Made in IBM Virtual Labs: CIOs Drive Growth and "Flatten the World"
NEW YORK - 18 Dec 2007: IBM (NYSE: IBM) showcased for the first time ever a host of new Web 2.0 technologies made in the IBM CIO global virtual lab, which includes lab sites in China and Germany.
The technologies unveiled today have been used internally at IBM to transform business processes and to attain measurable business value through innovation, collaboration and efficiency across the globally integrated enterprise.
Now through the availability of its comprehensive Web 2.0 solutions, IBM is enabling enterprises to drive growth by instantly collecting and sharing information of crucial business importance.
Web 2.0 technologies create open, collaborative spaces that eliminate the traditional hurdles created by time and distance that businesses worldwide have traditionally faced. The marriage of videos, blogs, and custom publishing enable working professionals to exchange ideas and perspectives using rich, multi-dimensional platforms that foster a two-way dialogue within an enterprise.
As a result, employees can leverage the technology available at their fingertips, regardless of time and place, to drive innovative ideas throughout their enterprises. By linking with several other development sites, guests experienced how IBM technologies drive efficiency, innovation, across the enterprise and tap into high-value skills from the company's top talent, around the world, to solve the specific needs of its clients.
The demonstrations showcased today also highlighted that CIOs are playing a fundamental role in the unfolding "flat" Web 2.0 global world. Four-fifths of Chief Information Officers recently surveyed by IBM believe that technology is significantly transforming their industries and enabling them to gain advantage over their competition.
"CIOs are at the nexus of the new business landscape," said Mark Hennessey, VP and Chief Information Officer. "Companies that successfully combine technology know-how with business insight will be able to differentiate themselves from their competition and drive profits throughout the world."
"Today, CIOs are change agents for enabling innovation," said Hennessey. "Leadership from the CIO - both as a business executive and IT expert - is actively shaping the destiny of global enterprises." Companies which are most successful in driving innovation use information technology to drive change. As the role of technology has increased in organizations to become as pervasive as every business application, so too has the role of the CIO increased.
The new technologies demonstrated at the event addressed real-life scenarios, which were developed using IBM's agile development approach, which minimized risks in the software engineering process through shortened iterations of development phases, while blending in business processes from the very beginning. Highlights include:
Evolution of the Intranet: On Demand Workplace Next Continuous innovation and enhancement of IBM's enterprise portal, in a rapid, non-disruptive, evolutionary manner is a goal of the "ODW Next" project. The On Demand Workplace (ODW) is IBM's single point of entry for employee intranet access (w3.ibm.com). It serves as the "front door" to IBM's internal transformation activities, providing a personalized work environment for nearly 350,000 employees, in over 100 countries. The vision of ODW Next is to couple a live innovation platform - a "perpetual beta" - alongside the production environment, to obtain the maximum benefits of practical usage and continuous feedback from a statistically significant number of global employees, while also minimizing risk to the steady state production systems.
Web 2.0 At Work at IBM
IBM uses Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis, blogs, tagging, situational application environments (or mashups) and podcasting to enable collaboration across the globally integrated enterprise and drive business value. IBM tools like Jams, ThinkPlace and The Technology Adoption Program encourage innovation from everyone and make it possible for great ideas to become a reality.
Virtual Worlds
The rise of virtual worlds as a gaming experience is no secret. But leveraging virtual worlds for corporate value holds great commercial promise. Investing in gaming for serious business raises several critical questions. Our investigation of these challenges has led IBM to create its own internal Metaverse, where IBMers can meet, learn and collaborate with their colleagues around the globe in a secure virtual environment.
Bluepedia
BluePedia is an encyclopedia of general knowledge about IBM, co-authored by IBMers for IBMers, which enables the collection of expertise and know-how of more than 300,000 IBMers around the world into a simple, searchable resource that is easily expanded, shared and used. The single, global co-authoring platform enables the development and implementation of a common worldwide vocabulary and easy recognition and identification of subject matter experts.
W3 Search
Enterprise search has evolved from text and metadata to people and opinions. IBM has implemented social search where information has been categorized and socialized by the community and not just an engine. IBM's repository of social metadata is influencing how IBMers use social and community driven content to find the most relevant information. It's a new twist on information discovery.
Lotus Symphony Running on Linux
Lotus and IBM I/T are working together to create cross platform solutions that enables our heterogeneous client strategy and supports the Linux client platform internally. Lotus has developed and IBM I/T is deploying an integrated Lotus Notes environment that includes email, group calendaring, teamrooms and database work flow with Sametime unified messaging and the IBM Lotus Symphony editors on Linux. The Lotus Symphony capabilities can ignite an explosion of Web 2.0 like innovation around open standards based (ODF) document creation.
Made in IBM Labs
IBM has a network of more than 60 research and development labs around the globe. IBM's laboratory population includes more than 28,000 researchers, developers and engineers. More than 20 percent of them work directly with clients. In 2006, the labs conducted more than 10,000 engagements with clients -- a 55 percent increase over the previous year.
Contact(s) information
Mark Guan
IBM Media Relations
914-766-1658
markguan@us.ibm.com
