support the implementation of enterprise solutions by introducing security layers, providing application integration capabilities, and enhancing overall integration performance. The main advantage of WebSphere DataPower appliances is the easy integration into a network infrastructure, in which they provide a software-independent configuration and simplified functionality.

When used as the security layer provider, IBM WebSphere DataPower Appliances can run many critical security tasks by offloading them from the application server.

Key security-related capabilities of IBM WebSphere DataPower Appliances are as follows:

• Unloading HTTPS session handling from the web server
• Acting as web application and XML firewall
• Providing authorization, authentication, and auditing (known as AAA) in a single mechanism
• Implementing an enterprise single sign-on (SSO) function through the use of LTPA tokens

In terms of application integration and performance enhancement, IBM WebSphere DataPower Appliances provide the following functions:

• Unloading XML, XSLT, and XPATH processing from the application server to the DataPower appliance and performing data transformations with better response times
• Acting as an enterprise service bus (ESB) to provide integration between different architecture layers
• Accelerating data conversion and application integration
• Providing support for transmission of specialized business-to-business message traffic between partners

By: IBM Redbooks
Link: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips1053.html