Adam Gartenberg's Blog

IBM Data Management and Social Marketing

Smarter Food News - improving freshness and safety of seafood exports

In Smarter Food news, IBM has announced a collaboration with the government of Vietnam to improve the traceability, freshness and safety of seafood exported to retailers in the United States, Japan and Europe. At a time when food contamination issues and food borne illnesses are coming to the forefront of consumer concerns, the news underscores IBM's efforts to create 'smarter', safer food supply for consumers around the world.

The traceability technologies will be tested at selected Vietnamese farms producing seafood destined for retailers in Japan, the US and Europe. The FXA technology will collect data such as farm of origin, results of spawning grounds inspections, where the food was processed, its current location and its temperature.

IBM Smart Food’s contribution will be to make this data accessible to wholesalers, shippers, retailers and other involved parties through the provision of serial numbers for each product. These will allow the products to be traced individually and enable retailers and other authorities to locate products quickly in case of a recall.


"In collaboration with retailers and government agencies, we are increasing consumer confidence by providing innovative technologies for tracing not only the origins and ingredients in food but the path they've travelled before arriving at stores." --Girish Vasudevan, territory exec, IBM Viet Nam. Smarter Food Safety

The importance of customer loyalty (and how to take advantage of it)

The June issue of STORES Magazine features an article by Patricia Waldron, worldwide distribution industry executive for Cognos.  The piece details how business analytics can help retailers drive greater customer loyalty and shopper advocacy in today's turbulent economy.

Smarter retailers are going one step further, preparing themselves to be in the strongest position when the economy improves. These retailers are focusing on their customers - understanding what appeals most to their loyal advocates, attracting new shoppers and determining what is important to consumers looking to shift their loyalties. These chains will be the ones that capture the lion’s share of the diminishing consumer wallet.

A recent IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) survey of 30,000 U.S. consumers revealed that shoppers anxious due to economic conditions rely on retailers they trust. These “advocates” have nearly doubled from 21 percent in 2007 to 38 percent in 2008. Advocates are more likely to recommend preferred retailers to friends and family, and remain loyal even if other retailers offer competitive value. In fact, 31 percent of advocates even increased spend with their primary retailer over the past year.


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Reminder: Webinar tomorrow (6/11) - How the Information you have can get you the results you need

A friendly reminder that we have a webcast coming up tomorrow (6/11 - 1:00pm ET) on New Intelligence and how, as the title states, "the information you have can get you the results you need."  Having been personally involved in the creation and review of the material for the presentation, I can assure you it will be interesting and informative.  


Discover A New Kind of Intelligence. . .how the information you have can get you the results you need

Web Seminar Center, June 11, 2009, 01:00PM ET

REGISTER

Image:Reminder: Webinar tomorrow (6/11) - How the Information you have can get you the results you need

The world we live in today is increasingly instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent. We are experiencing a revolution, and information is at the heart of it. Businesses that are taking advantage of this new wealth of information are able to make more intelligent decisions and are rising to the top. They’re managing large volumes of information in real-time, incorporating analytics and predictive modeling, pervasively collecting and sharing information across the entire value chain, and speeding time to value by delivering trusted, accurate and timely information to the right decision makers. In short, they’re discovering a new kind of intelligence.

Capitalizing on its unrivaled technology leadership and end-to-end solution capabilities, IBM has developed a comprehensive program to help customers address their most complex, information-intensive business challenges. Our speakers will share customer success stories, frameworks and methodologies that will demonstrate how new intelligence is not only changing the competitive landscape, but literally changing the way the world works. You’ll learn how you can build an information agenda, create a roadmap for becoming a smarter company, and establish the flexible information infrastructure you need to deepen your competitive advantage.

Presenter: Eric S. Sall, IBM Software Group, Information Management Director,
New Intelligence Market Mgmt
Strategy & Planning Marketing Manager

REGISTEr

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Video: Break Free with DB2 9.7

  • Author: Adam Gartenberg
  • June 5, 2009
  • Category:  DB2  IBM 

Here's a short but impactful video of DB2 customers and partners talking about the new DB2 9.7 and the impact it's having for them and their clients.  Examples cited include specific cases of savings on storage (e.g. 80% reduction in HW space requirements) and ease of migration (e.g., an Oracle migration that took 3 weeks in the past was done in 2 days with DB2 9.7 beta).



See here for many other videos on DB2.

News from IOD EMEA 2009

Share photos on twitter with TwitpicThe IOD EMEA conference is taking place this week in Berlin, and we're starting to see the announcements and news that are coming out of the conference.  IBM issued a string of press releases earlier today, highlighting a number of initiatives and detailing specific examples of organizations seeing the benefits of applying analytics, managing streams of data, performing faster development and migrations, and seeing the benefits of IBM's "No Paper Weight" drive.  (See further down for highlights and links).

In addition to the formal news, it's been great to see the activity taking place online.  The event organizers have really kicked up the social media involvement this year.  If you're at the event, you can leave comments about specific sessions over on the IOD 2009 blog (or if you're not there, you can read up on it), and the @IOD2009 Twitter account has been very active, providing updates from the conference and retweeting relevant posts.  They have also set up a common hashtag nomenclature (for example #TSB1909 - no dash 3 characters + session number) for each session to make it easy to post and follow discussions for a given session.

There was a bunch of buzz online yesterday about the pokens that were given out to all attendees.  I'll be interested in seeing the feedback afterwards; it seems like a great idea for a conference, and hopefully will help make the task of networking or finding information from exhibitors easier.

Anyway... back to the news.

In addition to advancements and new products around business intelligence, integrated data management, stream computing, and enterprise content management (more on each of these below), we announced continued momentum in companies looking to IBM for help in creating and adopting an information agenda.  IBM also announced new industry and analytics models for the Financial Services, Healthcare, Life Sciences and Government sectors, which will help organizations make better use of their information while minimizing the time and risk involved in the rollouts of new solutions and applications.

Since the launch of Information Agenda less than eight months ago, IBM has already engaged with more than 400 clients, helping them put information at the center of their business processes. Meanwhile, IBM has also conducted some 350 industry-specific Information Agenda workshops this year to help clients define their information strategy.


The announcement last month of InfoSphere Streams included a number of cases where organizations were pushing beyond the limits of what has been possible in terms of analyzing data in real time.  The announcement today with Uppsala University and the Swedish Institute of Space Physics follows along similar lines, as they look to analyze 6 gigabytes of data per second to better understand "space weather."
IBM (NYSE:  IBM) and Uppsala University and the Swedish Institute of Space Physics announced today a major new Stream Computing project to analyze massive volumes of information in real time to better understand "space weather." By using IBM InfoSphere Streams to analyze data from sensors that track high frequency radio waves, endless amounts of data can be captured and analyzed on the fly. Over the next year, this project is expected to perform analytics on at least 6 gigabytes per second or 21,600 gigabytes per hour - the equivalent of all the Web pages on the Internet.


DHL Worldwide is seeing some dramatic results from their use of Cognos; see the full press release for more detailed examples of all the different ways they are using the product and the benefits they are realizing.  
IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that DHL Worldwide, the market leader in the global air and ground express industry, is using IBM analytics software to help transform its global business operations and drive customer relationship profitability at its DHL Express Germany and DHL Call Forwarding North America divisions. The new intelligence system from IBM allows DHL to analyze more than 30 million customer records in just seconds vs. hours while drastically reducing its system maintenance costs.


One of the updated products announced today, Optim Development Studio, provides a common environment for Oracle Database users to simply drag and drop data between Oracle Database and DB2.  There were several other products and tool announcements today (including Optim Query Tuner for DB2 - a new product, and updates to InfoSphere Data Architect, Optim Development Studio, Optim pureQuery Runtime, and Optim Database Administrator (the last three were formerly Data Studio Developer, Data Studio pureQuery Runtime, and Data StudioAdministrator). Be sure to read more about all of these announcements over on the Data Studio blog and in the press release.
Israel-based ExactCost, an Healthcare IT solutions provider, recently migrated to DB2 9.7 from Oracle Database eighty percent faster than original estimates, saving two and a half months with Optim Development Studio. As a result, ExactCost was able to focus on their business objectives of improving performance and patient healthcare. In addition, ExactCost used Optim Development Studio for both Oracle Database and DB2 data-driven applications development, allowing a seamless integration across different platforms.

We also shared details of organizations seeing the benefits of IBM's "No Paper Weight" initiative, which is aimed at helping organizations "cut costs caused by the paper burden, reduce risks by relying on paper less, rescue information trapped in paper processes and eliminate unnecessary waste."  One such example is financial services company VR Kreditwerk:
Using IBM technology, VR Kreditwerk, a German-headquartered financial services company, was able decrease their paper consumption by automating businesses processes and more efficiently managing and transmitting approximately 20,000 documents per day. With a new automated process in place, they were able to cut the time to process a loan document from one day to one hour, increase the security of their information and maintain high standards for client satisfaction and quality of service, while continuing to meet regulatory compliance demands.


I'll look to post additional links and coverage over the course of the conference, and in the mean time would love to hear feedback from anyone who may be in attendance (I wasn't able to make the trip over for the conference myself this year).

Links:
Photo via @HoratioNelson

Free 2 Day IDS Workshops

  • Author: Adam Gartenberg
  • June 1, 2009
  • Category:  Informix  IDS  IBM 

Guy Bowerman writes about a series of free IDS 11.50 workshops planned in a number of cities over the next two months:

A series of free IDS 11.50 workshops are planned over the next few weeks, in Washington (June 10,11), Atlanta (June 16,17), Raleigh (June 16,17), Dallas (June 23,24) and Chicago (July 14,15). Here are details of the Atlanta event. I'll post more information or a link to the other events when I find it.


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Upcoming Webinar (6/11): Discover A New Kind of Intelligence

Please join us on June 11 for another Webinar on New Intelligence.  I know the last one was very well attended, and for any of you looking to learn more about how you can not only get control of your information, but put it to use to make faster, more informed, more accurate decisions, I'd highly recommend joining us.


Discover A New Kind of Intelligence. . .how the information you have can get you the results you need

Web Seminar Center, June 11, 2009, 01:00PM ET

Register


Image:Upcoming Webinar (6/11): Discover A New Kind of Intelligence

The world we live in today is increasingly instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent. We are experiencing a revolution, and information is at the heart of it. Businesses that are taking advantage of this new wealth of information are able to make more intelligent decisions and are rising to the top. They’re managing large volumes of information in real-time, incorporating analytics and predictive modeling, pervasively collecting and sharing information across the entire value chain, and speeding time to value by delivering trusted, accurate and timely information to the right decision makers. In short, they’re discovering a new kind of intelligence.

Capitalizing on its unrivaled technology leadership and end-to-end solution capabilities, IBM has developed a comprehensive program to help customers address their most complex, information-intensive business challenges. Our speakers will share customer success stories, frameworks and methodologies that will demonstrate how new intelligence is not only changing the competitive landscape, but literally changing the way the world works. You’ll learn how you can build an information agenda, create a roadmap for becoming a smarter company, and establish the flexible information infrastructure you need to deepen your competitive advantage.

Presenter: Eric S. Sall, IBM Software Group, Information Management Director,
New Intelligence Market Mgmt
Strategy & Planning Marketing Manager

Register

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Business Analytics and Optimization in 60 seconds



From the Smarter Planet Blog:

More of a :60 second primer than an ad, this new video hits home on the new intelligence aspect of IBM’s new consulting service, business analytics. For more on this see the Smarter Enterprise channel on our Smarter Planet site on Tumblr.  Also, you can add this new Analytics Album widget to your blog, site, page or network to stay on top of this fast developing front.


I've got the widget he mentions over on my blog sidebar (for those reading in RSS), should you be interested.

IBM Announces "InfoSphere Streams" Stream Computing Software


From Time: "Steve Mills, SVP of IBM Software (left), and Dr. John Kelly, SVP of IBM Research, view Stream Computing technology."

At its annual investor briefing yesterday, IBM announced the availability of a unique "stream computing" software solution that will allow organizations to analyze massive amounts of data in real time.  The IBM InfoSphere Streams software is based on the System S IBM Research initiative that involved over 5 years of development and has garnered 200 patents along the way.

The press release describes what InfoSphere Streams (referred to here still as System S) can do in more detail:

System S is built for perpetual analytics - utilizing a new streaming architecture and breakthrough mathematical algorithms, to create a forward-looking analysis of data from any source - narrowing down precisely what people are looking for and continuously refining the answer as additional data is made available.  

For example, System S can analyze hundreds or thousands of simultaneous data streams - stock prices, retail sales, weather reports, etc. - and deliver nearly instantaneous analysis to business leaders who need to make split-second decisions. The software can help all organizations that need to react to changing conditions in real time, such as government and law enforcement agencies, financial institutions, retailers, transportation companies, healthcare organizations, and more.

In an article titled "The Reasons Behind Google and IBM Being Ahead of the Competition," TIME magazine covers why this is such a major announcement:
IBM released "stream computing" applications that allow businesses to look at and analyze huge amounts of data in real time. Describing the product, IBM said "System S is built for perpetual analytics — utilizing a new streaming architecture and breakthrough mathematical algorithms, to create a forward-looking analysis of data from any source — narrowing down precisely what people are looking for and continuously refining the answer as additional data is made available." The ability to have access to that kind of information will undoubtedly be valuable to governments, the financial industry, and large multinationals with thousands of retail outlets. The new software is unique and does not appear to have any direct competition.


While it hadn't officially been announced until yesterday, this stream computing technology has been the underpinning of several of the Smarter Planet references that we have discussed over the past year or two.  It has already demonstrated great success across a spectrum of industries that include financial services, law enforcement, healthcare, manufacturing, environment monitoring, traffic control and others.  Some of the applications already published in the press include the real-time monitoring of premature infants, marine monitoring in Galway Bay, and automated options trading.  (And yesterday's press release has additional examples.)

IBM also announced yesterday the opening of the IBM European Stream Computing Center, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, that will serve as a hub of research, customer support and advanced testing for what is expected to be a growing base of European clients who wish to apply stream computing to their most challenging business problems.

Congratulations to all of the researchers, developers, marketers and everyone else involved in yesterday's announcement!

Links:

DB2 on Campus event at York University

Agatha provides an update from a DB2 on Campus event at York University.  Sounds like a great event!

On April 22nd, Dan Han, the first DB2 Student Ambassadors at York University, organized the first ever, DB2 on Campus event at YorkU.

Over 70 YorkU students from Computer Engineering, Computer Science, and IT programs attended the event to learn about the DB2 on Campus program and to help grow the DB2 community. Also, everyone in attendance requested to be contacted about additional DB2 resources, DB2 certifications, and future DB2 events!

Our featured DB2 on Campus Quarterly Newsletter and DB2 Best Practice flyers were picked up faster than free food! We also handed out DB2 9.5 Discovery Kit DVDs, some free t-shirts, and Raul donated a copy of his book, Understanding DB2: Learning Visually with Examples, to the YorkU Library.


Image:DB2 on Campus event at York University

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