Turbo Fa Milano

I arrived safely in Milan last evening, only to discover that Milan Fashion Week 2010 doesn’t begin for another 6 days!

My new line of cowboy-themed tie-die shirts, blue jeans, and cowboy hats seems to have been kept out of this year’s Milano lineup — I can’t be sure what, exactly, happened.

Did I inadvertently tick off Anna Wintour??

Perhaps it had something to do with my having worn a tie that didn’t match the color of my eyes.  It won’t have been the first time I committed a major fashion faux-pas while traveling abroad.

Though I’ll miss out on all the new Milano clothing lines, The Fashionisto blog will make sure you don’t miss a thing, no matter how short your high heels.

While I work to get my Texas fashion sense (such as it is) resituated, I had mentioned in a previous post the opportunities presented to organizations which focus on building out smarter business infrastructures.

This in anticipation of the IBM Pulse 2010 event next week in Las Vegas, which leads to some compelling questions you might want to ask yourself:

What would mean to your organization if you could always access critical business data at the exact moment you need it?

What if you could improve service and reduce costs by delivering IT services when your customers requested them?

Who knows, you might find yourself arriving in Milan for fashion week!

Especially in this challenging economic climate, companies around the globe have to manage and mitigate risk, even as they support their core business goals.

They have to address no small number of regulatory, organizational, and industry-oriented compliance drivers, and that alone can be a key inhibitor.

By way of example, 33% of consumers notified of a security breach will terminate their relationship with the company they perceive as responsible.

Doh!  Hold on, where’d all my customers go?!

71% of CIOs in a 2009 IBM Global CIO survey identified risk management and compliance as an important part of their visionary plans for enhanced competitiveness.

Can you spell Basel II?

And nearly 50% of all sensors used for critical measurements across production, facilities and transportation equipment are now smart sensors, generating up to 4 million signals daily — creating more information than ever before.

So many sensors, so little time!  Calgon, take me away!

Fear not.

Though it can’t help you with your fashion sense, IBM’s dynamic infrastructure strategy can help you deliver a shared, integrated and highly available infrastructure that can address these challenges today, but also capitalize on the opportunities of tomorrow.

It can help across a number of key areas:

• To enable visibility, control and automation across all business and IT assets through integrated service management
• To optimize the IT infrastructure through virtualization and energy efficiency initiatives to achieve more with less.
• To address the complexity of managing data growth through information infrastructure initiatives.

You can learn more about these opportunities in IBM Tivoli’s integrated service management podcasts and webcasts.

I would also suggest you visit our Smarter Cities Web experience, an excellent interactive overview of how IBM is helping drive adoption of smart and dynamic  infrastructures to facilitate everything from smarter traffic systems to smarter and more efficient energy grids. (Speaking of which, click hear to visit the IBM Energy Management blog!)

Me, I’ve got to manage my own energy and get back to this meeting in Milano…keep your fingers crossed for the Italian adoption of the Turbo Cowboy fashion line!