IBM Launches Smarter Computing

At Pulse 2011, IBM Corp. announced its Smarter Computing initiative. Specifically, the company highlighted how its expertise in analytics, security, sensors, and systems management can bridge the physical and digital worlds to create "smarter" IT departments and infrastructures. IBM also announced a series of new "smarter" software offerings that help with monitoring and analyzing new streams of data.

Focal Points:

• IBM has extended the capabilities of integrated service management, infrastructure affordability and flexibility, innovation of products and services, and predictability of business outcomes, with Smarter Computing. According to the vendor, this initiative is the dawn of a new era of computing that is more efficient and encourages greater innovation. Enterprises that incorporate Smarter Computing will apply systems-level thinking to transform IT, as well as innovate in ways that reduce the cost to invest in innovation significantly. IBM claims that with Smarter Computing, enterprises can launch new services while doubling IT capacity at a flat cost. Additionally, IT departments that integrate Smarter Computing can reduce server acquisition costs by up to 56 percent and can lower database costs by 68 percent, said IBM. These IT shops can also clear floor space by up to 90 percent, improve total cost per workload by 55 percent, and lower power consumption by 80 percent, IBM added. To realize these opportunities, Smarter Computing leverages the cloud for services, "big data" analytics for insight, and optimized systems for performance and efficient IT. According to IBM, IT architects will play a significant role in making the Smarting Computing vision a reality.
• Additionally, IBM announced a handful of "smarter" software offerings that are aimed at advancing "smarter" cities and transforming industries such as energy, healthcare, transportation, and water. The new Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus software offers predictive monitoring and event management, to enable enterprises regardless of industry to measure, analyze, and pro-actively manage complex networks and operations, said IBM. Meanwhile, the new Intelligent Metering Network Management offering helps utilities to monitor and manage smart meter alarms, data, and events. According to IBM, the software taps service availability and assurance data captured from smart meters, and then correlates this data against the utilities' policies. Through greater automation, control, and visibility of the smart metering infrastructure, utilities can thereby improve their operations, IBM added. Moreover, IBM announced the launch of Real-Time Asset Locator for Healthcare. This new software offering is intended to help hospitals with optimizing asset usage and tracking biomedical, clinical, and other high-value equipment.
• IBM also announced that its "smarter" buildings software is currently available to clients in an open beta release. The solution combines advanced dynamic dashboards, facilities and space management capabilities, and real-time monitoring and analysis for property owners and managers to reduce facilities operations and energy expenses, said IBM. The offering also includes a new feature from IBM's Business Partner Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (Esri). According to IBM, this new feature helps building managers to visualize their buildings from an aerial view, drilling down into the details of the building and the floor plans. Finally, IBM announced its Smarter Cities projects in Wilmington, NC and Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, as well as new results from a research project in Washington, DC. With IBM's software, these cities are using location-based technology to improve their operations and customer experience. They can obtain a bird's eye view of their city infrastructure, including buildings, roads, and waterways, as well as insight into underground operations and electrical meters, lights, pipes, storm drains, wires, and other assets on their city streets.

Experton Group believes IBM's expansion of its Smarter Planet initiative into buildings, cities, computing and certain industries is a logical, and timely, extension. Containing costs is on every executive's agenda and IBM's advancement of tools needed to achieve that objective should be of interested in every executive suite. Moreover, data centers are reported consuming between 1.5 and two percent of all energy consumed and, for the most part, are quite inefficient. Experton Group has found, and reported in numerous research notes, the gains that could be achieved if IT executives pursued "smarter computing" projects. The GreenWay Collaborative, an Experton Group joint venture, has developed and is now in beta, a data center benchmarking service that provides visual views of a company's data center efficiency versus the state of the art using a continuously updated rating system, heat map, and other visuals. This service is designed to enable IT executives to compare their current state data center efficiency against the industry as a whole and against comparable aggregate corporate efficiency capabilities, view corporate and aggregate data center improvement trajectories, and requires only 30 to 60 minutes of time per month to deliver actionable data. IT executives interested in benchmarking their data center efficiencies should contact Experton Group or Experton Group for further information on this Software as a Service offering.