IBM And Mobily: Spoken Like A True, Modern Mobile Network

IBM’s mobile computing juggernaut continues with a new deal just announced in Saudia Arabia.

Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) and IBM announced today a 5-year agreement worth approximately $280 million to provide comprehensive IT solutions for the Saudi Arabian company.

Saudi Arabia: 870,000 Square Miles

Riyadh is the capital and largest city of Saudi Arabia. It is also the capital of Riyadh Province, and belongs to the historical regions of Najd and Al-Yamama (Source: Wikipedia) IBM and Mobily, the Saudi Arabian telecommunications firm, will collaborate on future innovation with the help of IBM Research, using IBM’s Spoken Web solution. The basic principle of Spoken Web uses speech to create voice sites using the mobile phone network to establish a spoken version of the internet. The opportunity to collaborate with leading IBM researchers has become a key differentiator for IBM.

Saudi Arabia is a big place, encompassing some 870,000 square miles with a population approaching 30 million people.  Mobily, as the fastest growing telecommunications company in Saudia Arabia, has experienced an explosion in demand from the growing number of subscribers using mobile devices, and so in turn needed to boost its IT capacity and innovation in the market.

This new agreement with IBM will provide Mobily with faster, targeted access to new technologies and expertise so it can build a strong infrastructure to keep up with the company’s business growth.

As Mobily gears up for further expansion, it wanted to improve the quality and speed of its operations using IBM best practices.

As part of the agreement, Mobily and IBM will collaborate on future innovation with the help of IBM Research, for example, using IBM’s Spoken Web solution.

The basic principle of Spoken Web uses speech to create voice sites using the mobile phone network to establish a spoken version of the internet. The opportunity to collaborate with leading IBM researchers has become a key differentiator for IBM.

IBM’s Growth Market Strategy

The agreement highlights IBM’s continued geographic expansion initiative to strategically increase its presence in key growth markets like Saudi Arabia in support of its global growth strategy.

IBM is ramping up its investment across the Middle East and Africa, harnessing the company’s Smarter Planet initiative to help both public and private sector clients do more with fewer resources.

The strategic management of IT remains with Mobily, ensuring continuation of its standards of excellence and cutting-edge architecture, and enabling Mobily to meet the explosion in demand it is seeing from the growing number of subscribers using mobile devices.

“Partnering with one of the largest technology companies in the world offers Mobily a broad portfolio of modern IT solutions that will have a positive impact on our customers in terms of the quality of products and innovative services, in addition to solutions that will enrich their lives. We are pleased to sign with IBM, which has a significant presence in this strategic sector,” said Khalid Al Kaf, CEO, Mobily.

“The agreement is part of our efforts and vision of transforming Mobily into an integrated telecommunications operator. It also supports the Saudi government’s initiative of creating a knowledge-based community, adopting state of the art services and solutions” Al Kaf added.

IBM And Saudi Arabia: Remaking The Kingdom’s Future

IBM is involved in a range of key initiatives in Saudi Arabia, including a joint project with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology using innovative membrane technology and solar power to address the shortage of drinking water.

In another project, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and IBM are collaborating using the most complex, high performance computing system in the region.

The agreement with Mobily was signed in August 2012.

Out Of Curiosity?

I had a glorious weekend, thank you.

I got to watch some of the Olympics Saturday night, and I must say, it was refreshing to me to watch some plain old vanilla track and field events.

From Oscar Pistorius to Usain Bolt to Allyson Felix, I found myself enjoying the simplicity of seeing people running around the track.

Not that I haven’t enjoyed the beach volleyball and the swimming and everything else…I certainly do…but watching those runners break out of those gates and sprint for ten seconds or two minutes…well, I just found it very refreshing.

I did some of my own sporting over the weekend, playing golf at a couple of courses in north Texas where the temperatures in the afternoon were hovering around 102 or 103. Yes, it required lots of Gatorade.

Then, I went to bed late Sunday night, too tired to stay up for the Mars Curiosity landing but praying for its safe landing.

Terrified of what might become the further paring of the space program if Curiosity took a nose dive into the red planet.

This is one of the first images taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars the evening of Aug. 5 PDT (morning of Aug. 6 EDT). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Thankfully, that didn’t happen.  “Mars Science Laboratory” endured the now infamous “seven minutes of terror” (Google it) and landed just fine.  Here’s what JPL Tweeted on MSL’s behalf:

I’m safely on the surface of Mars. GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!! #MSL

Ah HA, a NASA with a Tweeter who’s the voice of MSL who has a sense of humor! (Follow MSL on Facebook here, a wonderful page about the program so far).

I’m an unabashed and unapologetic supporter of NASA and the American space program. One of my earliest memories was sitting on my dad’s knee when I was barely three years old, watching Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, so NASA made an impression on me very early on.

But also, just think about the amazing technology transfer the U.S. space program has brought back down to earth all these years: GPS, remote sensing for water and minerals and crop exploration, weather satellites, light-weight materials, geographic information systems…the list goes on and on.

And at a time when so many politicians and leaders seem to be thinking so small, I think it is through programs like Curiosity that we can dare to think and dream big.

Also let there be no question, IBM technology has played an instrumental role at times throughout the history of U.S. space exploration.

Just last year, while celebrating our Centennial, we saw videos like the following, which highlighted IBM’s role in Project Mercury, which led to Alan Shephard’s becoming the first American in space.

Shephard later became the fifth person to walk on the Moon, and the only astronaut of the Mercury Seven to make that walk. During his mission to the moon he hit two golf balls on the lunar surface — the longest drives ever!

NASA used IBM 7090 computing systems, and, later, 7094s to control the Mercury and Gemini space flights, and the IBM 7094 was used during the Apollo missions including Apollo 11, the moon landing.

Goddard Space Flight center also operated 3 7094s. During the early Apollo Program, a 7094 was kept operational to run flight planning software that had not yet been ported to mission control’s newer System/360.

So while curiosity may have killed the cat…it’s also what’s driving our latest mission to Mars…literally, and figuratively.

And no matter how little or vast our new knowledge becomes of the red planet, we will have proved once again that looking up and into the heavens helps us expand not only our knowledge base about Mars, but also our sense of ourselves and humankind.