Archive for the ‘smarter buildings’ Category
Live From IBM Pulse 2013: Day 2 General Session — IBM Tivoli Customers Share Their Best Practices
Several prominent IBM Tivoli clients joined IBM senior vice president Robert Leblanc at the IBM Pulse 2013 day two general session to discuss their asset and infrastructure management best practices on the MGM Grand Arena stage.
If you missed Carrie Underwood last evening in the MGM Grand Arena, well…I’m sorry.
Actually, I’d find it difficult to believe anyone from IBM Pulse missed Carrie Underwood, as the place was packed to the rafters, and Carrie did not disappoint.
In fact, quite the opposite…and judging from the line waiting to get in that stretched all the way back to the MGM hotel elevators, well, let’s just say expectations were high.
And as we move into Pulse 2013 Day Two, we should maintain those high expectations, because it was clear from this morning’s keynote customer interview led by IBM senior vice president Robert Leblanc that today’s focus would be on highlighting best practices in building and maintaining smart infrastructures.
IBM vice president Scott Hebner first kicked the session off, explaining IBM’s continued commitment to open standards (see yesterday’s announcement about IBM’s commitment to using OpenStack), explaining that “Just as standards helped us realize the promise of e-business over the last decade, I think the same is going to occur with respect to cloud computing.”
Scott also encountered an amusing “blue screen of cloud death” moment, where all systems failed, spinning umbrellas appeared on screen (and in the audience), and colorful chaos people appeared from offstage.
An amusing moment, but one with an underlined headline of warning: Thou who doth go too far forward building on proprietary platforms may findeth one’s business in cloud computing chaos!
Scott next handed the baton to Robert Leblanc, and it was time now for Robert to introduce a range of IBM Tivoli clients operating in a garden variety of industries: Steve Caniano, Vice President, Hosting, Applications, and Cloud Computing with AT&T; Robert Pierce, Assistant Vice President, Information Services, Carolina Healthcare; Eduardo Bustamante, Director of Systems and Telecommunications, Port of Cartagena; and Tony Spinelli, Chief Security Officer, Equifax.
First, he cleared the decks and set up the big picture: Technology is now the number one issue for CEOs, as they recognize it could make or break their success. Big data, mobile, and cloud loom over the horizon as competitive differentiating technologies, and, increasingly, are table stakes.
Security is more of a risk, but going on the offensive beats succumbing to the nastiness of the defensive (read the cyber security headlines lately?).
And yet…and here was the key point of the best practices session…only one in five CEOs feel they have a highly efficient IT infrastructure, one that’s versatile and dynamic and can adapt to the ever-changing whims of an admittedly volatile marketplace.
And Robert delivered more bad news (admittedly, he did so with a smile): 70 percent of CIOs lack proper visibility into their cloud systems, 78 percent are NOT using mobile device management, and 53 percent lack the proper automation of securing their assets.
Oh, and only one in ten feel they have the skills and capabilities they require.
Robert asked each of the IT executives about their respective environments and challenges.
Steve from AT&T observed that “cloud computing is a team game” but that “hybrid types of solutions needed to be deployed,” and he explained AT&T’s partnership with IBM had been key in this regard.
Robert with Carolina Healthcare explained in the field of medicine that “mobility has become a key differentiator” and that the new doctors coming up “expect robust information technology services” or else they’ll find someone else’s hospital to work at.
He went on to explain that Carolina had begun to use IBM’s Endpoint Manager to manage some 38,000 desktops, laptops, iPads and iPhones.
Eduardo had a different set of challenges, operating in a much more “physical” realm in using IT services to better orchestrate the cacophony of trains, cranes, and other moveable assets. He indicated the Port of Cartagena is implementing RFID in concert with IBM Maximo technologies to better manage and move those assets efficiently around the port, and in the process, adding a layer of analytics to allow for continuous improvement of that physical instrumentation.
And Tony with Equifax got a laugh from the audience when he started by stating that “Everyone in this audience wants me to do a great job,” acknowledging the company has and must protect the information of individuals and businesses around the globe.
He suggested companies need to move beyond simply “naming the bad actors” in the security intrusion front, and instead move to “better understand those bad actor’s strategies and tactics” so they can better prioritize, respond to, and yes, even prevent those incidences from occurring in the first place, something Equifax is doing through the implementation of improved security intelligence using IBM QRadar technology.
“By having better security intelligence on the battlefield,” Tony explained, “you’re better prepared.”
“Not all assets are created equally,” he explained, speaking, of course, for Equifax, but acknowledging a much broader theme and challenge to the gathered IBM Pulse crowd.
(Almost) Live From IBM Pulse 2012: Todd and Scott’s Livestream Kickoff
Greetings from the social media room on the solutions expo floor of IBM Pulse 2012.
It’s been a wild and crazy day, which you know already if you follow my blog.
We’ve already witnessed several keynote sessions, and Scott and I have been busy interviewing some of our key execs and thought leaders from IBM Software.
Those would include IBM Mobile guru Bob Sutor, who explained he’s historically been more iOS than Android (but he’s leaving the mobile OS door wide open) and who walked us through the “mobile lifecycle,” and IBM Developer Relations VP Mike Riegel, who regaled us with his insights into the IBM SmartCamp and Global Entrepreneur initiatives.
Keep an eye out on the Livestream for those interviews as they make their way into the Pulse 2012 video rotation.
Meanwhile, I wanted to include a link to the video Scott and I did for our kickoff last evening here on the Pulse 2012 Solutions Expo floor, where we set up the big picture for the week’s tidings — and even had some fun doing so.
U.S. Air Force Partners With IBM On Building Performance Mission
IBM today announced that the U.S. Air Force (USAF) has selected IBM smarter buildings software to help its civil engineers maximize energy efficiency and automate the management of its physical infrastructure portfolio — from buildings, vehicles, runways and other infrastructure across 170 locations worldwide.
BM has partnered with the U.S. Air Force to help its civil engineers maximize energy efficiency and automate the management of its physical infrastructure — from buildings, vehicles, runways, and other infrastructure across 626 million square feet and 170 locations worldwide.
This portfolio includes more than 626 million square feet of real estate, over 100 million square yards of airfield pavement and 10 million acres of land used by Active Duty, Reserve and Air National Guard personnel.
Presidential Executive Orders require executive branch departments and agencies to establish asset management plans, install performance measures and ensure the effective management of Federal real property assets through their entire lifecycle.
Additional orders require agencies to improve energy efficiency, reduce natural resource consumption and decrease waste production to reduce carbon emissions.
To meet this order, the Air Force Office of the Civil Engineer, whose mission is to provide, operate, maintain, and protect sustainable installations as weapon-system platforms through engineering and emergency response services across the full mission spectrum, will use IBM TRIRIGA software to gain greater visibility and control of its physical assets.
IBM’s integrated workplace management software, called IBM TRIRIGA, provides the Air Force with a standardized, powerful technology platform to analyze data about real property assets, streamline work orders and suppliers, and reduce energy use across thousands of buildings.
These tools will help USAF measure and manage its operational, financial and environmental performance to determine and prove effectiveness against government-wide and agency real property management objectives.
“IBM TRIRIGA software will help implement our NexGen IT vision and give USAF a data-driven approach to manage its real property and physical assets, as well as help us predict issues before they impact service and safety,”said Alexander Earle, Chief Information Officer, Air Force Office of the Civil Engineer. “Implementing IBM TRIRIGA will help strengthen our IT infrastructure by removing redundant systems, providing real-time analytics and optimizing core processes that enable us to make better decisions about how we manage our resources.”
Using IBM TRIRIGA, USAF plans to reduce operating costs, increase return on budget and reduce energy consumption through:
- Integrated Workplace Management: Provides a single system to optimize performance of all real estate locations, assets and personnel operations. By optimizing building use, occupancy costs are reduced, lease administration is made easier, and managers can evaluate future space requirements to make long term planning decisions.
- Energy Assessment Tools: Enables users to obtain environmental insights and pre-defined, automated operational procedures and processes to monitor and reduce energy consumption as well as waste production from real property assets operations.
- Condition-based Maintenance: Better manage the maintenance of property and equipment based on the age, condition and history of facilities. Having this insight can prevent costly repairs by allowing staff to pinpoint equipment that should be replaced before incidents occur.
IBM TRIRIGA improves the operational, financial and environmental performance of real estate assets and operations. The software provides a comprehensive suite of applications to manage the real estate lifecycle of an organization with pre-defined management processes and extensive web-based configuration management tools.
About IBM Smarter Buildings
Since launching its Smarter Buildings initiative in February 2010, IBM has created a portfolio of smarter buildings solutions that integrate with building automation software from across the industry.
IBM’s real-time monitoring and analysis, facilities and space management capabilities, and advanced dynamic dashboards helps property owners and managers reduce facilities operations and energy expense, and improve asset management and reliability.
Through IBM’s acquisition of TRIRIGA, IBM accelerated efforts to bring intelligence in the smarter buildings market. IBM’s smarter building solutions help clients listen to data generated by facilities. By collecting, managing, and analyzing data IBM helps clients gain intelligence and insight to energy, space and facilities management. TRIRIGA strengthens IBM’s smarter buildings solutions by adding key functions such as real estate, facility and energy management software solutions.
Mona Lisa Smile: IBM Helps The Louvre Become Europe’s First “Smarter” Museum
At Pulse 2012 here in Las Vegas, IBM announced today that it is working with the Louvre Museum in Paris to preserve and protect its facilities and artwork, which covers more than 650,000 square feet, making it one of the largest museums in the world.
Through its intelligent management system, the Louvre Museum can protect and maintain artwork while keeping galleries open to the millions of customers who visit yearly.
Established in the 18th century, the Louvre is home to thousands of objects and artifacts ranging from prehistory to 1848, including the most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa. To preserve and protect its facilities and world-famous artwork, the museum staff handles more than 65,000 repairs and maintenance visits per year. Through the use of IBM Maximo Asset Management software the museum’s staff has been able to streamline their maintenance processes to improve customer service as well as the efficiency and real-time operation and management of the museum.
As Europe’s most visited museum, with a record breaking 8.8 million visitors in 2011, one of the Louvre’s goals is to keep the majority of its galleries open daily. To meet that goal while managing over 65,000 repairs and maintenance visits, the museum needed to make its corrective and preventative maintenance more streamlined and efficient.
Prior to working with IBM, the staff managed its facility-related repairs and maintenance work by paper, involving hundreds of vendors. In order to keep the majority of its galleries open daily, the museum recognized that it needed a computerized maintenance management tool to make its corrective and preventative maintenance more streamlined and efficient.
The museum engaged IBM Business Partner SQLI to upgrade IBM Maximo software in order to create a single information database and shared repository for the museum staff. The software solution’s integrated database helps the museum visualize processes including the initial planning, cleaning, maintenance and disposal of the rooms and facilities systems such as the air-conditioning system, heating system, elevators, lights for each room or gallery, and the locking system for more than 2,500 doors,
“Managing thousands of repairs, cleaning and maintenance visits per year to preserve the facilities and artwork while keeping the galleries available and accessible to visitors is a daunting undertaking,” said Metin Pelit, department manager of computerized maintenance management system, The Louvre Museum. “Thanks to IBM software, we’re able to visualize our entire infrastructure and make better, more informed decisions about when and how to respond to problems — and about when to proactively address a potential problem that we otherwise wouldn’t have seen coming.”
Better Managing The Louvre, Making The Mona Lisa Smile
The Louvre’s management system can now aggregate data from individual systems within the museum, providing the museum staff and its vendors coherent and real-time information on each asset. Additionally, the software provides a predictive view into the performance and reliability of the facility equipment and systems, allowing museum staff to better determine which assets need to be repaired or replaced.
“Buildings are massive systems of systems, and these systems need to talk to each other for a building to become smarter,”added Pelit. “In the Louvre’s case, there’s the added challenge of being home to thousands of irreplaceable pieces of art which must be carefully preserved while trying to accommodate millions of visitors annually. By using Maximo software to monitor the condition of assets across the museum’s facilities in one single database, these systems begin to talk to one another, allowing staff to preserve artwork and facilities with more ease and efficiency. As a result the Louvre is now able to keep the majority of their galleries open to customers on a daily basis while simultaneously reducing costs and energy consumption.”
The IBM software enables the museum to gain better insight on what assets they have: how many assets they own, their location and the maintenance history log. The software helps the Louvre Museum staff to manage both planned and unplanned maintenance activities, from initial work request and work order generation through completion and recording of the actual work performed.
The software matched job tasks to available contractors, estimated and obtained approval of costs, established priorities and initiated maintenance activities throughout the museum and its individual galleries. It enables the museum to better follow-up on the maintenance staff – especially contractors, who also work with Maximo. Based on this knowledge, the museum can tailor its tender offer, and consequently contractors can better align their offer to the customer needs.
About IBM Smarter Buildings
IBM delivers technology that manages buildings from museums to office buildings, warehouses, factories, power plants, laboratories, campuses, apartments, resorts and more, to save costs, better manage systems, and reduce carbon emissions. IBM software, hardware and services help create, manage and maintain the world’s most intelligent and interconnected infrastructures from smarter buildings, cities, utilities, offices, transportation systems and operations in every industry.
Since launching its Smarter Buildings initiative in February 2010, IBM has created a portfolio of smarter buildings solutions that integrate with building automation software from across the industry. IBM’s real-time monitoring and analysis, facilities and space management capabilities, and advanced dynamic dashboards helps property owners and managers reduce facilities operations and energy expense, and improve asset management and reliability.
You can learn more about IBM Smarter Buildings here.
Rio de Janeiro’s “Mission Control”
I’ve been extremely blessed to have traveled to many wonderful cities around the world during my tenure with IBM.
If you forced me to choose a favorite…well, it wouldn’t be an easy decision. Far from it.
But near the top of the list would have to be a city that left me absolutely breathless, literally and figuratively, and that’s the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Forget the wonderful caiprinhas cocktails and the breathtaking views — I remember once, on my first visit in 1999, I had to do a presentation in the IBM building there, and they had to close the drapes, the view of the Christ statue in the background so incredibly stunning that I couldn’t focus!
But it’s the people that make the place. And the people of Rio are very special.
And if it’s the people who make the place, it’s also the people who make it run.
And making it run they are, the people of Rio de Janeiro, with a little from our team at IBM.
The New York Times takes an in-depth look this weekend at how Rio’s becoming one of IBM’s hallmark “smarter cities,” as they prepare to host both the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics.
And fellow IBM blogger and buddy of mine Steve Hamm goes even deeper, explaining how the torrential rains in Rio during April 2010 that killed more than 70 residents made mayor Eduardo Paes vow that such horror would not occur on his watch again.
This story provides an excellent case study as to the type of smarter building, city, and infrastructure management that we’ll be hearing discussed at this week’s IBM Pulse 2012 conference in Las Vegas!
Check out the video below to learn more about Rio’s smarter city operation.
IBM Smarter Buildings Analytics Helps CFOs Prepare For Major Accounting Shift
You can tell we’re getting close to the Pulse 2012 event.
Just earlier today, IBM introduced some new analytics software to help CFOs and real estate executives accelerate their preparedness for pending compliance rules for leased assets.
Proposed accounting rules from the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), which are expected to be finalized in 2012, will require a company’s leased assets — real estate, vehicles, other equipment — to be added to their balance sheet as a capital asset.
That means S&P 500 companies would have to list the value of their leases on the balance sheet, weighing them down with an estimated average of more than $1 billion in new assets.
The pending regulation has the potential to dampen their financial performance as expressed in debt/equity ratios and return on assets.
The U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) estimates that the impact of these changes may approach $1.25 trillion dollars for U.S. publicly traded companies.
Visibility Into Your Leased Assets
IBM’s announcement today centers on issuing new software to help companies manage this major accounting change.
IBM TRIRIGA software has new analytics that delivers visibility into balance sheet and income statement impact; financial assumptions and audit controls for both real estate and equipment leases; and automates management review and approval processes, specifically to help companies navigate the proposed regulation.
The new software also delivers strategic facility scenario modeling to increase return on leased real property assets.
With a global view, the software can:
- Provide operational controls such as critical date alerts, payment processing and financial assumptions for leased real estate and equipment assets in a single technology platform.
- Provide balance sheet and income statement analysis of complex real estate lease decisions, such as 10 years with two renewal options versus 20 years, for instance.
- Help predict future demand for space and display gaps between demand and availability of real estate space.
These types of analytics are critical as an IBM study issued today shows 92 percent of those surveyed believe they are not prepared to implement the pending rules.
The IBM survey, conducted by CFO Research Services, a research group sponsored by CFO Publishing, polled 179 senior executives from global companies with revenue in excess of US$1 billion.
About IBM Smarter Buildings
Since launching its Smarter Buildings initiative in February 2010, IBM has created a portfolio of smarter buildings solutions that integrate with building automation software from across the industry.
IBM’s real-time monitoring and analysis, facilities and space management capabilities, and advanced dynamic dashboards helps property owners and managers reduce facilities operations and energy expense, and improve asset management and reliability.
Through IBM’s acquisition of TRIRIGA, IBM accelerated efforts to bring intelligence in the smarter buildings market. IBM’s smarter building solutions help clients listen to data generated by facilities.
By collecting, managing, and analyzing data IBM helps clients gain intelligence and insight to energy, space and facilities management. TRIRIGA strengthens IBM’s smarter buildings solutions by adding key functions such as real estate, facility and energy management software solutions.
Register to watch this video about these new lease accounting solutions from IBM, and next week, be sure to follow #ibmpulse and #smarterbuildings for some exciting news on smarter building management emanating from the IBM Pulse 2012 event.
turbotodd
Turbotodd 