To prosper, stay ahead of change

Business Times - 25 Jun 2009

What is needed today is an infrastructure that supports the convergence of business and IT needs and assets

By CHEAH SAW PHENG

WE have long known that organisations are living systems - made up of smaller components and systems. As the planet becomes a smarter planet - and more human beings, man-made systems and natural systems become interconnected, instrumented and intelligent - we begin to achieve unprecedented freedom to build, assemble, reassemble, loosely couple and link resources in the organisation.

Organisations that are prospering most are those that are dynamic and resilient enough to stay ahead of the change required of them.

And it's not just about pervasive connectivity. For the first time, massively powerful computers can be applied affordably to processing, modelling, forecasting and analysing just about any workload or task. New approaches to service delivery are taking hold, such as cloud computing models - creating a new kind of user experience - particularly in the consumer Web space - in search, social networking, retail and productivity applications.

From the user perspective, cloud computing holds promise for organisations to acquire services without needing to understand the underlying technology. Utility wires, automobiles and packaged goods are becoming increasingly 'instrumented' with sensors, transistors or RFID tags.

We are all now 'interconnected' no matter where we are thanks to the Internet. And becoming ever more 'intelligent' thanks to advanced software that communicates with vast supercomputing data centres.

Major shift underway

A whole host of rapidly accelerating changes are unfolding: mergers of 100-year-old companies, creation of new industries and the demise of others, the emergence of new economies, the opening of long-isolated markets, the imposition of new government regulations and the relaxation of others, and so on.

Today, the PC model of the 1980s and the highly distributed model of the 1990s must be replaced by a new, more integrated paradigm, based on openness, networks, powerful new technology and the integration of digital intelligence into the fabric of everyday work and life.

Take a look at The Fullerton Hotel in Singapore, a six-star luxury hotel with 400 rooms and suites carefully designed to provide both business and leisure travellers with a sanctuary of serenity and comfort in which to retreat and rejuvenate.

To take its guest service and operation capabilities to new heights, the Fullerton replaced its ageing computing infrastructure with a more robust, highly scalable, reliable and energy-efficient infrastructure to support its new business intelligence, human resources and inventory management applications.

Its goal was to leverage leading-edge technology that will enable its staff to enhance efficiency and better service to its guests, while having a positive effect on the environment and running a more cost-effective operation.

The result? The new infrastructure has reduced the hotel's data centre server footprint by 75 per cent, helping to save on facilities space and cabling. With fewer systems to manage and update, the hotel's system management is streamlined and there are savings on labour costs.

Adding to that, the drop of at least 30 per cent in the power and cooling costs of its data centres is helping the hotel make its mark in going green and caring for the environment.

The change gap

Recent surveys indicate that 98 per cent of CEOs plan business model changes and 83 per cent expect substantial or very substantial change. But the gap between those who expect change and those who believe they can handle it has tripled in the past two years.

For instance, take the utility industry. Who wouldn't want to better manage demand with available capacity rather than build expensive new power plants. Or if you actually knew what consumer demand was, automatically reroute power rather than overload the grid and end up with another power outage.

So what's holding them back? To do that, they'd have to take their IT assets out of their silos. And take their business or 'operational' assets - that network of power plants and distribution systems - out of their silos.

And integrate them into a 'smarter grid' which would allow them to manage all those transformers and breakers, and even the smart meters and thermostats in our homes and harvest all that intelligence from their IT systems.

In the food industry, consumer pressure and government regulations now mandate that food producers ensure the safety of the food supply across the supply chain. Yet headlines about salmonella and E coli outbreaks are way too frequent.

So what's holding back the food industry? The way the food companies monitor and control the temperature of their perishable goods is not working. They don't have an infrastructure in place that connects the farm, to the truck, to the supermarket shelves.

So whether it is food or utilities - while they are totally different industries, they all share something in common.

What's holding them back? What we call a 'change gap'. Their business or 'operations' and IT assets are highly fragmented and highly distributed, thereby creating an environment that has business and IT operations working in silos. There is a large gap between our progress digitising and instrumenting critical applications and processes and the rigidity of the underlying infrastructure.

Infrastructure needs

What is needed today in this digitally connected world is an infrastructure that supports the convergence of business and IT needs and assets, creating integrated 'smart' assets that will enable organisations to reduce costs, manage risk and improve service while reducing costs.

The key requirements that such an infrastructure has to address include the integration of digital and physical infrastructure, the need to manage, store and analyse a massive amount data and reduce massive inefficiencies of energy, data centres and server utilisation.

The underlying technical capabilities that allow the development of such a converged, dynamic and smart infrastructure include:

• Virtualisation - Breaking out of the barriers of physical devices in a data centre, servers, storage, networks, data and applications giving businesses improved total cost of ownership, resiliency and flexibility
• Energy efficiency - Optimising the energy efficiency of the IT infrastructure to reduce costs, resolve space, power and cooling constraints
• Service management - Integrated visibility, control and automation across all of the business and IT infrastructure components that support differentiated service delivery and accelerated business growth
• Asset management - Enhanced asset reliability, availability and uptime that underpin quality delivery of service according the priorities of the business while also maximising return on lifetime asset investment along with inventory optimisation, labour efficiency, and mitigating the risk of equipment failures that jeopardise the environment and the health and safety of people.
• Security - Adopt a new approach to managing risk and security across organisations, processes, and information as the IT and business infrastructure become more interconnected
• Business resiliency - Build in capabilities to rapidly adapt and respond to risks, as well as opportunities, in order to maintain continuous business operations, reduce operational costs, and enable growth in an increasingly connected world
• Information infrastructure - Supported by a resilient infrastructure for securely storing and managing information and mitigating business risks.

These are unique and challenging times. But times of challenge also bring with them great possibilities. Smart systems are transforming energy grids, traffic systems and supply chains. They are ensuring the security of financial transactions and the safety of our food supply.

They are changing our business models and how we work together. Rising cost pressures, higher service expectations, new risks and threats and emerging smarter and more adaptive technologies, such as cloud computing, virtualisation and Web 2.0 are some of the driving forces that are further accelerating the need for this change. In fact, in this globally integrated economy, a converged, dynamic infrastructure that enables a business access and extracts value from all types of assets, whether it's physical, digital, or virtual, is becoming the basis of competitive advantage.

The author is general manager, Systems & Technology Group, IBM Singapore

A Phone for the Elderly

A SIMPLE-TO-USE cellphone, targeted at the elderly and children, looks set to be the potential star of the PC Show.

The phone's maker, Foresight Technologies, a Singapore company, will be making its debut at the electronics fair, which starts on Thursday.

Unlike most current mobile phones that have tiny, dinky buttons, the iNo Mobile has buttons at least three times bigger, so the elderly can press them easily, as well as a torch.

There is a special SOS button on the back of the handset so that if an elderly person gets into trouble, pressing the single button will send emergency calls and text messages to four pre-programmed numbers.

And when the button is released, the phone will also sound a siren to attract the attention of passers-by.

Singapore shows the way

Business Times - 03 Jun 2009

It is one of the most impressive examples of a smarter city that IBM has seen to-date

By TERESA LIM

IN WHAT many are calling the worst of times, let me offer a different perspective. I believe that the current economic crisis represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform our current world, to build more intelligent cities, infrastructures and systems that will not just repair, but prepare our economy for the 21st century.

Consider this. In 1900, only 13 per cent of the world's population lived in cities. By 2050, that number will be 75 per cent. We are adding the equivalent of seven New Yorks to the planet every year.

While this unprecedented urbanisation is both an emblem of our economic and societal progress, it is stressing the planet's infrastructure with challenges including traffic congestion, water and waste management, sanitation, food and nutrition security.

We therefore need to start building a smarter world - one city at a time. The process has already begun. Intelligence is being infused into the way our cities work.

Malta, Germany and Denmark are applying smart meters and instrumentation to make the power grid more stable, adaptable and less costly. Masdar City, being built from scratch near Abu Dhabi, will be the world's first economically and environmentally sustainable city, with zero carbon emissions.

Asian countries are going through an even faster urbanisation frenzy. And its emerging nations are struggling with the resulting strain on their crumbling infrastructures.

Singapore is at the nexus of these changes. Singapore is one of the most impressive examples of a smarter city that IBM has seen to-date. It is transforming a world-class infrastructure managed by world-class professionals into a smarter city powered by the world's most advanced technologies.

By identifying the right opportunities and targeting investments in smarter systems, the government and businesses can drive the next wave of economic growth, while making life in Singapore better for all its citizens.

Singapore's recent stimulus package was clearly designed to fully exploit the potential of the future - rightly focused on investing in training to make its people more competitive, and creating more intelligent systems for transport and water management, and a more integrated health infrastructure.

Sam Palmisano, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer, defines a smarter city as one with economic, technological and social systems that are sustainable, and are truly systems that come together to make the community more productive, more efficient, safer, more vibrant and more responsive to opportunities.

In our view, Singapore is doing many things right in becoming a smarter city. The Republic's systems currently come together efficiently and effectively for its residents and businesses.

These are some proof points:

Smarter transport: Cities in Sweden, Australia and England are using smarter transport systems to reduce both congestion and pollution. Stockholm has introduced a dynamic toll system that has reduced traffic by 20 per cent, decreased wait time by 25 per cent and cut emissions by 12 per cent.

Locally, we partnered with the Land Transport Authority (LTA) to build smarter transport systems to address traffic management challenges. We leveraged our research asset, the Traffic Prediction Tool, providing LTA with the ability to predict traffic flow up to 60 minutes into the future with an accuracy of about 85 per cent. Another collaboration is the LTA Green IT initiative where LTA achieved savings of at least 20 per cent in energy consumption for its IT environment.

Last November, LTA and IBM embarked on an initiative aimed at promoting Singapore as a centre for research for world-class urban transport solutions.

Smarter healthcare: Technology alone will not solve all the problems in healthcare, but we believe that they provide the building blocks for creating more integrated, more intelligent healthcare systems.

Smarter healthcare means integrating data and centring it on the patient, so patients 'own' their information and have access to a networked team of collaborative care. It means moving away from paper records, reducing medical errors and improving efficiencies. And it means applying advanced analytics to vast amounts of data, to improve outcomes.

Singapore continues to lead the region in healthcare with significant investment in healthcare infrastructure, including funds to develop a national electronic health records system, based on the principle of 'one citizen, one health record', accessible by all hospitals and polyclinics.

This is a bold and far-reaching move that will deliver smarter, more effective healthcare to its residents, especially those who need care from a variety of healthcare providers. This is an important first step towards the creation of an integrated intelligent healthcare system - linking diagnosis, drug discovery and healthcare providers to insurers, employers, patients and communities.

Smarter water: The theme at the inaugural Singapore International Water Week 2007 was 'Sustainable Water Solutions for Cities' with good reason. In Asia, 700 million people do not have access to safe drinking water. But Singapore already has in place a resilient infrastructure that delivers safe drinking water to every resident on tap, and a strategy that will provide adequate supply for both its residents and industrial needs.

Singapore's water management efforts have been widely recognised on the global water stage. Its Deep Tunnel Sewerage System (DTSS), a superhighway for used water management, was recently crowned the 'Water Project of the Year' at the prestigious Global Water Awards 2009 in Zurich, Switzerland. PUB Singapore was also honoured with the prestigious 2007 Stockholm Industry Water Award for its holistic approach to water resources management.

Singapore is clearly well positioned to seize the opportunities to lead in this area. This is precisely why we chose Singapore to be one of six worldwide locations to hold IBM's Global Innovation Outlook (GIO), specifically on oceans and water management. We brought together private and public sector, academic and commercial participants from 12 countries last October, to brainstorm on sustaining the world's water systems.

Another GIO will be held in Singapore this July, focusing on Smarter Cities - building intelligence into systems and processes that enable people to work, recreate and govern themselves.

Smarter people: Today's global economy is a giant service system, comprising billions of people, millions of businesses, and millions of technology products. In Singapore, the services industry accounted for 68 per cent of its 2008 GDP, and continues to grow.

We know that the service-oriented world calls for a new breed of workers of the 21st century. Our vision is to develop T-shaped professionals with deep proficiency in one area - engineering for instance - and a breadth of multi-disciplinary skills that will enable them to collaborate productively and fuel the growth of our services economy.

This new field is called Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME). IBM worked with Singapore's top universities resulting in Nanyang Technological University, the National University of Singapore, Singapore Management University and the Institute of Systems Science introducing SSME into their curricula.

Partnering the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, we rallied leading industry partners to jointly sponsor the National Infocomm Scholarship, which supports students to pursue infocomm and SSME-related degrees.

Smarter cities are the result of years of planning and execution by a strong government with a single- minded focus on citizen welfare and business growth, coupled with the passion and responsible behaviour of a people with a thirst for innovation.

Singapore clearly possesses the blueprints of a smarter city, and more importantly, the opportunity to level the playing field and create economic value and vitality for its nation and a better quality of life for its population.

The Republic has achieved incredible economic success while maintaining social harmony in less than a generation's lifetime. Today, it is timely for Singapore to seize the global stage as here lives and breathes a smarter city model that many others in Asia and the rest of the world can follow.

The writer is managing director, IBM Singapore

US$10 laptop

Feb 3, 2009

NEW DELHI - INDIA has unveiled plans to produce a laptop computer costing just US$10 (S$15) in a bid to improve the skills of millions of students across the country.

The laptops will be mass-produced as part of a government-sponsored education scheme launched on Tuesday in the southern city of Tirupati.

Details about the computer remain scarce, but Higher Education Secretary R.P. Agrawal said last week that it would be available within six months.

"Once the testing is over, the computers will be made available on commercial basis," he told the Press Trust of India news agency.

"Its cost will be 10 US dollars. If the parents want to gift something to their kids, they can easily purchase this item."

The laptop will reportedly have a two gigabyte memory and wireless Internet capability, but officials have not publicly demonstrated a prototype - or yet explained how it can be produced at such a low cost.

The government has earmarked more than 46 billion rupees (S$1.4 billion) to develop the low-power gadget to work in rural areas with unreliable power supply and poor Internet connectivity.

The planned laptop is part of a push to increase the number of students in higher education and give them the technological skills needed to further boost India's economic growth.

New Delhi rebuffed a previous attempt to bring cheap laptops to India, led by MIT computer scientist Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child programme.

The government cited hidden costs for its rejection of that computer, which was dubbed the US$100 laptop.

-- AFP