Live @ IBM Pulse 2013: A Q&A With IBM Tivoli GM Deepak Advani

Turbo sat down for a chat with IBM Tivoli general manager Deepak Advani earlier this week, discussing a range of topics relevant to to the broader smarter infrastructure management discussion taking place at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas this week.

This week at IBM Pulse 2013, I had the opportunity to sit down with IBM Tivoli general manager, Deepak Advani.

Deepak has served in a variety of executive capacities at IBM during the course of his career, including most recently as the Vice President of IBM’s Business Analytics organization. He was also instrumental in the development and growth of IBM’s Linux portfolio, and later served e1as the Chief Marketing Officer for Lenovo.

Our chat ranged across a variety of topics relevant to the conference and the broad opportunity presented by more effective infrastructure and asset management and utilization. Deepak recapped some of the key themes he presented to the audience of 8,000+ attendees, spoke of the challenges the world’s largest organizations face with respect to their IT operations, and explained how more effective visibility, control and automation of their systems can help turn opportunities into business outcomes.

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.

Live From IBM Pulse 2013: Dr. Danny Sabbah — The Internet Is The Computer

Dr. Danny Sabbah, CTO and general manager for IBM Next Generation Architecture, extols on the promise and virtues of the nexus between “systems of engagement” and “systems of record” at the opening general session of IBM Pulse 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada, earlier today.

Welcome to the world of the hybrid cloud and legacy application environment, a merger of the front office and the back, the nexus of the burgeoning mobile and social milieu (the “systems of engagement”) with the systems of record.

This was the key message delivered in the opening general session of IBM Pulse 2013 here at the almost packed MGM Grand Garden arena here in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The opening itself was another kind of hybrid, one that featured a number of skilled percussionists drumming in the key messages of the challenges and opportunities facing IT organizations around the globe.

Speed is a constant.  Change is a constant.  Declining budgets are a constant.  What’s the variable?

The opportunity to create new kinds of value for the organization by better fusing business assets, facilities, infrastructure, and data into a seamless and holistic view of the entire operation, one whereby you help your organization better gain increased visibility, control, and automation.

In short, to move from being a cost center to a center of strategic business innovation, and to turn opportunities into outcomes.

Are you prepared to take on this new challenge?

IBM Tivoli marketing guru Scott Hebner entered the stage to set the stage for IBM Pulse 2013, explaining there were 8,000+ attendees from over 80 countries around the globe, and that the depth and breadth and diversity of experience in this room (and we’re talking about a pretty big room…like, as in, Carrie Underwood will be playing this room for Pulse this evening) was unprecedented.

Scott started his opening by asking a few key questions of the gathered infrastructure management faithful: Where does an infrastructure begin and where does it end?  How do we make it become more interconnected and instrumented so we can garner more value from existing assets?

Scott explained that we’re all sitting on a staggering amount of operational data, both animate and inanimate — and not just in the traditional data center, either.  In your tractors.  Your warehouses.  Your office buildings.

And this “operational big data” residing in all those assets is an enormous opportunity, one that allows us to better understand the “exact condition of everything in real-time.” Which means also extracting new value from those assets and, hence, being able to then provide better services to our organizations and users.

But the climbing of this new mountain of data has its challenges.  For one, skills.  IDC expects 7 million new cloud computing positions to come online, 6X that over the rest of IT employment.  That means new skills, new training, new…students.

Which is one of the primary reasons we’re all gathered here in Lost Wages, to come together and learn from the experts and one another, to improve the economics of IT, and to uncover those growth opportunities.

Scott introduced a customer who flew all the way here from down under, in Melbourne, Australia, to share their experience in this new frontier of computing.

Neal Roberts, the CIO of Yarra Trams, is part of a team that oversees the largest tram network in the world, one with 250 kilometers of track and nearly 500 tram cars that travel some 185 million track miles per year!

First, Yarra’s values, which help drive both the team and the trams: Think like a passenger, do Zero harm, and provide Continuous Improvement.

The first two are pretty self-evident, but the third, continuous improvement, takes some concerted and coordinated effort and a lot of hard work.

That coordination increasingly takes place between the line of business and IT organizations.  And Mr. Roberts explained that “We’re all facing the same challenges. Trying to manage the velocity of change, and to become centers of innovation while reinventing the customer relationship.”

For Yarra, that meant driving a symbiosis of asset management and location information, the so-called systems of record, with the real-time notification opportunities of social media data.

It goes a little something like this: The rains come, puts a tram out of service when it gets flooded, the operations center is notified, the operations center schedules a dispatch to fix the train, the schedule is altered, data is streamed to the public cloud (including a mobile app for tram users) to notify them automagically the train schedule has been disrupted/altered, the tram eventually gets fixed, all goes back to normal.

Yarra Tram of Melbourne, Australia, uses IBM Maximo asset management technology to bridge to “systems of engagement” and inform Melbourne citizens when trams are out of service so they can make other arrangement.s

No problem, the trams are back to running on time.

Dr. Danny Sabbah, CTO and general manager of IBM Next Generation Platforms, picked it up from there.

Dr. Sabbah observed that we are truly at an inflection point, and that since last year, the key themes which emerged around securing the cloud, mobile, and embedded solutions, have only become more important, and that we’re now seeing this increased integration of public cloud data and the existing services.

That is again the important nexus to focus on, because it is from that nexus that we’ll see increasing value unlocked by organizations around the globe, and it’s a new stage in the evolution of technology and the importance of data.

Dr. Sabbah included a key example: Mobile devices are anticipated to account for 40% of access to all kinds of business applications in the next few years.

And as a result of this, big data is joining mobile and cloud as the next must have competency.

“Devices are becoming more intelligent and communicating even more data,” Sabbah continued, and we’re getting “smart buildings, smart grids, and smarter healthcare. None of these are operating in isolated silos.”

“The convergence of these technologies,” he explained, “is driving the Internet of things.”

And yet intelligent interconnection and instrumentation is making it increasingly hard to balance efficiency and innovation. Sabbah explained, “The drive for innovation drives a commensurate need for technology optimization” and that optimization is what helps free up finite IT resources for focusing on innovation.

That is also another reason IBM has put so much muscle behind its PureSystems line of technology, with the express intention of freeing up people, time, and money from mundane operational tasks of server administration, data routines, etc., so they can work on value added projects!

The new cloud and mobile-based “systems of engagement” spoken of earlier, along with the systems of record from the past 40 years of computing, aren’t going away, and in fact, the opportunity for these systems to interact and interoperate extracts new value.  But that requires flexibility (read: openness) in their infrastructure design, because different workloads are coming together — some require new levels of optimization, others new levels of maintenance, and some towards speed of delivery.

But, ultimately, flexible architectures allow us to mash up new services, so that those organizations who build flexibility into their infrastructure DNA are those “most poised to win.”

Getting there will require rapid iteration and the continued “reduction of confused and conflicting infrastructure and software.”

“It’s not the network that’s the computer,” Sabbah wound down.  “It’s the Internet that’s the computer.”

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.

The IBM Pulse 2012 Circus Begins

Greetings from Viva Las Vegas, Nevada.

I arrived here under the cover of darkness yesterday.

Actually, I arrived in the afternoon, but “cover of darkness” sounds so much more dramatic.

It’s been a crazy week on the road, but we’re only halfway through. Now, Pulse 2012 starts.

Pulse is one of my favorite IBM Software events.  It was Tivoli that brought me back to my native Texas, and to Austin in particular, in the summer of 2001.

I made a lot of great friends during my time working with the Tivoli brand, and I also got a lot of great work done.

And Tivoli has evolved over the past eleven years.  Dramatically.

I need not tell any Tivolian, customer or employee, that.

For my money, it’s evolved all for the better.  The focus of the Tivoli business has far expanded well beyond its core systems management focus, which is what it was centered around when I arrived.

Here’s a factoid: I’ve never seen a Cirques du Soleil performance.  Until last night, when I took in the “Ka” show here at the MGM Grand.

That might seem like a random transition.  But follow me here.  A Cirques du Soleil performance is like one big ecosystem that must be managed across its disparate parts.

A former theatre major myself, I watched in fascination at all the systems that were in play during the Cirques’ performance of “Ka.”  The massive staging and hydraulic systems.  The flying systems that allowed the performers to defy gravity.  The house staff that welcomed the audience into the show.  The audience itself.  The cast. The scores of stagehands in the background.

If you’ve seen a Cirques du Soleil performance, you know of which I speak: It’s a massive and complex linkage of disparate systems coming together to create the wonder that are their shows.

These days, your world is a lot like all those systems.  And to be able to understand and manage it all, and extract new value out of the knowledge you have about all those systems…well, that’s where Tivoli comes in.

I’m going to leave it at that, lest you think I’m completely off my rocker.  But, I’ve done my homework preparing for Pulse 2012, and between the focus on managing mobile, physical assets and infrastructure, the cloud, and the underlying security, there’s plenty of opportunity for systems linkage and improved understanding of those systems.

So, welcome to Las Vegas for Pulse 2012.

Speaking of systems, be sure and check your bathroom for Bengali tigers.  I think it’s just always better to be safe than sorry.

In the meantime, keep an eye here on the Turbo blog and on the Twitter hashtag #ibmpulse.  There’s going to be a firehose of information coming at you these next few days!

Live @ Pulse 2010: Chesapeake’s Smarter City

At today’s IBM Pulse 2010 event here in Las Vegas, IBM and the City of Chesapeake, Virginia, announced how they’ve partnered to build a “smarter city,” one in which intelligent city-wide systems enhance public services, including public works, public utilities, public safety, and even its parks and recreation initiatives.

The use of IBM technology in this effort is enhancing services delivered to the public ranging from maintenance and operations of traffic signals and water systems to the management of the City’s Fire and Police Departments.

As a result of these efforts, the City of Chesapeake is consistently improving the quality of life for its citizens.

The Background

The City of Chesapeake is one of the larger cities in Virginia, covering some 353 square miles. It’s a diverse community, with suburban, urban, and rural areas, with with a business community that is equally diverse.

It includes more than 80 foreign-based companies from 19 different countries, and a city that has more miles of deep water canals, including the Intracoastal Waterway, than any other city in the U.S.

IBM software manages the maintenance of equipment and facilities for the Chesapeake Public Works Department, including the people and trucks using brine for snow removal at the City of Chesapeake Expressway Toll Plaza

The size and location of the city makes it a complex infrastructure to manage. These unique challenges can be addressed in part by using technology to collect and analyze data that can be used to improve how transportation, utility management, and public safety systems react to constantly changing conditions.

A Comprehensive Plan for a Smarter City

In accordance with its comprehensive plan, the City of Chesapeake is paving the way to a smarter future by currently investing more than $1.2M U.S. in capital improvement projects affecting community facilities, economic development, and other key departments.

“Technology is the power tool of today,” said Peter R. Wallace, CIO of the City of Chesapeake. “We’re using IBM Software to give staff the data and tools to continually improve processes, which is essential in this economy. The City of Chesapeake is less than 50 years old, but those founders inherited hundreds of years of infrastructure. Until now, we haven’t had a quick or convenient way to look at the City’s assets and make smart decisions. To succeed, we must be efficient in the way we work and transparent to our citizens. IBM is helping us accomplish those goals.”

IBM’s software is connecting city systems, and providing the various city departments with a transparent view of what’s going on at any given time. By analyzing the data and sharing the findings across departments, the city is able to detect and react to potential problems more quickly.

IBM: A Vision for Smarter Cities

A recent IBM Institute for Business Value report entitled “A Vision of Smarter Cities” asserts that the digitization of data within a city’s core systems will enable city managers to collect data on the efficiency of processes that could not be previously measured, like wastewater treatment. This, in turn, will lead to more informed decision-making and planning from city leaders.

Michael Fitchett, the City of Chesapeake Systems Development Coordinator and a former city firefighter, discussed at a press conference today hosted by Tivoli general manager Al Zollar his team’s efforts in building a smarter City of Chesapeake.

“When we went live in December 2008 with IBM Maximo asset management software, I never thought I’d be up here talking about a smarter city initiative. The system has allowed me and my team to see a lot of different facets and look across the entire environment of the city and to, in turn, provide our citizens with better services.

“My CIO looks at me everyday and says “ATA” — Accountability, Transparency, and Agility.  I have a mayor who walks into the room and asks what our motto is: ‘We’re open for business.'”

Fitchett explained that he had strong management support, and that every day he is looking for “efficiencies and effectiveness” and explained what he considers to be the essence of a smarter city:

“Making sure we’re getting needed data out to our field personnel so that they can make real-time decisions: Working on a broken water main, perhaps having a video feed down that pipe to see proximity locations and able to analyze and instantly make critical infrastructure decisions.”

“The City of Chesapeake serves as a great example of how cities can take advantage of technology to provide citizens and businesses with a better, smarter place to live,” said Bill Sawyer, vice president of operations, IBM Maximo software. “By using these IBM technologies to better manage critical systems like water management and public safety, the city is both improving the quality of life for its citizens today and building a more sustainable future.”