It’s a little odd to use a concept like vertical integration but that seems to best explain what IBM is doing. IBM calls what Watson does “cognitive computing,” heralding an age of machines that supposedly think. What the company has not figured out is how to make this into an engine of growth. The tech giant has had years of shrinking revenue, but says its investments in Watson will take time to bear fruit. It will be picking up more talent in the deal.
Japan is a country that grew rich before growing old. In the countries that we work in, the median age is rising fast and more people live long. Our fear is that these countries will grow old before they amass the wherewithal to support a good life for their elders. Little has been done mobile ICTs for the aged. It is significant that this colloborative effort is focused on Japan, perhaps the country most associated with the problem of an aging population.
Was surprised the Rio operations center from 2010 is still Exhibit 1. Has nothing much happened since? I can’t find any reports in the past tense about Bangalore water supply other than the para below. Guess it is still work in progress. A different view of resiliency considers the creation of “smart” infrastructure that is instrumented, interconnected and intelligent, and provides the owners with adaptive capacity, the foundation for resilience.
As someone old enough to remember the 1984 Apple ad that assailed IBM as big brother, I am willing to bet Big Blue will pull through and to be amused by Apple collaborating with IBM. The areas IBM is betting heavily on include data analytics, cloud computing and corporate mobile and social computing. At a meeting with analysts in May, company executives called them its “strategic imperatives.” They span IBM’s services, software and hardware businesses and mostly contribute to the revenue of the services and software units. Steven Milunovich, an analyst at UBS, estimates that these businesses account for 21 percent of IBM’s revenue.
We are in the big data for development space, but we keep an eye on what is happening in the big data for profit space. And IBM is a company we watch. Since 2005, IBM has invested $24 billion in the data analytics business, including $17 billion on 30 acquisitions. In 2013, the business generated nearly $16 billion in revenue. So if IBM makes less money in the future selling hardware, software and services for corporate customers’ data centers, it plans to make more money helping its customers make sense of data — to cut costs, increase sales, innovate and personalize product offerings.
We thought it would only be social science. But all science? The trend of looking for commonalities and overlapping interests is emerging in many parts of both academia and business. At the ultrasmall nanoscale examination of a cell, researchers say, the disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics begin to collapse in on each other. In a broader search for patterns, students of the statistical computing language known as R have used methods of counting algae blooms to prove patterns of genocide against native peoples in Central America.
Every year, IBM make five tech predictions that it is confident will be realized in the next five years: five in five. Number four this time is the prediction that the Digital Divide will be bridged, thanks to mobile devices. Mobile devices are decreasing the information-accessibility gap in disadvantaged areas. In five years, the gap will be imperceptible as growing communities use mobile technology to provide access to essential information. New solutions and business models from IBM are introducing mobile commerce and remote healthcare, for example.
Big data was what caught my attention at the talk by IBM Fellow C. Mohan at WSO2Con. The talk was good. But the exhibition would have been better. It turns out that the initial “data wall,” as it is called, offers a series of displays culled from “live data streaming,” some from sensors around Lincoln Center.
I was privileged to listen to a presentation by Dr C Mohan on IBM’s collective wisdom on technology trends yesterday at the inaugural session of WSO2Con 2011. There were many, many fascinating nuggets, but what particularly struck me was the prediction of the importance of big public data sets. The very first post I made in 2011 was on this subject. We have open data sets, but they are just there. How can we make them more usable and truly open?
I am sitting in China, writing this. It may be a case of observer bias, but I find the Sri Lankan young people I deal with more nimble in thinking and in command of English than their counterparts here. Yet, according to a ranking by IBM as reported by LBO, China has made a dramatic jump from 13th position in 2009 to 5th position in 2010, while Sri Lanka is holding steady at 12th place. Is this a cause for self-congratulation or self-examination? Is the glass half-full or half-empty?
The shoe is yet to drop in terms of South-Asia-like retail prices, but Bharti is beginning to move out its famed outsourcing model to Africa. The story emphasizes IBM, but one has to be understanding of the US-centric NYT. I.B.M.
IBM has been hired to help rural Americans get broadband access using power lines. On Wednesday, Big Blue announced it has signed a $9.6 million contract with International Broadband Electric Communications to bring the technology to rural America where it hopes to deliver high-speed broadband connectivity to millions of people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to get it. IBM and IBEC, which will build and manage the networks, are working with over a dozen electricity cooperatives in seven states, The Wall Street Journal reported. For years, people have hoped broadband-over-power line technology, or BPL, would allow power companies to become the third alternative in the broadband market, competing against cable operators and telephone companies.
Most Americans are still hesitant about banking with their cellphones and PDAs, but young people are increasingly accepting mobile banking, according to a survey. Serving the needs of tech-savvy customers will be crucial for banks to stay competitive as the collective income of baby boomers’ children is expected to surge over the next 10 years and exceed that of their parents. So far, though most major banks offer mobile banking, 89% of consumers don’t use their cellphones to conduct banking transactions, according to the study by IBM’s retail banking consulting practice. The study found that 21% of consumers ages 18-34 use their cellphones for banking transactions, compared with about 10% of the general population. These numbers, particularly for younger consumers, are expected to grow significantly.
LIRNEasia places emphasis on developing capacity for ICT policy and regulation in the region, as well as developing the capacity of the members of its own team. Part of the problem, we find, is that organizations do not put their money where their mouth is: while platitudes about the importance of training come easy to leaders of organizations, actually committing money for training and releasing staff for training does not come that easy. We try to walk the talk at LIRNEasia, but obviously we can be more systematic about it. Here is brilliant idea from IBM, which may be too complicated for an outfit that is still 12-14 people depending how the counting is done. But still worth thinking about.
A consortium of technology companies, including I.B.M. and Cisco Systems, announced plans Tuesday for a vast wireless network that would provide free Internet access to big portions of Silicon Valley and the surrounding region as early as next year. The project is the largest of a new breed of wireless networks being built across the country.
Since the last thread was getting unwieldy in size it has been shut. Please continue the discussion here.