Addressing The IT Labor Challenge

Back in April, I blogged here about the new IBM PureSystems line of servers that have been in the works for some years and backed by $2 billion in investment by IBM.

Here we are a few short months later, and we’re seeing some substantial uptake of this new line, including in growth markets.

Just a few updates:

• Over 700 IBM Business Partners have now adopted IBM PureSystems, and 1,300 of those have completed training on the new lines
• 160+ solutions and “patterns” of expertise have been developed both by IBM and our partners across 20 industries
• New financing options now all for organizations to defer the first payment for IBM PureSystems for 30 days

Organizations around the world are increasingly looking for ways to reduce IT complexity and overcome the growing worldwide skills shortage. Today, approximately three-quarters of global employers cite a lack of experience, skills or knowledge as the primary reason for the difficulty filling IT positions.

Egads!

Because of this, organizations are searching for new ways of computing that don’t require the additional commitment of significant resources or employee training to set up and maintain.

And voila, IBM PureSystems.

PureSystems meets this demand by providing patterns of expertise –- a new technology model that builds on the experience of thousands of IBM clients and radically streamlines the set-up and management of hardware and software resources.

Global Clients Embrace IBM PureSystems  

Since launching in April, clients around the world are using IBM PureSystems to reduce IT cost and complexity. For example:

• BPTP, a leading Indian real estate company, selected IBM PureSystems to streamline its IT infrastructure to improve the overall home buying experience for its customers. Established in 2003, BPTP has experienced rapid growth over the last decade. Sustaining and building upon this growth required BPTP to find a better computing and storage solution. To meet these challenges, it selected IBM PureSystems for all of its processing and storage requirements.
• PCCW, a leading information technology outsourcing company based in Hong Kong, has selected IBM PureSystems as the foundation for its new Enterprise Solutions Superstore — an online environment for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). As a result, they are now able to offer customers applications on the cloud using a Software-as-a-Service model.
• ValeCard, a multi-industry conglomerate based in Brazil, has achieved 40 percent growth annually over the past three-years. Facing rapid expansion of its business, ValeCard turned to IBM PureSystems to manage thousands of transaction records from contracts with large companies and government entities. Additionally, ValeCard is using IBM PureSystems to help it meet an increasing set of new regulations and standards for data availability.

IBM’s Partners Drive PureSystems Adoption 

For IBM Business Partners, PureSystems creates a new opportunity to help clients solve the complexity of enterprise IT.

From resellers to distributors and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), more than 700 Business Partners are supporting IBM PureSystems.

PureSystems currently run tens of thousands of existing ISV applications across four operating environments including Windows, Linux, AIX, and IBM System i.

Additionally, Business Partners have created more than 160 new solutions and applications that are optimized to run on PureSystems. These patterns of expertise, which span 20 industries, can be accessed through the IBM PureSystems Centre.

They include leading solutions from some of the world’s largest ISVs, including ERP systems and applications for the banking, marketing, healthcare and energy industries.

Numerous partners are also installing PureSystems in their own datacenters. For example Computer Gross, a managed service provider in Italy, and OneTree Solutions, an ISV from Luxembourg are both using the cloud capabilities of IBM PureSystems as a way to more easily meet the needs of their customers.

PureSystems Training, Certification, & Validation

To help address the new opportunity that PureSystems presents, IBM is also providing training, marketing, certifications and technical validation support to business partners.

For instance, dozens of IBM Innovation Centers in cities such as Bangalore, Dublin, Johannesburg and Shanghai are helping Business Partners develop and test their applications using IBM PureSystems. Business Partners can also bring their clients to IBM Innovation Centers to see PureSystems technology at work.

In addition, more 1,300 business partners — ISVs, managed service providers, resellers, system integrators and distributors — have been showing their support and interest in PureSystems by attending Business Partner Day and training events in 27 cities around the world.

PureSystems cloud capabilities are also drawing interest, with 500 developers using the PureSystems Cloud Trial to create applications through IBM’s SmartCloud that are ready to run on IBM’s new expert integrated systems.

IBM Financing For PureSystems

To help credit-qualified clients easily acquire IBM PureSystems, IBM Global Financing is making available a range of financing options.

As a result, clients will be able to avoid paying cash up-front, while lowering their total cost of ownership.

This is the first time that clients can lease the entire value of the system, including hardware and software.

Credit-qualified clients that elect financing can see immediate benefits with PureSystems while deferring their first payment for 90 days. Additionally, IBM Global Asset Recovery Services can buy back servers, including those made by HP and Oracle, for clients migrating to IBM PureSystems.

There are two models of the PureSystems family available — PureFlex System and PureApplication System.

PureFlex System enables organizations to more efficiently create and manage an infrastructure, while PureApplication System allows organizations to quickly deploy and reduce the cost and complexity of managing applications.

Both have already shipped to leading clients in 5 continents.

You can learn more about IBM PureSystems in the Expert Integrated Systems blog here.

The Blackout In India

To my friends in India, I hope you’re fairly weathering your blackout.

I was just reading through some BBC coverage which has reporters spread across northern India, including Utter Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, and West Bengal.

The report suggests Calcutta was not as badly affected as other regions, because it has a private electricity board, but that power went out across the rest of West Bengal state.

Thus far, coverage suggests the power breakdowns in India are mainly in the north, the east, and the northeast, and that about 600 million people have been in affected in over 20 Indian states.

To put that in perspective for those of us here in the west, that would be like the power going out across all of the U.S. and all of the United Kingdom, at once.

Yes, just imagine that.

Obviously, there will be lots of fingerpointing until an investigation can get to the bottom of this, but in the meantime it demonstrates once again how fragile infrastructure can be, in both emerging and advanced economies.

In the Northeast blackout of 2003 here in the U.S., some 55 million U.S and Canadian citizens were impacted and some left without power for up to 16 hours.

Though there was no major civil unrest during that particular blackout, one need simply just read the Wikipedia entry of that event to remember how many “systems” were impacted: everything from transportation to healthcare to water supply.

In India, telecommunications are being particularly hard hit in this outage, because so many people there depend on mobile phone service for their communications.  Even if the cell towers have backup generators, many folks in rural India have no alternative method of recharging their cell phones once that primary charge dissipates.

Also, business process outsourcing companies such as Wipro, Genpact, WNS and others have “kicked in business continuity plans” to ensure continuity of services to global clients. Thus far, The Hindu Business Line is reporting that the IT-BPO industry, which accounts for over 7% of Indian GDP, are running their operations at centers in the north and eastern India using backup generators running on diesel.

The Wall Street Journal India has an “IndiaRealTime” blog where you can follow the latest on the India power outage.

Managing & Mitigating Risk: The 2011 IBM Global Business Risk & Resilience Survey

Once again, IBM has published a global business risk and resilience study, this year in partnership with Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of IBM.

The study was conducted in June of this year, and included responses from 391 senior executives…Thirty-five percent of the respondents were C-level executives…About 39% were from North America,38% from Western Europe, 20% from Asia Pacific, and 3% from Eastern Europe.

Companies with less than U.S. $500M in revenue comprised 39% of the responses, and 48% of the respondents hailed from companies with more than U.S. $1 billion in revenue…The survey also covered a gamut of industries, including financial services (16%), IT and technology (16%), professional services (13%), manufacturing (8%) and healthcare (7%).

Click on the image to enlarge. The IBM Global Risk & Resilience Study revealed that to date, companies around the world are focused heavily on building out their resilience and risk plans, as well as putting the supporting technologies and processes in place to get them into effect.

Before I dive into the results, here’s the setup: Global organizations are increasingly emphasizing business resilience; that is, the ability to rapidly adapt to a continuously changing business environment. Resilient corproations are able to maintain continuous operations and protect their market share in the face of natural or man-made disasters as well as radical changes in the financial or economic climate. They are also equipped to seize opportunities created by unexpected events.

So, the question is, are they?

It’s a mixed bag.

The research suggests that more and more businesses will adopt a more holistic approach to risk management in the next three years ass they deal with growing uncertainty and the increasing interconnectedness of the varied risks they face.

That’s the good news, aspirational though it may be.

But in terms of today’s reality, the study indicated that only a minority of companies (37%) has implemented an organization-wide business resilience strategy…with 42% saying they’ll do so in the next three years.

Almost two-thirds (64%) say they have a business continuity plan of some sort, and a robust 58% have dedicated contingency plans for dealing with a variety of risks.

That’s the topline…now on to the deeper dive:

• Larger organizations are more likely than smaller ones to have an integrated strategy.  They, of course, typically have more to lose, and complexity increase’s an organization’s exposure to risk. Larger firms are more likely to have assigned overall responsibility for enterprise risk management to a single executive (which means, of course, direct accountability). Still, there is a contingent of small companies that have adopted integrated strategies. These companies also rank highly with regard to indicators of success such as revenue growth, profitability, and market share.

• Continuity, IT and compliance risks remain in the foyrefront, but companies are diversifying their strategies to build business resilience. Nearly 40% of respondents say their organization regards business continuity as primarily an IT issue. However, when they’re asked to name their “primary risk management concern,” some name more than one, including disaster recovery (47%), IT security (37%), and regulatory compliance (28%). Though most have started by addressing the largest threats first, they increasingly are expected to turn to such things as communications and training programs designged to build a more resilient culture overall.
• Business resilience planning increasingly involves specialists from across the organization, yet CIOs and IT pros remain the most prominent stakeholders.  Hey, what happened to sharing the love…and the risk??  Because a culture that imbues responsibility for risk management at every level enables companies to respond to changes and unexpected events. A solid majority of respondents (60%) say that business resilience is considered a joint responsibility of all C-level execs. Yet as IT penetrates more deeply into every aspect of company operations, CIOs and IT pros remain key players in building more resilient organizations. Fifty-six percent of respondents say the CIO collaborates with top IT strategists much more frequently than three years ago.

Click on the image to enlarge. Silos, budget and predicting ROI were cited as the biggest barriers in the study to adopting an holistic approach to business resilience and risk.

How Can I Better Manage Risk Moving Forward?

In most organizations, improving business resilience requires a shift in corporate culture because that is what shapes values and behavior. If a company’s culture blends risk awareness with other corporate values, then people instinctively know the right thing to do when confronted with an unexpected situation, and that reduces risk.

Understanding these principles is a good first step, but in interviews, executives are clear that buy-in from the top is essential to foster broad organizational change. Promoting holistic risk management concepts to peers and employees is also critical.

Taking an incremental approach with broad participation in strategy development can help, because it is easier to promote change if a new initiative is not seen as being pushed by one particular faction.

Senior-level commitment and adequate resources are also needed to develop comprehensive communications and training programs to support integrated risk management. One of the distinguishing features of the most resilient companies is that they are much more likely than other firms to have developed a communications strategy to push the message of resilience out to every corner of the organization.

Companies that embrace these measures are more likely to create an effective business resilience plan. This will provide a robust foundation on which to build a long-lived competitive position supported by end-to-end risk management.

Go here to download the full report.

Outages

My power went out this morning.

I had barely finished my first blog post and was starting to attack my email and, KABOOM, a transformer across the street popped like a Black Cat bottle rocket, only much louder.

So, I went off in search of wifi, first stopping at the nice AT&T store down the street to see if they could help me with my Blackberry Bold.

I’ve been having trouble with the battery since I had the unit replaced while in San Jose for SES.  Literally, I put the thing down wrong and the power shuts off.

I want to say thanks to the nice AT&T people on the 5th Street location in Austin.

The counter rep provided me a free battery swap, and reminded me I had 3 months left in my annual warranty if I needed to do another swap on the device itself (and I reminded her I had bought their insurance).

So, fingers crossed.

I then set out for Starbucks to grab a coffee and some free wifi for a bit, first putting in my power outage report on austinenergy.com

I have a feeling it could be hours because very few of us in the complex are at home during the day, and I’m concerned one report may not do the trick.  We’ll see.

Ah, the joys of working at home.

Speaking of outage, IBM customer Air New Zealand had an IT outage that began Friday morning and lasted for several hours, impacting the company’s check-in services, online booking system and call center, and affecting more than 10,000 passengers and leaving airports in disarray.

The CEO of Air New Zealand is blaming IBM, to whom ANZ had outsourced much of its computing operations, and according to a Good Morning Silicon Valley blog post over the weekend IBM “expressed its regrets” and said the likely cause was a failed oil pressure sensor on a backup generator during a scheduled maintenance session.

Unfortunately, the incident occurred during a very busy holiday travel time for New Zealand travellers.

TV New Zealand reported late Monday that IBM had issued a statement and explained that “IBM’s primary focus was to rapidly restore services to our clients, and in particular to Air New Zealand.”

The report went on to indicate that IBM had immediately engaged a team of 32 local IT professionals, supported by global colleagues and management, to restore impacted client systems and that services to most clients were restored within an hour of the outage.

If I know my colleagues, I’m sure they’re doing everything they can to make sure not only that the Air New Zealand operations are back in working order but also to ensure this type of outage doesn’t occur again.