IOD Press Conference: A Trillion Networked Things (Including Cows)

I’m currently in the IOD 2009 press conference.  IBM Software general manager Steve Mills has already taken the stage and made his opening comments, and currently speaking is Frank Kern, VP of IBM’s General Business Consulting group.

The picture they’re painting has a backdrop, the “backgrounder” if you will:

By 2010, there will be a billion transistors per person and a trillion networked things — cars, roads, pipelines, appliances, pharmaceuticals, even livestock.

Get along, little dogie. We’ll find you wherever on the range you may roam!

The volume of information created by those interactions is driving businesses to use information as a tool for making smarter and faster decisions and, in turn, gaining a competitive edge.

Even for the cows (if you’ve seen the Chick Filet billboards, you know that’s important).

The key to unlocking the value of all this information lies in developing an information strategy that makes use of business analytics and other information management for technologies for smarter, faster decision-making.

But according to a recent IBM survey of nearly 300 clients, 1 in 3 business leaders frequently make critical decisions the information they need.

Sifting through massive amounts of paperwork to get any process to the finish line is costing businesses millions of dollars.

And in IBM’s recent Global CIO Study, 83 percent of respondents identified business intelligence and analytics as a priority.

Hence IBM’s numerous investments and announcements in the business analytics space, including today’s.

In April, IBM launched a Business Analytics and Optimization services practice that draws on the company’s expertise in vertical industries, research, math, and information management.

New Analytics Solutions Centers have already opened in New York City, Tokyo, and Beijing…and Frank Kern announced in today’s press conference that new centers would be opening in Washington, D.C. (focusing on cyber) and London (focusing on financial).

And, probably most importantly, since 2006, IBM has established relationships with more than 15,000 clients and 2,300 new business partners, helping them bring Information on Demand offerings to market more quickly and around the globe.

About a quarter of the nearly 100 acquisitions IBM has made since 1995 directly support the company’s Information Management portfolio.

Read more about today’s announcements here, and if you’d like to learn more, download the IBM Business Analytics and Optimization press kit here.

You can also read more about smart intelligence in action, in ReadWriteWeb’s blog post about the soon-to-be-demoed IBM Food Traceability iPhone App, “Breadcrumbs,” which can help consumers with smarter in-store food shopping by giving them detailed information about grocery food items (including info on product recalls!)

Speaking of ReadWriteWeb, their own Alex Williams just asked a question about the real-time Web (seeming to nod to social media-like data), to which Deepak Advani, IBM VP Predictive Analytics, replied that IBM has technology to help deal with the real-time Web but that such analysis should be done in a larger context (leveraging other information sources/stores).

Okay, I’m blowing this popsicle stand for parts beyond, as I have some information of my own I need to go integrate.

IOD 2009 Opening Session Debrief: Information-Led Transformations…by Winston the Turtle?

The Information on Demand Conference has finally kicked off this morning, and just in time, too.

I had a nice chat over breakfast with a Filenet guru from God’s Country (Montana).  It was just she and about 6,000 other folks (check the IOD group on Flickr, surely somebody took a picture of that).

Now, we’re situated in the main Mandalay Arena, where earlier things were kicked off by four ladies playing upbeat string music, and then the Black-Eyed Peas Wannabes.

Then, singing ventriloquist (You heard me…No, really, that was me!) Terry Fator brought out Winston the Turtle to share a few strolls down memory lane, including Roy Orbison’s “Crying.”

Then, IBM Information Management general manager Ambuj Goyal sauntered in to the Bee Gees’ “Staying Alive,” and explained that just a few short years ago we were gathered talking about data and content management, but that much had changed since.

For instance, $8B in acquisitions, including Filenet, Cognos, and SPSS (in that order, I do believe).  The economic climate.  Continued data and information proliferation.

And as IBM engaged in thousands of customer engagements, we kept hearing over and over from line of business execs: If I only had the right information at the right time, I could make better decisions.

And so many IT executives exclaiming, if only I could work better with IT.

IBM Global Business Services senior VP Frank Kern joined Ambuj to say the vision was compelling: What would it take to create a predictive capability for business decision makers?

Which is why IBM is investing in deep analytics, to help companies reduce risk and put greater certainty around the decisions they have to make

To answer one simple question: What if?

The IM Software Future’s So Bright

It was one of those rare sports weekends: All my teams won!

The Longhorns beat Mizzou, the Cowboys beat Atlanta, and the Yankees took the ALCS.

I should come to Vegas more often…I get good odds here.

Of course, wagering on the past is just Monday quarterbacking, and here at the Information on Demand Conference, it’s the future most folks are concerned about.

IBM information management (IM) market insight analyst Stacy Novack held a session yesterday to give us the lay of the land, and the future seems to be so bright for IM software that you gotta wear a two-phase commit.

First, in broad strokes, Stacy indicated that the IM market is expected to be $237B next year, with software being about $63B of that (the other slices are services and hardware).

Though the clouds are starting to lift on IT budgets everywhere, their recovery will be tied to continued GDP improvement, but Novack expects relative resilience in software spending as companies prepare for the uptick.

The recovery is expected to vary widely by region (ranging from -2.0 to +2.0) in 2010, and the information management software opportunity is expected to grow twice that in “growth” countries versus the G7.

Some CAGR expectations: 5.9% from 2009-2013 for the overall IM software market, with analytics applications leading the pack at an expected 7.8% (some $9B in 2010).

Business intelligence isn’t far behind at 6.0% (~$12B next year).

And there are big picture trends and forces shaping the climate: Global recession has led to cost cutting, govt stimulus, the “hyperconnected” enterprise, corporate social responsibility, and, ultimately, the drive for more security and transparency.

On the tech front, factors include continued proliferation of data, content, and information — Did you know the digital universe, by 2011, is expected to be 10 times the size it was in 2006??

And that’s not even yet counting last night’s killer live concert by U2 on YouTube!

Seventy percent of that digital universe is created by individuals (you know, like Larry from down the hall who likes to take pictures of the stuff growing on the office coffee pot and post them on Facebook), yet enterprises are responsible for the security, privacy, and compliance of 85% of that content.

Shhh, nobody tell the lawyers!

Many companies are increasingly seeking information-led innovation that treats information as an asset, not a liability, but there are challenges: need to improve the levels of integration, analytics capabilities, the breadth of access, the currency of information…there are still substantial gaps.

But the opportunities are prevalent and often immediate: Information management software capabilities are well positioned to address immediate and emerging business challenges.

Though cost reduction initiatives brought about by the downturn continue to be a priority, many organizations realize effective analytics capabilities can help drive short-term results, even as those organizations prepare for longer term IT investments.

To take advantage of those, IT leaders need to translate those solutions so they meet the needs of business decision makers, and work to link those shorter-term investments to longer-term infrastructure visions.

IBM’s Global CIO study found that CIOs spend 55% of their time on activities that spur innovation and help the business, including leveraging analytics to gain competitive advantage.

There are good odds that your time spent here in Vegas at IOD will help you along the way.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find some breakfast…along with 6,000 of my new closest friends!

Turbo Video Dispatch #2: How to Grok IOD

Turbo Information on Demand Conference 2009 — Video Dispatch #1: Too Much Frickin’ Information

Sunday, Sunday — Getting Going at IOD

It’s Sunday morning and I’m on the premises.

I went for a quick jog along the Vegas strip early this morning (remember, I’m on Texas time), and in one fell swoop I saw a pyramid, the Empire State Building, and the Eiffel Tower.

Only in Vegas, bay-bay.

Today’s action (and I’m not talking about the lines on the NFL Sunday games, although we can come back to that) is centered around IBM’s Business Partners and learning one’s way around the event.

The Business Development Day Opening Sessions kick off at noon in (Session GSS-3344A), with a focus on “The Evolution of Information Management.”

From 2-4:30,  you can learn how to navigate your way around the conference (GSS-3342A), and the EXPO Solution Center has its grand opening from 6-8PM.

Remember to use your Smart Site to create your own personal schedule, and for you 3Gers (especially those of you with an iPhone or iPod Touch), check out iodsmartsite.com

And for the truly networked, load “Bump” from the Apple Store so we can exchange virtual bidness cards.

Me, I’m about to head off to mi amigo Stacy’s session on Information Management Market Intel.

The Wide Shot: No More Black Swans

So here’s the deal: The world is changing.  Bigtime.

Forget black swans only appearing once upon a blue moon.  Those suckers are out flying in formation just looking to create the next wave of trouble.

Right before I left Austin, I downloaded Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book on the financial crisis, Too Big to Fail.

I started reading it on the plane ride, and leading into the Information on Demand event, I’ve been thinking a lot about the financial crisis.

Why it happened?  How it happened?  How we can prevent another one from happening again anytime soon?

And I don’t mean by hiding all our collective money in a mattress.  That would have to be one big honkin’ mattress.

Yeah, the financial crisis was definitely a whole buncha bad news.

Now it’s time for some good news: The world is becoming increasingly instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent.   This we know…just look around.

Though there is, as a result of this, an explosion of information, this increased interconnectedness is also creating an opportunity for a new kind of intelligence on an increasingly smarter planet.

But as a result of the tremendous growth in information, organizations are also operating with significant blind spots and are trapped within application-bound silos.  The stovepipe syndrome.

Intelligent organizations, however, are looking to use the wealth of information and analytics for better, faster decisions and actions, optimized processes, and more predictable outcomes.

Let’s call this business optimization.

The opportunity for organizations around the globe, then, is for CEOs and other business leaders, as well as those in public enterprises, to create sustainable competitive advantage by optimizing all parts of their business.

To do so, they need a business analytics and optimization strategy (here comes the new acronym…are you ready yet?  It’s easy: Give me a B….Give me an “A”…Give me an “O”…what does it spell?  “BAO”?!)

That’s right.  Forward thinking organizations are implementing an information-led transformation (ILT) to achieve the next generation of efficiencies by applying analytics to optimize decisions at every contact point.

CIOs, and other IT leaders, also play a key role.

As partners to LOB and public sector execs, they are charged with creating an information agenda that supports the business and operational strategy; builds and maintains a flexible platform for trusted information; and helps the organization apply business analytics to optimize decisions.

Organizations need to pursue an…here’s that fancy new phrase again…information-led transformation…to support the business.

Hey, we’re from IBM headquarters, and we’re here to help.

How?

Well, we won’t be hiring any black swans anytime soon, that much I can tell you.

No, that’s exactly what we’re going to be talking about at the event over the next several days: How IBM can help its clients identify their greatest opportunities, as well as their greatest exposures to risk, and then develop and execute a strategy to optimize all types of decisions, leveraging the ability to capture, organize, process, and contextualize enterprise information.

Our clients can take this on in any variety of ways, from the tactical to the strategic, to get immediate value, including by:

• Focusing on a foundational information need such as single view of the customer, or a full information agenda, addressing information strategy, roadmap, infrastructure and governance
• Applying analytics to optimize a specific business objective such as customer retention, or a broader need such as enterprise risk management; or
• Solving a single information platform need such as a cost-effective archiving strategy, or a broader need such as a flexible enterprise information architecture

Or, you can stay in your stovepipes and watch your information…and probably your business…stagnate.

But what do I know, it’s Saturday night in Vegas and I’m blogging about how you need to start better using your information for insight when I ought to be out trying to get myself arrested somewhere along the Vegas strip!

Who’s On First?

I’m on the plane to Vegas.  It has wi-fi, and that’s the first time ever I’ve been on a plane with wi-fi, unbelievably.

But I don’t log on to it.  I don’t take the bait.  I’m too busy contemplating what awaits me in Vegas.

Let me start with my personal dilemma.

No, it has nothing to do with my blackjack skills or my overall gambling addiction (okay, I don’t really have a gambling addition, but it makes for a better story).

It’s much simpler than all that.

I’ve been so busy of late that I never had time to sit down and figure out what my schedule is for this Information on Demand Conference.

I’m supposed to be everywhere and nowhere at once, I’m sure, and yet despite the best efforts of our support staff, I’m completely clueless.

One schedule has all the key events laid out in a PDF.  The IOD Smart Site is supposed to help me build my own personal schedule.  Our blogging and PR staff gave me another PDF outlining all the key blogger events.

I’m panicking!  It’s like one of those dreams, where the dog ate your homework right before you’re supposed to take your final exams as you fall off the tall building and then…wake up right before you hit the ground.

It’s…well, it’s kind of like many of you out there.  I’ve got plenty of information…too much, really…but I have no way of consolidating it all and making intelligent decisions about how I should spend my next five days in Vegas (well, I can think of a few ways, but most of those would get me fired).

Sound familiar, all this information overload?  Kind of like the state of your business or organization, perhaps?

So, here’s my commitment to you.  I may never quite get a handle on my own schedule for this coming week, but what I will work to do is share my key thoughts and sentiments expressed here on the ground by all the mucho-smarter-than-me people at the conference.

To wit: My next post will be on the state of the information state.

YOU Are An IT Superstar

You know who you are.

You, who toil away in obscurity down in the server room while the suits sit upstairs and figure out new ways to make you wish you had gone into a line of work that would have been much safer for your sanity, like salmon fishing in the frozen waters off Alaska.

You, who work to submit a so-called realistic budget, each and every fall, on time, with all the boxes checked, and still, the VP of marketing who couldn’t find his way to an RSS feed if he had a handheld Garmin, always cuts it 25% before he even opens the spreadsheet.

You, who hasn’t had a real lunch break in years because you’re too busy answering idiotic calls on the help desk only to have people call you back and yell at you as though you’re IT Satan himself, because they’re too frickin’ stupid to find a blatantly obvious power button…and then they wonder why you have a bad attitude.

You, who have somehow managed not to go postal on them, when you probably had every right to.

This video is for you.

You, who feel the front line pain each and every long and interminable day, who knows where all the bodies — and the Cat 5 cables — are buried.

You,  who keep the business running, night and day, who respond to the really cool SMS alert that’s triggered by an automated UNIX shell script when the server crashes, which you wrote during the 10 minute coffee break that you never take.

You, the IT superstar.

And, if that’s not you, send it to the person who is.  Send it now.

Do it!

They’ve deserved your thanks for a long, long, longggggggg time.

Fear and Loathing at Information on Demand

I’m getting desert fever.

Scott Laningham and I got together earlier this week and recorded this podcast to give a heads up to folks about all the good stuff happening at next week’s Information on Demand event in Viva Las Vegas.

As I explained there, what happens in Vegas goes on this blog, and hopefully that’s what you’re counting on.

Though I didn’t get asked to a return engagement with Wayne Newton at the Tropicana, Scott and I will be roaming the halls of the Mandalay Bay…and points beyond…listening, learning, and playing back for all of you what we unearth.

We’ll be your eyes on the ground…you know, the kind that pop out of the glasses and hang down from their springs.

And, if I can find a few spare moments, I may even try to channel my inner Hunter S. Thompson.  Allow me to quote freely from his Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas para uno momento:

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Ah, Hunter S., we miss your crazy and wise words — they’re as fresh in 2009 as they were in 1972.

So, yes, that’s what Scott and me will be in search of, among other things: the information high-water mark.

But mostly, we’ll be trying to get underneath how establishing an information on demand environment can help our customers and IBM build a whole lot smarter planet.

One filled with continually emerging new intelligence, insight, and actionable analytics…and, in the process, one which can also make me a better blackjack player.

Ye ever faithful Twitterers in the audience, please follow hash tag #iod2009, and be sure to hang on tight: it’s gonna be a wild and information overloaded ride!