I was at a family gathering this weekend where I had the opportunity to talk to a friend who is also now in a leadership role at a large technology company. Our discussion about the growing availability and use of information reenforced my belief that we are experiencing an exciting evolution in the business world that is having a profound global impact. But most of our discussion was not about technology, it was about global skills availability and growth. I had a very similar conversation the day before with one of my neighbors who is also in a technology leadership position.
Thinking about this topic on the drive in this morning, I recalled that am overdue in publicly welcoming new members of our IBM Champions program. IBM Champions are IT professionals and educators who make significant contributions to their communities: evangelizing IBM solutions, sharing technical knowledge and expertise, and growing and nurturing independent communities.
We recently expanded the set of Information Management Professionals in the IBM Champion program to 158 Champions across 28 countries. My thanks to all of these folks who contribute their time and talent to strengthen and expand their professional communities.
Given the global need for these skills.. and the need to develop individuals for well paying jobs, there is a tremendous opportunity for educators and experienced mentors to help grow a new generation of Information Management professionals and data scientists.
P.S. For anyone noticing the drop off in my blogging pace lately, we can blame spring fever and my need to spend time at family events… and on my yard and golf game. (I have lots of work to do on the latter to keep up with my son!)
Its been a couple of weeks since my last post. I have to admit that after all the material I wrote, reviewed, and edited for two recent product launches – DB2 & InfoSphere Warehouse 10 and IBM PureSystems – I needed a bit of a rest. And before I forget – kudos and thank you to the not-so-small army of folks from the organization I lead, and from across the many IBM organizations that generated all that material and drove the launch activities around the world.
I already wrote about DB2 and InfoSphere Warehouse 10, and set up the PureSystems news with a post about Expert Integrated Systems. I wanted to save my post about IBM PureSystems to comment on the announcement experience and reaction. I was fortunate to be in London for discussions with press, analysts, partners and clients who attended our announcement event. For us product marketing types – nothing beats seeing and hearing the immediate reaction to the product story we have helped develop over months (or even years).
A new era of computing with Expert Integrated System
I have to say I am generally pleased that the value of this new class of systems was understood by those who attended our events around the world and on-line. I am also not at all surprised that the reaction of many is: “I will need to see this for myself, it sounds too good to be true.” This launch experience reminds me of the 2001 launch of eclipse.org and the WebSphere Studio portfolio built on the then new eclipse technology.
At the time, most were skeptical of the future we painted about development and operations tools being built by an ecosystem of providers to “plug-in” to a common platform – creating a new level of cost efficiency and team productivity. A couple of years later, no one was questioning that this new approach had changed the game and set a new level of expectations among clients.
I predict that in a year or two, no one will be questioning the new level cost efficiency and productivity that result from using systems that come with, and easily plug-in, expertise from IBM, a growing ecosystem of solution providers, as well as client IT teams. These systems are designed to improve the experience and economics of IT – simplifying and speeding solution development, deployment and ongoing management – in both traditional and cloud computing environments. It goes beyond the level of bundling and integration we have seen in the industry thus far.
Unlocking the resources needs to make the next leap forward in business computing
One question I heard a lot in the process of introducing IBM PureSystems was: “So does this built in expertise and automated deployment and management mean this is about helping clients cut IT staff?” For those of you with the 18+ months of project backlogs; or the 23% reporting projects behind schedule, over budget or both; or those who are unable to find enough expert skills to keep up with the demands of your business – you know this is about doing more with the resources you have. IBM PureSystems are designed to free your valuable resources – people and money – from the mundane, repetitive and error prone tasks, so they can focus on delivering the new value that business leaders are demanding.
Discussing this topic with folks reminded me of a Curt Monash post about the future of enterprise application software. Curt expands on a Sarah Lacy post about the change due in enterprise applications. Several of the points Curt and Sarah make line up with topics I have already covered about the implications of the new era of data management we have entered. Curt cites several factors driving updates to applications:
- better integration with communications technology
- better integration with analytics technology
- better use of different kinds of data – e.g., machine generated
- integrating social software
- taking advantage of software as a service
IBM PureSystems offer a set of capabilities that can help our clients accelerate this move (if not leap) forward. By both freeing resources from today’s burdens and helping them accelerate new innovations and the benefits of cloud computing.
Over 100 years of innovations and still going strong
IBM started over 100 years ago when business machines were scales and time clocks. Since then IBMers have given the world the general purpose business computing system, the Automated Teller Machine (ATM), the Universal Product Code (UPC “bar code”), and many other innovations that have helped transform businesses in all industries. I believe that some future writer will include Expert Integrated Systems on their list of transformative innovations from IBM.
I have been writing a lot about the different data management systems organizations can use today to get the most value from available information. But there are other capabilities that complement these systems are also important for delivering top performance, reliability, security and cost efficiency.
For example in the areas of:
Development
- Speeding time to market and enhance compliance by modeling data assets and automating database design processes
- Empowering developers to write high-quality code more rapidly using optimized frameworks
Management
- Centralizing database health monitoring and job management
- Tuning queries for best performance
- Using reliable change management to alter objects, permissions and dependencies
- Automating upgrades and data migrations
Collaboration
- Improving cross-team collaboration with processes that span database, application and data access requirements
- Increase data quality and consistency with shared policies, models and metadata
- Simplifying team integration with a common, integrated environment for multiple roles
To help organizations balance the increasing information-driven demands, IBM provides a set of solutions to help them optimize performance, improve availability, increase productivity and maximize efficiency of their data environments – for DB2, IMS and Informix across all system platforms. Given this week’s announcement, I should call out….
Advanced Database Management Solutions for DB2 and InfoSphere Warehouse
for Linux, UNIX and Windows
These solutions help organizations better their daily challenges and simplify:
- Database Development and Administration
- Performance Management and Optimization
- Problem Recovery and Resolution
Many of these capabilities are included in the advanced editions of DB2 and InfoSphere Warehouse at a very attractive price. If interested in how this value stacks up, I suggest you read the
- Average 41% lower license and support costs
- Average 20% lower infrastructure costs, including server and storage systems
- Average 26% personnel investment freed to work projects that deliver new business value
- = Average 37% lower combined costs
Another good read is “Managing the Data Lifecycle” by Holly Hayes.
So basically I am saying that you should use all the best tools available to you to:
- Get the most value from available information
- Optimize your environment for performance, reliability, security and cost efficiency
- Empower your team to deliver greater value to your organization
Made in IBM Labs: New IBM Software Accelerates Decision Making in the Era of Big Data
For a product segment that was supposed to be a boring commodity, there sure is a lot of excitement about new data systems this year. Ok, to be fair, the excitement about data systems is among those of us in the information technology business who appreciates what these systems do for an organization. And what they do for our clients and partners is…
Save valuable time and money
Pick your favorite demand(s) – e.g., handle the explosive growth of data, analyze big data, do more with less – it all boils down to do more, faster and for less money.
As I have been writing, picking the right type of system for each of your data management challenges has a big impact on your ability to achieve those goals. It is also true about picking the right system when a relational database or warehouse is the best choice for your needs.
The idea that these are “commodity” systems may have some merit for applications with modest requirements. But when an organization’s operations and competitive advantage depends on them, the performance, simplicity, and cost differences among your choices can have a tremendous business impact.
I invite you to learn more at our virtual conference event:
“The Future of Database and Data Warehouse Software“
- An industry perspective from analyst Colin White, President BI research
- A tour of new features from Tim Vincent, CTO, IBM Information Management
- The business impact of doing more, faster, for less from an early access program client (video and case study)
- Several sessions about new feature details from the product teams
- An opportunity for live Q&A with experts at the virtual expo hall
A quick sample of the new capabilities that have caused excitement among early access clients, partners and even industry analysts:
- Performance boost for software that was already a market leader – an early access partner measured approx. 10x faster warehouse queries than the previous version
- New Multi-Temperature Data Management and Adaptive Compression that advances leading data compression capabilities to free space for growing data – overall compression up to 90% seen among early access program clients and partners
- Enhanced availability, simplified scalability and geographically dispersed clusters with enhanced DB2 pureScale
- Easier integration of information and insights from non-SQL/relational data (NoSQL) – simplified integration with Hadoop-based systems and New built-in RDF Graph data management, along with the built-in native XML data management, pureXML, introduced in DB2 9
- New Time Travel Query eliminates costly application code currently required to get answers at any point in time – past, present and future. (those of you already on DB2 10 for z/OS should be familiar with this feature)
For more details you should also watch for what my colleagues Conor O’Mahony and Larry Weber have to say about the new software.
And for those of you hungry for more product news excitement – and for ways to do even more, faster and for less – you should attend another important IBM event on April 11 to learn about new Expert Integrated Systems from IBM.
One of the things I enjoy about my career at IBM is the opportunity to be part of figuring out, and ushering in, new generations of business computing technology – delivering new levels of value to our clients. I was fortunate enough to be in on the first generation of fiber optic channels (for the System z mainframe); in IBM Software for the early days of Java; on the WebSphere team at the beginning of Web services, SOA, and the launch of the eclipse platform and community; and most recently to help shape the vision for Information on Demand to power a new generation of Business Analytics and Optimization.
It’s that time again.
First, a bit of context….
It’s not just about engineering a system. It is about the expertise to make the most of it.
This week Eric Savitz, at Forbes wrote that “Jefferies analyst Ross MacMillan late Sunday cut his rating on Oracle to Hold from Buy…” Referring to MacMillian:
he writes in a research note. “We also have increased concerns that the relational database is facing multiple threats including SAP’s HANA, increased adoption of SaaS by enterprise customers (especially [of] Salesforce.com and Workday) and the potential risk of disruption from new approaches to analyzing large volumes of unstructured data.”
If you have read my past posts, you know I generally agree that we have entered a new era of data management that has significant implications for technology providers.
He also notes:
The Jefferies analyst contends that Oracle is seeing challenges with its engineered system strategy. He asserts that Exadata adoption “has moderated,” that Oracle Database Appliance adoption has not been as strong as expected and that the company’s Exalogic systems are “still seeking a viable use case.” He adds that he is “concerned that the strategy is not playing out to plan with implications for growth.”
Coincidentally, 3 days earlier IBM Executive IT Specialist Roman Kharkovski posted an in-depth analysis of what Oracle Exalogic is – and is not.
Bottom line is that out of the box, this Exalogic machine is nothing else, but a 42U rack of x86 servers mounted on a single rack and weighting 966 kg (2131 lb for those of us metrically challenged). You, the Oracle customer must apply your skills and expertise to turn this rack into something useful.
Roman followed with a great explanation that It’s not just about engineering a system. It is about the expertise to make the most of it. Answering the questions: “what should the next generation of systems really be? What do enterprises need from their systems today?”
Now I invite you to learn how IBM is answering these questions:
Introducing the world’s first family of systems with integrated expertise
Join us on April 11, 2012 when IBM launches a new breed of systems with integrated expertise. These new systems leverage built-in expertise, integration by design, and a simplified overall experience to fundamentally change the economics of IT. Not only will it revolutionize operations, your entire enterprise will benefit from immediate access to the collective knowledge of thousands of deployments and millions of lessons learned.
I will write about this in more depth in April. But for now, let’s just say I am looking forward to another fun ride as this next move forward unfolds.
Maybe it is the new San Diego location bringing back more returnees this year? Maybe the increase in international registrations are from the growing number of new Informix clients and partners we have seen in the last year? I am hoping it is both.
But whatever the reasons, I was excited to hear that the pace of registrations is up significantly for this year’s International Informix Users Group Conference, April 22-25. This annual conference is the largest gathering of Informix users.
Highlights include:
- New location : San Diego, CA
- Over 100 sessions with 2 new tracks and many new speakers
- New sessions on complementary IBM products: WebSphere, Lotus, Tivoli, InfoSphere, Guardium, Cognos, etc
- New content for all Informix versions and features
- Optional Half and Full Day Tutorials to maximize your training dollars
- FREE Hands On Labs from IBM
Whether you are an Informix user that has not kept up with all the new value delivered in the last few years, or one that has experience with the latest features to share with fellow users, I encourage you to Join us in San Diego.
Also, for those of you may have missed it, the first Informix India User Group meeting was held in Mumbai last month. I was very happy to attend this event, and personally hear from co-sponsor Avanti Software Solutions their passionate appreciation for the unique values of IBM Informix software for powering their growing application portfolio.
Have you seen the video: The Fillmore Group on JP Morgan’s successful migration from Oracle to IBM, with Information Champions Frank Fillmore and Kim May? It is a great story about how DB2 helped lower cost and complexity while increasing reliability for mission critical Web applications. But is also a great example of the value of IBM Information Champions – to our clients and to the community.
The IBM Champion program recognizes innovative thought leaders in the technical community — and rewards these contributors by amplifying their voice and increasing their sphere of influence.
You can read more IBM Champion stories at Mastering Data Management – e.g., from Informix Champion Lester Knutsen; DB2 Champion Dave Beulke; and one of our newest Champions, co-founder, president and CEO of TerraEchos, Alex Philp.
Alex’s story is an interesting example of taking on new generation Big Data challenges:
TerraEchos began by analyzing pressure waves with the US Navy. All events – in the air, on land or even subterranean – create waves that can be translated into digital acoustic signals. These signals produce incredible amounts of unstructured data at very fast speeds…
But it’s more than just computations: InfoSphere Streams and TerraEchos truly manage the information, and do so incredibly quickly, at a pace of 300 MB/second. That velocity is essential for the “in motion” part of the equation. After all, in security matters, you don’t have time to stop and analyze static data. And, Alex noted, that adds a layer of complexity, “that most people are not quite dealing with yet.”
The technical expertise these professionals bring to bear on projects is obviously critical to the success of their companies and their customers. What might not be as obvious is the impact their contributions are having on the community. Many of the Champions have been recognized for the education they offer their peers though articles, books, conference sessions, user group meetings or teaching classes. By sharing their time, experience and success stories, they are strengthening the entire community and influencing the success of others.
You can search for Champions by area of expertise at IBM developerWorks.
A number of stories I heard in the last couple of weeks made me appreciate the broad range of new IBM clients and partners we have seen recently. I think the diversity supports the points I have been making about a new era of data management where IT professionals are demanding the best solution to address each requirement.
Better performance, reliability, and hands free administration
I had the good fortune of attending the Informix India User Group meeting last week in Mumbai. One of the stand out stories was from event sponsor Avanti Software Solutions, who shared why they recently moved their application portfolio, including Retail and eGovernment solutions, to IBM Informix software. Previously they had used Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Database. The net: better performance, reliability and hands free administration makes their solution better and saves their clients time and money. As a result, we are welcoming new IBM Informix clients across India from small 300 transactions a day retailers, to government agencies serving millions of citizens. (if you missed it, I outlined other Informix client stories in my last post.)
More companies need the best – to be the best
Then this week I learned that IBM added 76 System z (“mainframe”) clients in the last 5 quarters – more than in the previous 5 years. And we are expecting an even bigger number this year. Why? Aspiring global leaders in emerging markets that need to compete at a higher level than ever before; the new zEnterprise 114, that starts at $75,000–the lowest entry price ever for an IBM mainframe; and companies who need to cut costs by consolidating their inefficient Linux server sprawl. The net here: lower operating costs along with advantages in security and reliability – these systems pretty much run with zero downtime.
Roughly half of these additional System z clients are returns by companies that had previously stopped using System z. I think that is a very exciting stat. Both new and renewed appreciation for the unique advantages of System z may be why more that 1000 schools are teaching classes and labs with IBM System z in countries such as China and India, as well as the US.
Rapid deployment analytics for competitive advantage
Those 2 stories reminded me that in the most recent IBM earnings report, CFO Mark Loughridge noted: “strong performances from our Netezza offerings, which were up nearly 70 percent. This appliance complements and extends our business analytics portfolio with a rapidly deployed, low-cost-of-ownership solution for high performance queries and analytics. For the quarter, almost a third of the transactions were with new Netezza clients. Since acquiring Netezza, IBM has expanded its customer base by over 40 percent. And when we go head-to-head against competition in Proof of Concepts we had a win rate of over 80 percent this quarter.”
I love the MediaMath story as an example of why Netezza systems are winning IBM new clients. Early in the start-up’s life, MediaMath used and outgrew MySQL. They tried Oracle Standard Edition with about five terabytes of data and found it wanting. According to Chief Technology Officer Roland Cozzolino, it was difficult to ingest and store data from 50 million daily transactions, let alone handle their growth to 350 million transactions per day. It took “tons of partitions to summarize and break data into vertical buckets by advertiser for analysis,” said Cozzolino, and the Oracle platform limited any critical ad hoc analysis capabilities that were required to understand data value and to “gain a horizontal view of the business.” Cozzolino reported, “We selected Netezza because it offered the best ROI, the fastest time to market of any solution, ease of use and a low total cost of ownership.”
Lower cost, higher performance SAP landscape
Yesterday I read a post by Conor O’Mahony with video from the IOD conference where Coca-cola Bottling shared its experience moving from Oracle Databse to DB2 …. the net: $100,000 potential savings outweighed zero existing DB2 skills in the decision to move its SAP landscape from Oracle Database to DB2. And now a skeptical 12 year Oracle DBA veteran “would not go back.” Additional benefits noted: a supply chain manager noticed the improved performance, and they double the numbers of records over 3 years without having to add storage – thanks to ongoing advances in DB2 deep compression.
Cutting database costs in half
And finally, watching that video reminded me of another compelling story I heard directly from a new client at the IOD conference. Reliance Life Insurance Company, one of India’s leading insurers, cut database total cost of ownership in half by switching from Oracle Database on Sun servers to IBM DB2 on Power Systems. In a 2011 case study, Reliance notes that in addition to cost savings, application availability has also increased significantly. “When we were on Oracle Database, downtime of our applications was quite high,” says Ms. Daga. “After we moved to DB2, we were actually able to report 95 percent uptime of all applications as compared to only 80 percent with Oracle Database.” Most notable is that these improvements have come as the number of concurrent users IT supports has grown fourfold. “When we had Oracle Database, we only scaled to 3,000 concurrent users for our portal,” adds Ms. Daga. “Since we moved to DB2, our capacity has increased to 12,000 concurrent users.”
One size DOES NOT BEST FIT all
In today’s information intensive world, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all data management solution – if “fit” means optimal preformance and cost efficiency. A growing number of organizations are realizing better results and lower costs by switching to data management software and systems that best fits each of their needs.
If your customer’s data center was lost to a fire – would you be able to help them be up and running in a day or two? Are you are you looking to expand your customer base beyond those that can afford their own data centers…. without having to become an outsourced data center provider?
Last post I wrote about the value of “Cloud” technologies to improve an organization’s agility and IT economics. But I forgot to mention the impact that this technology evolution can have for business application providers. There are two stories I want to share that highlight this impact.
Cloud enabled “Software as a Service” solves a business continuity emergency
Mitchell and McCormick is an industry leader in providing solutions for the Public, Mental, Rural, and Environmental Healthcare industries. One of their clients, a medium-large sized health care provider that has run its operations with M&M software for many years, experienced the unfortunate challenge of a fire that significantly damaged its data center.
Amazingly, they got their system back in full operation in just a couple of days! There were two reasons for this. First, they wisely maintained off site backups of data. Second, and the point of this story, M&M had worked with IBM partner Four Js and Informix Genero technology to cloud-enable its software in preparation to expand its business. M&M was able to quickly give the client access to its software on the M&M cloud environment; restore the backed up data; and provide the capabilities it needed to take care of patients and run its business.
Cloud technologies expand market opportunity
Silanis is the world’s largest and most experienced E-Signature provider, with clients in insurance, banking and government. In order to expand into new markets and reach a broader customer-base beyond on-premise enterprise customers, Silanis implemented an on-cloud solution. Taking this approach saved Silanis time and up front costs of setting up its own data center to power its business expansion strategy. Now new clients, such as a small mortgage provider that could not have deployed a complete on-premise environment, are able to offer e-signature services to accelerate their processes and attract and delight new clients. Another example is this story about state government contract signing in the Cloud.
e-SignLive™ is a cloud-based e-signature service integrated with IBM’s LotusLive cloud-based collaboration platform (Note: this was prior to LotusLive joining the IBM SmartCloud portfolio). In addition to providing the collaborative e-signature services via the Web, this solution takes advantage of both WebSphere Application Server and DB2 as platform services in the Cloud.
Clear business values of the Cloud
So there it is, two clear business values of the Cloud for solution providers:
- new business continuity solutions through greater deployment agility
- opportunity expansion through faster and lower cost access to software
For those of you who get challenged about “the Cloud” being over-hyped, I recommend using stories like these that show real business solutions that lower cost, reduce risk and expand revenue opportunity.
Software Defined Infrastructure 