Category Archives: IBM

Big Data, cognitive computing, IBM, News & Analysis

IBM partners with Aberdeen University to bring Watson to medical research

IBM2The University of Aberdeen has recently announced a partnership with IBM, which will allow students and staff to utilise Watson Engagement Advisor.

IBM scientists are collaborating with researchers at the university on the EU Marie Curie K-Drive project, an initiative which explores a number of different use cases for big data and knowledge graphs, including the treatment of cancer. The results of the project will also form the foundation of any proposals put forward by the university for the EU Horizon 2020 Programme.

“Cognitive represents an entirely new model of computing that includes a range of technology innovations in analytics, natural language processing and machine learning,” said Paul Fryer, Academic Initiative Leader at IBM. “The collaboration between IBM and the University of Aberdeen, which builds on a long-standing relationship, aims to help nurture the next generation of innovators; and is the first initiative of this type in Scotland.”

The university is now one of four in the UK to have access to the Watson Engagement Advisor, which will be used by students and staff to forward their cognitive computing research.

“The partnership with IBM is an exciting opportunity to advance our research in this area,” said Dr Jeff Z. Pan, coordinator of the K-Drive project at the university. “Cognitive computing is empowering human decision-making processes by understanding and exploiting data which is structured and unstructured, and our research is focused on how to make the best use of both types of data.”

Watson’s marketing messaging has primarily focused around the commercialization of artificial intelligence and big data. The partnership with the University of Aberdeen and the K-Drive project builds on IBM’s efforts to demonstrate the real-world viability. Over recent weeks, IBM has announced a number of collaborations to utilize the Watson proposition, including with Mastercard and the Honda Formula One team.

IBM and Honda announced that Watson technology would be incorporated into the McLaren Honda Formula One cars and pits to improve performance and racing decisions in real-time. The sensors will collect data from a number of different sources including driver timing, fuel flow rates and engine performance. The partnership is in reaction to new regulations that required all Formula One cars to use hybrid engines and limited fuel consumption during races.

“With the rapid growth of the Internet of Things, by 2025, every car will be connected in some way exuding vast amounts of streaming data ranging from traffic updates to health of the vehicle, operations and more,” said Harriet Green, GM for Watson IoT at IBM. “We are excited to team with Honda to provide sophisticated cognitive IoT capabilities and analytics to combine data directly from the F1 racing vehicles with other sources, allowing Honda to not only enhance its vehicles that are built for speed, but to also be more friendly to our environment.”

cloud datacentre, Enterprise IT, IBM, News & Analysis, Smartphone

IBM announces $200 million Indosat Ooredoo cloud deal

Money cloudIBM has announced a five-year $200 million contract with Indosat Ooredoo to develop and deliver solutions on IBM’s cloud platform, Bluemix.

As part of the deal, IBM and Indosat Ooredoo will build an integrated command centre to serve local clients, of both organizations. The move forms part of IBM’s expansion plans for the cloud business, which coincides with the company’s recent win in South Africa, where it will open its first cloud data centre in the country.

“This collaboration shows how IBM’s expertise, technology and services can help Indosat Ooredoo and Lintasarta lead market change in Indonesia while also transforming their existing operations,” said Martin Jetter, SVP, IBM Global Technology Services.

Indonesia’s telco and technology market has been growing rapidly over recent years. Smartphone growth has been healthy in the world’s fourth most populous country, as penetration of total mobile phones is expected to reach 53% in 2017, up from an estimated 24% in 2013. This demonstrates huge potential for growth, as smartphone penetration in China during 2013 was estimated at around 71%.

Outside of Indonesia, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to be a significant growth area for the cloud industry. Market research firm IDC, estimates that by 2018, more than 70% of enterprise organizations in the region will access public cloud IaaS and SaaS capabilities via aggregation hubs.

Jakarta has regularly been quoted as the city which produces the largest number of tweets per day, though this is not solely down to consumers. Businesses regularly use social media, most notably twitter, to communicate with its customers, more so than in western markets.

“Use of smart mobile devices is becoming pervasive, opening up enormous opportunities for local businesses – so we are excited to be working with Indosat Ooredoo and Lintasarta to help clients tap into the power and flexibility of cloud-based solutions and digitally transform their businesses,” Jetter said.

Indosat Ooredoo’s subsidiary, Lintasarta, will jointly develop and deliver cloud-based solutions with IBM, accelerating collaboration and automation of software delivery and infrastructure changes. Customers of the telco will also have access to IBM’s cloud-based enterprise mobility management platform.

“We will be able to bring a greater range of higher value services to market more rapidly, with the confidence of knowing that we are collaborating with one of the world’s largest and most innovative technology companies,” said Alexander Rusli, President and CEO of Indosat Ooredoo. “This landmark alliance will reshape the local market and help Indonesian customers and organizations tap into the most advanced technology available anywhere in the world.”

Alongside the deal, IBM has also announced that it will open its first cloud data centre in South Africa. Working in collaboration with Gijima and Vodacom, the move aims to support cloud adoption and customer demand across the African continent.

“Our new Cloud Data Center gives customers a local onramp to IBM Cloud services including moving mission critical SAP workloads to the cloud with ease,” said Hamilton Ratshefola, IBM Country GM in South Africa. “It also gives customers the added flexibility of keeping data within country which is a key differentiator for IBM.”

The announcement adds to IBM’s growth on the continent, where it currently has a presence in at least 24 countries. IBM has highlighted that Africa is a substantial market for future international growth of its cloud business.

Enterprise IT, IBM, News & Analysis, redundancies, Survey

Fresh redundancies illustrate IBM’s continuing cloud challenge

IBMWithin the last twelve months, the company has inducted more than 70,000 IBMers and spent more on acquisitions than in any other 12-month period in its history. Focusing on data analytics, security, machine learning and mobile, the business is attracting a new breed of employee to its ranks. All would seem well until you consult social media.

The Facebook group, Watching IBM, has increased its following by more than 66% over the last week. The group has taken responsibility for bringing light to the 70,000 job losses experienced by the firm in the past few months. Comments such as “At the beginning of 2015 our department had 25 people in it. At the beginning of 2016 our department has 13 in it,” highlight the decline.

For all the positive news of expansion, new product offerings, and 70,000 new employees, the headcount over the course of the twelve month period has shrunk around 1% to 377,757 from 379,592.

With company revenues declining for fifteen consecutive quarters, this should not come as a great surprise for most; IBM’s struggles to re-invent itself as a cloud business have been well documented over recent years.

Back in January, Clive Longbottom, Service Director at Quocirca commented that IBM could risk being left behind, should the transition take too long. With AWS, Microsoft and Google continuing to surge forward, that risk is continuing to grow, though the consultancy skills nurtured in IBM will remain in demand “I still believe that IBM will remain a major force in the IT world, it just has to make sure it positions and messages itself effectively to its existing customers and to its prospects”

Last week IBM released a report which highlighted that two- thirds of organizations implementing hybrid cloud are gaining competitive advantage from their hybrid environments are nearly three times as likely to use it to assemble data assets or monetize data.

Surveying more than 500 hybrid cloud implementers, in 26 countries worldwide, the report highlighted that 85 percent of respondent commented that a hybrid approach to cloud is accelerating the digital transformation in their organization. During 2015 Q4, total cloud revenues (public, private and hybrid) for the vendor increased 43% to $10.2 billion, though revenues throughout the business were down 9% to $22.1 billion in the same period for 2014.

Despite some negative press, and a surge in social media activity being directed towards the tech giant, it seems the workforce transition is far from complete. “We’ve been shifting resources aggressively,” CFO Martin Schroeter commented last week “and we’d like to shift them more aggressively.”

Apple, health, IBM, Internet of Things, IoT, News & Analysis

IBM, Apple combine IoT forces for sleep health study

electronic medical health recordIBM’s Watson Cloud is to be the foundation for research by the American Sleep Apnea Association (ASAA) into how human sleeping habits affect our health. IBM and ASAA have also jointly created a new SleepHealth app to encourage patients to contribute to the cloud based SleepHealth Mobile Study.

The SleepHealth study uses Apple’s Internet of Things technology and open source ResearchKit, which simplifies tasks and survey compilation and feeds its data into the SleepHealth app. SleepHealth is the first ResearchKit study to run on the Watson Health Cloud.

Though sleep is critical for physical and metal health it remains one of the most overlooked of the basic human needs and one in four Americans experience sleep problems. Chronic insomnia affects 10% of Americans and 25 million suffer from types of obstructive sleep apnoea such as disrupted sleep, snoring and uneven breathing, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This in turn can create heart disease, hypertension, obesity, cancer, depression and fatal accidents.

Researchers and physicians will use Watson to host its surveys and study exercises and interrogate the data to uncover patterns. The Watson Cloud makes crowd-sourcing data possible and creates a system of patient-led research and data-driven discovery, according ASAAs chief science officer Carl Stepnowsky. The SleepHealth app could build the world’s largest longitudinal study to collect data on both healthy and unhealthy sleepers, said Stepnowsky.

The Watson Health Cloud has opened up a diversity of data sources such as medical literature, treatment guidelines, claims data and clinical data, according to Kyu Rhee, chief health officer for Watson Health. Researchers can also opt to apply Watson Analytics for deeper insights from the data. “One of our goals at IBM Watson Health is to eliminate silos that hinder collaboration between researchers, patients and clinicians,” said Rhee.

The study also makes use of IoT technology. The SleepHealth app makes use of multiple Apple Watch sensors, such as the accelerometer, which detects movements, and the gyroscope, which determines orientation in space, to measure and record movements such as shifting positions during sleep. It also uses Apple Watch’s heart rate monitor to detect sleep. Some of the app’s features, such as the Personal Sleep Concierge and the Nap Tracker, were designed specifically to the Apple Watch as a way to improve sleep habits. SleepHealth will be the first ResearchKit app to use Apple’s new Night Shift feature that reduces light exposure before sleep.

IBM, News & Analysis, SanDisk, Storage as a Service

IBM and SanDisk join forces to create software defined flash storage for cloud

Sandisk infiniflashFlash storage maker SanDisk and IBM are working together on a new software defined, all flash storage system for data centres. News of this collaboration comes days after BCN revealed that EMC had introduced a new category of flash storage for the same market.

SanDisk’s new InfiniFlash, a high capacity and performance flash-based software defined storage system, features IBM’s Spectrum Scale file system. The joint product is the two manufacturers’ answer to the increasing demands faced by data centres who can never get enough capacity and performance and will need more flexibility in future. An all flash system gives the requisite computing power and the IBM-authored software definition provides the agility, according to SanDisk.

Flash is the only technology that can support the many variables of the modern hybrid cloud, according to SanDisk, which listed bi-modal IT, traditional and cloud native applications and the increasing workload created by social, mobile and real-time processing as drivers for the need for a powerful storage infrastructure. The InfiniFlash for IBM Spectrum is described as ultra-dense and scalable, meaning that it can be bought in small increments that can be easily snapped to together to quickly build a hyperscale infrastructure. SanDisk claimed it offers the lowest price per IOPS/TB on the market and the option for independent storage.

SanDisk claims InfiniFlash has five times the density, fifty times the performance and four times the reliability of traditional hard disks, while using 80% less power. Pricing starts at $1 per gigabyte (GB) for an all-flash system. When used with software stacks designed to reduced data (through de-duplication and other techniques) the cost of storage could fall to around 20 cents per GB, claims SanDisk.

The IBM Spectrum Scale, meanwhile, uses software definition to create efficiencies through file, object and integrated data analytics designed for technical computing, big data analysis, cognitive computing, Hadoop Distributed File System, private cloud and content repositories.

Ravi Swaminathan, SanDisk’s general manager of System and Software Solutions, promised the ‘best of both worlds’ to data centres. “Customers can afford to deploy flash at petabyte-scale, which drive business growth through new services and offerings for their end-customers,” said Swaminathan.

IBM, News & Analysis, object storage, Storage as a Service

IBM launches object-based storage for the cloud

Cloud storageNew object-based cloud storage could tackle the growing challenge presented by unstructured data, according to IBM.

Announcing a new Cloud Object Storage at its InterConnect 2016 event in Las Vegas, IBM said the object storage technology it acquired from Cleversafe creates a fast, flexible, hybrid cloud storage service that gives companies new options for managing and analysing data.

Researcher IDC says 80% of new cloud apps will be big-data intensive. The cloud, mobile, IoT, analytics, social media, cognitive and other technologies all conspire to increase the data management workload, said John Morris, general manager of IBM Cloud Object Storage. Bringing Cleversafe technology to the cloud will give clients a way to keep on top of the problem.

The service offers a choice of multiple application programming interfaces and the option to store massive amounts of data on-premise, on the IBM Cloud or in a hybrid of both.

In June, when the Cloud Object Storage services is launched, it will come in three configurations: Nearline, Standard and Dedicated.

Nearline is a cloud infrastructure for infrequently accessed data charged at a lower cost and ideal for archive; back-up and other non-timely workloads. The Standard offering will provide a higher performance public cloud offering based on the Cleversafe technology with three new APIs into S3 Object storage.

The Dedicated option gives a single-tenant IBM Object Storage system running on dedicated servers in IBM Cloud data centres. This is available as an IBM managed service or as a self-managed cloud solution and gives clients access to object storage without needing for extra hardware or data centre space.

IBM Cloud Object Storage will be available in a variety of licensing models, including perpetual, subscription or consumption. This means customers can buy storage capacity with the flexibility to move data between the enterprise and the cloud as business needs change. It will also support both file and object workloads, so enterprises can have a single data storage hub that supports both traditional and web-based applications.

AWS, IBM, Networks, News & Analysis, Open Source

IBM launches Swift answer to Lambda at Interconnect 2016

open sourceIBM has unveiled a raft of new announcements today at Interconnect 2016, its largest ever cloud event. The rally, in Las Vegas, attracted 25,000 clients, partners and developers who were briefed on new partnerships with VMWare, IBM’s work with Apple’s Swift language, Bitly, Gigster, GitHub, Watson APIs and a new platform, BlueMix OpenWhisk.

The Bluemix OpenWhisk is IBM’s answer to Amazon Web Services’ event driven system Lambda, which allows developers to create automated responses to events when certain conditions are met. Automated responses have become a critical area for public cloud service providers and BCN recently reported how Google launched Google Cloud Functions in order to match the AWS offering to developers. All the systems aim to give developers a way to programme responses without needing to implement integration-related changes in the architecture, but IBM claims OpenWhisk is the only one whose underlying code will be available under an open-source license on the code publishing site Github.

By allowing all users open access to inspect code IBM says it can inspire greater levels of developer collaboration. IBM said OpenWhisk is highly customisable through either web services or using commands and it can be adapted to company requirements rather than being an inflexible cloud services.

OpenWhisk will work with both the server-side JavaScript framework and Apple’s increasingly popular Swift programming language. With a range of application programming interfaces (APIs) IBM claims the OpenWhisk service will have greater flexibility than the rival services from Google and AWS.

In a statement IBM explained the next phase of its plan to bring Swift to the Cloud with a preview of a Swift runtime and a Swift Package Catalog to help enable developers to create apps for the enterprise. The new Swift runtime builds on the Swift Sandbox IBM launched in December and allows developers to write applications in Swift in the cloud and create continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) condition that run apps written in Swift in production on the IBM public cloud.

IBM also announced a new option for users to run GitHub Enterprise on top of IBM Bluemix and in a company’s own data centre infrastructure.

In another announcement IBM gave details of a new partnership with VMware aimed at helping enterprises take better advantage of the cloud’s speed and economics. A new working arrangement means enterprise customers will find it easier to extend their existing workloads from their on-premises software-defined data centre to the cloud. The partnership gives IBM users the option to run VMware computing, storage and networking workloads on top of the IBM cloud. The new level of integration applies to vSphere, Virtual SAN, NSX, vCenter and vRealize Automation. In addition the IBM cloud is now part of the vCloud Air Network from VMware and the two partners will jointly sell hybrid cloud.

Big Data, Database, health, IBM, News & Analysis

IBM Watson Health buys Truven Health Analytics for $2.6B

Legs of Fit Couple Exercising on Treadmill DeviceIBM Watson Health has announced an agreement to acquire cloud based big data specialist Truven Health Analytics. The deal, valued at $2.6 billion, will give the IBM Watson Health portfolio an additional 8,500 clients and information on 215 million new patients, subject to the merger being concluded. Upon completion of due diligence, IBM will buy Truven from its current owner Veritas Capital.

Truven Health Analytics has a client list that includes US federal and state government agencies, employers, health plans, hospitals, clinicians and life sciences companies. The 215 million records of patient lives from Truven will be added to data from previous IBM Watson Health acquisitions of big data companies. These include 50 million patient case histories that came with its acquisition of cloud based health care intelligence company Explorys and 45 million records owned by population health analyser Phytel. IBM Watson Health has also bought medical imaging expert Merge Healthcare. In total, IBM Watson Health now has 310 million records of ‘patient lives’ which, IBM claims, gives it a health cloud housing ‘one of the world’s largest and most diverse collections of health-related data’.

In September BCN reported how two new cloud services, IBM Watson Health Cloud for Life Sciences Compliance and IBM Watson Care Manager had been created to unblock the big data bottlenecks in clinical research. The first service helps biomedical companies bring their inventions to market more efficiently, while the Care Manager system gives medical professionals a wider perspective on the factors they need to consider for personalised patient engagement programmes.

According to IBM it has now invested over $4 billion on buying health data and systems and will have 5,000 staff in its Watson Health division, including clinicians, epidemiologists, statisticians, healthcare administrators, policy experts and consultants.

Truven’s cloud-based technology, systems and health claims data, currently housed in offices and data centers across facilities in Michigan, Denver, Chicago, Carolina and India, are to be integrated with the Watson Health Cloud.

IBM has invited partners to build text, speech and image recognition capacity into their software and systems and 100 ecosystem partners have launched their own Watson-based apps. IBM opened a San Francisco office for its Watson developer cloud in September 2015 and is also building a new Watson data centre there, which is due to open in early 2016.

blockchain, Database, IBM, Microsoft, News & Analysis

IBM and Microsoft race to develop Blockchain-As-A-Service

Money cloudIBM has made 44,000 lines of code available to the Linux Foundation’s open source Hyperledger Project in a bid to speed the development of a Blockchain ledger for secure distributed online financial transactions.

IBM is now competing with a number of vendors, such as Microsoft Azure and Digital Asset, to bring Blockchain services to market either as a Bitcoin crypto currency enabler or for wider applications in financial services trading and even the IoT.

In a statement IBM said it wants to help create a new class of distributed ledger applications by letting developers use IBM’s new blockchain services available on Bluemix, where they can get DevOps tools to create and run blockchain apps on the IBM Cloud or z System mainframes. New application programming interfaces mean Blockchain apps will now be able to access existing transactions on these systems to support new payment, settlement, supply chain and business processes.

IBM also unveiled plans to put Blockchain technology to use on the Internet of Things (IoT) through its Watson IoT Platform. Information from RFID-based locations, barcode-scans or device-reported data could be managed through IBM’s version of Blockchain with devices communicating with the ledger to update or validate smart contracts. Under the scheme, the movement of an IoT-connected package through multiple distribution points could be managed and updated on a Blockchain system to give a more accurate and timely record of events in the supply chain.

The vendor intends to foster greater levels of Blockchain app design activity through its new IBM Garages that will open in London, New York, Singapore and Tokyo.

In Tokyo IBM and the Japan Exchange Group have agreed to test the potential of blockchain technology for use in trading in low transaction markets. As the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Project evolves, the joint IBM and JPX evaluation work will adapt to use of the code produced by that effort.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is to launch its own Blockchain as a service (BaaS) offering within in its Azure service portfolio with a certified version of the online ledger scheduled to be launched in April.

In January 2016, Microsoft announced that it is developing Blockchain related services in its Azure’s DevTest Labs. In November BCN reported that Microsoft has launched a cloud-based ledger system for would-be bitcoin traders.

Microsoft is also inviting potential service provider partners pioneer the use of Blockchain technology in the cloud.

Enterprise IT, IBM, News & Analysis

New IBM z13s mainframe was built with a BIOS for hybrid cloud

datacentre cloudIBM has designed its latest mainframe to address the challenges stopping hybrid cloud from becoming the de facto model of enterprise computing. The result has been benchmarked by analysts as the world’s most secure server for enterprise hybrid cloud computing.

The new IBM z13s mainframe, unveiled on February and available from March, is pre-installed with high levels of security and a greater capacity to process security functions, according to the manufacturer. The new levels of security are created by embedding IBM’s newly developed cryptography features into the z13s’s hardware. By running cryptography functions in silicon the mainframe can run its encryption and decryption processes twice as fast as previous generations of machine, boosting the speed of information exchange across the cloud, it claimed.

The new mainframe creates the most secure server in environment in the world, according to an independent report quoted by IBM from researcher Strategy Analytics (2015 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability Survey).

Encrypting sensitive data across company IT departments, regional offices and the public cloud has become a barrier to adoption of this more efficient model of computing, according to IBM’s senior VP of Systems Tom Rosamilia. In response the new z13s model has extra cryptographic and tamper-resistant hardware-accelerated cryptographic coprocessor cards. These have faster processors and more memory, encrypting at twice the speed of previous mid-range systems, which means that hybrid clouds can now handle high-volume, cryptographically-protected transactions, without delay.

The new model uses the Cyber Security Analytics which are standard within the z systems range of mainframes, with the addition of IBM Security QRadar security software, which correlates security intelligence from 500 sources in order to help it spot anomalies and potential threats. This can be used along with the Multi-factor Authentication built into the z/OS operating system for the mainframe range.

The system also uses IBM’s Security Identity Governance and Intelligence to create policy to govern and audit access, in order to cut internal data loss. Access to application programming interfaces (APIs) and microservices, configurable by IBM integration partners, can be used to shut down any further hybrid computing vulnerabilities according to IBM, which announced the addition of BlackRidge Technology, Forcepoint and RSM Partners to its Ready for IBM Security Intelligence partner programme.