Archivo de la categoría: IBM

IBM, Machine learning, Networks, News & Analysis, Open Source, SystemML

IBM open-sources machine learning SystemML

Machine 2 MachineIBM is aiming to popularise its proprietary machine learning programme SystemML through open-source communities.

Announcing the decision to share the system source code on the company blog, IBM’s Analytics VP Rob Thomas said application developers are in need of a good translator. This was a reference to the huge challenges developers face when combining information from different sources into data-heavy applications on a variety of computers, said Thomas. It is also a reference to the transformation of a little used proprietary IBM system into a popular, widely adopted artificial intelligence tool for the big data market. The vehicle for this transformation, according to Thomas, will be the open-source community.

IBM claims SystemML is now freely available to share and modify through the Apache Software Foundation open-source organisation. Apache, which manages 150 open-source projects, represents the first step to widespread adoption, Thomas said. The new Apache Incubator project will be code named Apache SystemML.

The machine learning platform originally came out of IBM’s Almaden research lab ten years ago when IBM was looking for ways to simplify the creation of customized machine-learning software, Mr. Thomas said. Now that it is in the public domain, it could be used by a developer of cloud based services to create risk-modeling and fraud prevention software for the financial services industry, Thomas said.

The current version of SystemML could work well with Apache project Spark, Thomas said, since this is designed for processing large amounts of data that stream in from continuous sources like monitors and smartphones. SystemML will save companies valuable time by allowing developers to write a single machine learning algorithm and automatically scale it up using open-source data analytics tools Spark and Hadoop.

MLLib, the machine learning library for Spark, provides developers with a rich set of machine learning algorithms, according to Thomas, and SystemML enables developers to translate those algorithms so they can easily digest different kinds of data and to run on different kinds of computers.

“We believe that Apache Spark is the most important new open-source project in a decade. We’re embedding Spark into our Analytics and Commerce platforms, offering Spark as a service on IBM Cloud, and putting more than 3,500 IBM researchers and developers to work on Spark-related projects,” said Thomas.

While other tech companies have open-sourced machine learning technologies they are generally niche specialised tools to train neural networks. IBM aims to popularise machine learning within Spark or Hadoop and its ubiquity will be critical in the long run, said Thomas.

Avnet, AWS, Channel, cloud marketplace, distribution, IBM, News & Analysis

Avnet launches Cloud Marketplace with AWS and IBM as key clients

Money cloudGlobal distributor Avnet has launched a cloud shop and unveiled both IBM and AWS as headline partners.

The Avnet Cloud Marketplace is described as ‘the latest evolution’ in Avnet’s cloud offering. Avnet said it is incorporating all the insight gained from running 900,000 workloads in public, private and hybrid clouds in the past two years and making that wisdom available to its partners.

The shop offers top brands like AWS and IBM, with flexible payment models and a cloud management toolset. Avnet said its unique angle is that it allows partners in the US and Canada to offer cloud-based services to their customers through both consumption and subscription-based models. Channel partners will be able to create branded storefronts to offer complete solutions to their customers. Avnet’s Cloud Marketplace customers include VARs, ISVs, MSPs, systems integrators (SI), technology manufacturers and end users. The Marketplace will help them rollout services quicker, according to Sergio Farache, senior vice president of Avnet’s Solutions and Strategy business unit in the Americas.

“This is how Avnet helps partners use next-generation technologies and evolve,” said Farache.

The Avnet Cloud Marketplace is based on Avnet’s digital distribution strategy, where a combination of digital tools, processes and services can simplify the cloud and service provisioning.

Meanwhile, Avnet has announced that IBM’s cloud services Softlayer and Bluemix will be provided through its portal. IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) will help developers integrate applications more rapidly while its Software-as-a Service (SaaS) offering will make cloud, analytics, mobile, social and security applications available to Avnet’s channel partners.

Avnet will also offer IBM Business Partners some educational and training resources to further expand their cloud expertise. On November 6th Avnet revealed that packaged solutions powered by AWS, such as backup and disaster recovery solutions that integrate NetApp and Veritas software with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Glacier, will be offered to its channel. These offerings will make it easier for Avnet’s US and Canadian resellers, AR and service provider partners to sell the full range of AWS.

Analytics, cognitive computing, IBM, Internet of Things, IoT, News & Analysis, The Weather Company, Watson

IBM to buy The Weather Company and make it elementary to Watson

IBM The Weather Company PhotoIBM has entered an agreement to buy The Weather Company’s B2B, mobile and cloud-based web properties, in a bid to extend its Internet of Things range.

The acquired assets include WSI, weather.com, Weather Underground and The Weather Company brand. The Weather Channel will not be part of the acquisition but it will license weather forecast data and analytics from IBM under a long-term contract.

IBM says the combination of technology and expertise from the two companies will be foundation for the new Watson IoT Unit and Watson IoT Cloud platform as part of its $3 billion investment strategy in this sector.

The Weather Company’s cloud data system runs the fourth most-used mobile app daily in the United States and handles 26 billion inquiries a day.

On closing the deal, IBM will acquire The Weather Company’s product and technology assets that include meteorological data science experts, precision forecasting and a cloud platform that ingests, processes, analyses and distributes petabyte sized data sets instantly. The Weather Company’s models analyse data from three billion weather forecast reference points, more than 40 million smartphones and 50,000 airplane flights per day, allowing it to offer a broad range of data-driven products and services to 5000 clients in the media, aviation, energy, insurance and government industries.

The Weather Company’s mobile and web properties serves 82 million unique monthly visitors. IBM said it plans to develop The Weather Company’s digital advertising platform and skills, commercialising weather information through data-driven advertising with additional ad-sponsored consumer and business solutions.

“The next wave of improved forecasting will come from the intersection of atmospheric science, computer science and analytics,” said Weather Company CEO David Kenny. “Upon closing of this deal, The Weather Company will continue to be able to help improve the precision of weather forecasts and deepen IBM’s Watson IoT capabilities.”

Datacentre, IBM, Intel, News & Analysis, OpenWorld 2015, Oracle, server

Oracle and Intel announce plans to ramp up the offensive on IBM in the cloud

Oracle openworld 2015Intel and Oracle are to build on a previous collaboration which saw them jointly take on IBM in the cloud computing hardware market. Now they are conspiring again, this time to target Oracle’s database and software customers, in a bid to get them to ditch their IBM computer servers and buy Oracle/Intel servers instead.

The new pact was announced at the opening of Oracle’s tech conference as Intel CEO Brian Krzanich took the stage of Sunday with Oracle CEO Mark Hurd. Project Apollo, in which the two manufacturers pooled engineers in a joint bid to investigate how massive cloud computing data centres can run faster using Oracle hardware with Intel chips, was pronounced mission accomplished.

On Sunday Hurd and Krzanich announced the new hardware partnership and a back up conversion programme. Oracle CEO Mark Hurd said ‘thousands’ of customers have dropped IBM for Oracle when running Oracle software. To back this up, Oracle launched a migration support programme. The ‘Exa Your Power Program’ (EYP) is aimed to help customers move their Oracle Database from IBM Power systems to Oracle Engineered Systems using Intel technology.

The EYP is a free database migration Proof of Concept study in which Oracle will assess a customer’s environment, create a database migration results report and show how it thinks the customer could significantly cut the time and costs of running critical database workloads.

“CSC has successfully migrated dozens of customers’ enterprise workloads,” said Ashish Mahadwar, Executive General Manager of Oracle’s Emerging Business Group. “We recently migrated an Oracle Database for a major insurance provider from IBM Power 7 to an Exadata X5 engineered system as a Proof of Concept.”

Mahadwar claimed that test results showed a Siebel Application runs four-to-ten times faster and ETL Processes running up to 12-times faster on Exadata.

Transformation of the enterprise is already underway with the continuous improvements in a vast software ecosystem that Intel and Oracle jointly deliver according to Mahadwar. “The Exa Your Power program will make it easier for customers to realize the benefits of moving to Intel architecture,” said Mahadwar.

Big Data, IBM, marketing cloud, News & Analysis

IBM adds Universal Behavior Exchange into its Marketing Cloud

IBMIBM says the new Universal Behavior Exchange (UBE) in its Marketing Cloud will help businesses to understand their customers better.

The vendor and cloud service provider claims UBE can solve the problem of connect up all the different sources of information available to them. In some companies this means taking data from up to 30 different systems. Cloud service UBE aims to connect and personalise all relevant information and allow marketing staff to devise more effective campaigns on Facebook and across the Web.

UBX is supported by an open ecosystem of certified partners that includes social, mobile, CRM and paid advertising solutions. Vendor partners include MediaMath, Spredfast, MutualMind, SugarCRM and Exchange Solutions.

Features in the cloud based system include a click-to-connect integration that should simplify the getting and using of data marketers. A pre-integrated network of the vendor partner’s technology should give clients a faster access to a wide range of customer behaviour types, with event and audience data available across a range of paid, owned and earned channels. The system ultimately allows users to study the behaviour of customers and create a highly personalised interaction in response, according to IBM.

“IBM is making it simpler to understand how customers prefer to engage,” said MediaMath president Mike Lamb, “Connecting advertiser data to other channels could create more timely and relevant interactions.”

In a related announcement, mobile marketing system vendor Vibes leader has announced a complementary offering. The Vibes mobile marketing platform will now personalise mobile campaigns with IBM Campaign for targeted text messaging and mobile wallet offers. It will also work IBM Marketing Cloud systems to trigger transactional and service-oriented mobile messages, like appointment reminders and service updates.

“UBX is cracking the code on big data applied to the marketing cloud, and we’re thrilled to be a part of this emerging ecosystem,” said Vibes CEO Jack Philbin.

Big Data, Datacentre, HPC, IBM, News & Analysis, UK

IBM to create HPC and big data centre of excellence in UK

datacenterIBM and the UK’s Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) have jointly announced they will create a centre that tests how to use high performance computing (HPC) for big data analytics.

The Hartree Power Acceleration and Design Centre (PADC) in Daresbury, Cheshire is the first UK facility to specialise in modelling and simulation and their use in Big Data Analytics. It was recently the subject of UK government investment in big data research and was tipped as the foundation for chancellor George Osborne’s northern technology powerhouse.

The new facility launch follows the government’s recently announced investment and expansion of the Hartree Centre. In June Universities and Science Minister Jo Johnson unveiled a £313 million partnership with IBM to boost Big Data research in the UK. IBM said it will further support the project with a package of technology and onsite expertise worth up to £200 million.

IBM’s contributions will include access to the latest data-centric and cognitive computing technologies, with at least 24 IBM researchers to be based at the Hartree Centre to work side-by-side with existing researchers. It will also offer joint commercialization of intellectual property assets produced in partnership with the STFC.

The supporting cast have a brief to help users to cajole the fullest performance possible out of all the components of the POWER-based system, and have specialised knowledge of architecture, memory, storage, interconnects and integration. The Centre will also be supported by the expertise of other OpenPOWER partners, including Mellanox, and will host a POWER-based system with the Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform. This will provide options for using energy-efficient, high-performance NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators and enabling software.

One of the target projects will be a search for ways to boost application performance while minimising energy consumption. In the race towards exascale computing significant gains can be made if existing applications can be optimised on POWER-based systems, said Dr Peter Allan, acting Director of the Hartree Centre.

“The Design Centre will help industry and academia use IBM and NVIDIA’s technological leadership and the Hartree Centre’s expertise in delivering solutions to real-world problems,” said Allan. “The PADC will provide world-leading facilities for Modelling and Simulation and Big Data Analytics. This will develop better products and services that will boost productivity, drive growth and create jobs.”

Corporate, Enterprise IT, Financial Results, IBM, News & Analysis, Quarterlies

IBM cloud service revenue up despite 14th quarterly revenue decline

IBM2IBM has posted an unexpectedly large drop in revenue and cut its full-year profit forecast, blaming the strong US dollar for dampening demand from China and emerging markets. Though cloud, big data, mobile and other strategic markets are growing, their rise is not enough to arrest a long term trend of decline.

IBM, which gets more than half its business from overseas, says it has been affected as the dollar is currently 17% up on its standing against a basket of currencies compared to this time last year.

Chinese sales were particularly affected, with fewer big deals being registered. As a consequence revenue from China fell 17%, IBM’s chief financial officer Martin Schroeter told analysts. Sales in Brazil, Russia, India and China combined were down 30%.

The company’s total revenue fell 13.9% to $19.28 billion in the quarter, below analysts’ average forecast of $19.62 billion.

It was the 14th quarter in a row that IBM has posted a reduction in revenue. As IBM divests itself of low-margin businesses it has failed to make up the shortfall, yet, through cloud computing, according to analysts.

“This is another example of the massive headwinds that traditional tech stalwarts are seeing in this ever-changing environment, as more customers move to the cloud,” said FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives.

According to IBM CFO Martin Schroeter, weakness in IBM’s consulting and storage businesses account for the revenue shortfall, rather than the performance of its cloud services.

“I would characterize it as the consulting and systems integration business moving away from these large, packaged applications and the storage business moving to flash and to the cloud,” Schroeter told Reuters in an interview.

Revenue from IBM’s ‘strategic imperatives’, cloud and mobile computing, data analytics, social and security software, rose 17 per cent in the third quarter ending on Sept 30th.

IBM’s net income from continuing operations fell to $2.96 billion, or $3.02 per share, from $3.46 billion, or $3.46 per share, a year earlier.

At the close of trading yesterday (Monday) IBM’s shares had fallen 7 per cent this year.

BlueMix, Content & Applications, Enterprise IT, IBM, Infosys, News & Analysis

Infosys to use IBM’s Bluemix make next generation of cloud apps

IBM and Infosys have announced a joint venture where Infosys will use IBM’s Bluemix system to prototype, develop and roll out new cloud apps for its client base in 50 countries.

The partners will launch a Bluemix-powered Innovation Lab in which Infosys and its clients can work together to create applications. Infosys developers are to be trained on Bluemix and tutored on cloud app development. Infosys will also get access to the IBM Bluemix Dedicated, a library of cognitive computing and analytics systems and services for building client apps.

The Infosys Innovation Lab will be staffed with a dedicated team of designers, ‘extreme agile’ specialists and industry and technology architects. Infosys has 187,000 employees and a turnover of $8.7 billion.

IBM launched Bluemix with a US$ 1 billion investment in 2014 and it now claims to be the largest Cloud Foundry deployments in the world, with a catalogue of over 120 tools and software-services, with all the top open-source, IBM and third-party technologies.

The partnership is all about getting access to these technologies and sharing them with clients, according to Srikantan Moorthy, Head of Application Development and Maintenance at Infosys. “Our goal is to bring these advanced technologies to clients’ application landscape in the most rapid and collaborative way possible,” said Moorthy, “Infosys will also incorporate any Bluemix-related curriculum into its on-boarding and training process.”

The disruptive forces of cognitive computing, analytics and IoT are all delivered through the cloud and Bluemix will only exacerbate these changes, according to Steve Robinson, IBM Cloud’s General Manager. “Developers can accelerate the deployment of these next-generation apps and this collaboration with Infosys will advance our clients’ journey.”

IBM, IoT, Webinars

Forecasting Cloud’s Place in the Internet of Things

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Date: Thursday, October 22, 2015

Time: 04:00 PM British Summer Time

Duration: 1 hour

Data is no longer contained within the walls of a data center. Devices or “things” need to share data with the same quality of service whether they are in remote corners of the world or in major metropolitan areas. Flexibility, speed, and security area all required elements for real-time data analysis in IoT projects and any company wanting to transform with the Internet of Things; as a result, the Internet of Things is becoming the primary application for cloud computing.

In a recent study from IBM and Business Cloud News, we learned that nearly two-thirds of respondents agree companies that are slow to integrate cloud into their IoT solutions will fall behind the competition. Learn more about current trends and future growth opportunities as data, engagement, and cloud all converge around the Internet of Things.

  • See how the Internet of Things is becoming the primary application for cloud computing
  • Review your readiness to integrate cloud and IoT solutions

REGISTER FOR THIS WEBINAR

Big Data, cognitive computing, Consulting, IBM, News & Analysis, Watson

IBM augments Watson with new cognitive business consulting arm

WatsonEnterprise tech giant IBM has announced the creation of IBM Cognitive Business Solutions, a consulting practice designed to help businesses get into the cognitive computing game.

IBM continues to invest heavily in its Watson cognitive computing operation, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to better deal with unstructured data. This consulting business will have access to over 2,000 consultants across a wide range of industries.

“Our work with clients across many industries shows that cognitive computing is the path to the next great set of possibilities for business,” said Bridget van Kralingen, SVP of IBM Global Business Services.

“Clients know they are collecting and analyzing more data than ever before, but 80 percent of all the available data — images, voice, literature, chemical formulas, social expressions — remains out of reach for traditional computing systems. We’re scaling expertise to close that gap and help our clients become cognitive banks, retailers, automakers, insurers or healthcare providers.”

“Before long, we will look back and wonder how we made important decisions or discovered new opportunities without systematically learning from all available data,” said Stephen Pratt, global leader, IBM Cognitive Business Solutions. “Over the next decade, this transformation will be very personal for professionals as we embrace learning algorithms to enhance our capacity. For clients, cognitive systems will provide organizations that adopt these powerful tools outperform their peers.”

Speaking at a Gartner symposium IBM CEO indicated the cognitive business is a cornerstone of IBM’s overall strategy. IBM says it has already invested over a billion dollars on Watson and intends to train another 25,000 IBM consultants and practitioners on cognitive computing before the end of this year.