Cloud Computing Event – Coming Up in San Jose!

Join me at the SIIA On Demand Cloud Computing Event next week in San Jose!

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Yep that’s me talking about cloud computing and the SIIA OnDemand conference.  And I meant what I said:  you should join me at the SIIA On Demand Conference (www.siia.net/ondemand) in San Jose.  This conference will have such great practical advice – we’ll be hearing from experts about how to drive more revenue in this tough economy.  They’ll talk about using social media marketing techniques, new pricing strategies, and lots of other ways you can see results quickly.  There’s also going to be a large forum for hearing actual real world success (and failures) that you can learn from and apply to your business.

As I mentioned in the video, if you come for the first day, you can join me at an IBM-hosted pre-conference event Oct. 28.  And come by and say hi on the second day, when I’ll be part of a panel discussing “Channel Strategies That Win: A View From the Top.”

Find out more about the conference at these links:

Look at the conference overview – http://www.siia.net/ondemand/
Join the LinkedIn group once you register:  http://bit.ly/odgroupmembers
Browse the current attendee list – http://www.siia.net/ondemand/2009/attendees.asp
Review the conference agenda -  http://www.siia.net/ondemand/2009/schedule.asp
Register today – http://www.siia.net/ondemand/2009/register.asp.  Enter promo code PRMSPKR and save $100.
I look forward to seeing you there!

A quick update on Smarter Utilities

This week we announced the results of another smart grid pilot project here in North Carolina.  IBM and our partner Consert worked to install energy management devices on specific appliances at each location – such as hot water heaters, pool pumps, HVAC, etc.  – to give consumers the ability match the device power consumption to their use.   For example – why not turn off the hot water heater when no one is home all day!

The pilot was run for 100 residential and business customers of the Fayetteville Public Works Commission, the local utility.  The result – customers were able to reduce their consumption by ~20% in the first month!

Here’s a good overview at the NY Times Green Inc Blog – check it out!

Thinking a lot about food lately!

Lately I’ve been thinking quite a bit about food – not so much because I’m hungry but because it seems to be a topic that keeps popping up in both my work and personal life.

A few weeks ago our family helped hand out grocery bags with shopping lists to members of our church.   We were part of an effort to help the Raleigh Catholic Parish Outreach replenish their food bank, as they have seen a 42% increase in families seeking aid this summer compared to last year.  Clearly the recession is worsening the situation for many families across North Carolina who seek out CPO for a week’’s worth of groceries.  Families take the shopping bags with a shopping list of items attached, fill the bag with the items, and bring it back the following week to be collected and taken to the CPO Food Bank. Essentially this work of charity is to gather food from those able to procure it to share it and redistribute it to those less fortunate.

Last week our family also enjoyed our weekly delivery of The Produce Box. It’s a great service we subscribe to that deliver locally grown, farm-fresh produce to our door every week during our North Carolina growing season.   Why – because it not only supports local farmers, but it tastes better and is healthier too!

Then last week we also saw the passing and death of Norman Borlaug.  As you may know, Norman won the Nobel Prize in 1970 for his revolutionary work to create genetically altered strains of wheat and rice that significantly increased the crop yields.  He is universally credited with saving the lives of hundreds of millions of people by enabling many developing economies to become self-sufficient in their agricultural production during the 1960s.

During the recent downturn there have also been quite a few media articles and reports about the increasing number of citizens (and especially Americans) who have taken to growing their own produce.   Given the global economic downturn they are now frequently called “recession gardens.“

Thanks in large part to the innovation of Mr. Borlaug there is now sufficient food on the earth to feed the world’s population.  Similarly, thanks to programs like the Produce Box, my family can enjoy organic food from a local farm as an alternative to the very good and high quality produce in the grocery store that is shipped in from all parts of the globe.

But still we have a hunger problem in many parts of the world.  As you can see at the Stop the Hunger site – approximately 27,000 people die of hunger each day in the world, and 78% of the malnourished children live in countries with food surpluses.   So if we have enough food – it must just be a question of getting it to the right places…..

More to come – on Smarter Food….

Indian Perspective on Global Leadership

As many of you know, I’ve been traveling in India last week and this week to work both with key software partners, as well as to spend time with our rapidly expanding IBM India Software Marketing Center of Excellence.

As part of IBM’s transformation to become a globally integrated enterprise, our goal is to ensure we are leverage the best talent available all around the world, while simultaneously shifting talent to the best market opportunities.  Obviously this requires quite an adept organization and strong leadership to ensure we are always focusing on the right product areas (software, services, high-value servers and not longer PCs), the right geographic markets (more focus on high-growth emerging markets like China, India, Brazil, etc.) and the right client opportunities (more focus in the last few years on small and mid-size clients.)

Managing to keep, retain, and shift talent to meet this ever changing business dynamic requires careful leadership and a truly global perspective.   As I sat at breakfast this morning in Mumbai, India I was reading today’s The Economic Times – and ironically enough, they had a piece on their op-ed page that talks precisely about global leadership and managing talent.  The author – Kumar Mangalam Birla is chairman of the Aditya Birla Group – which is a $28B Indian Company that is part of the Fortune 500 and has subsidiaries that compete in everything from cement and aluminum production to mobile telephones and grocery stores.

In his piece that was printed today he argues that -

“Being a true-blue MNC [multi-national company] is only partly about geographic spread. It is relatively simple to address cross-border issues pertaining to technology, finance, markets and products. But extremely difficult to cope up with challenges relating to the human dimension. Global leadership is all about developing a mindset that wants to leverage resources seamlessly, across geographic boundaries. A mindset that is eager to build unique capabilities, to transcend the barriers of cultures in order to create value. It’s about being global in attitudes — but without letting go of your roots.”

I think this offers a great perspective on the true nature of global leadership.  Last week I had the privilege of meeting many of our newest members of the  IBM Software Marketing Center of Excellence Team here in India – and I know they will help us blaze the trail toward creating the best possible value for our IBM clients by leveraging resources seamlessly regardless of their geographic location.

Below are a couple of photos of our new teammates!

A new twist on web 2.0 social networking tools

As I travel around the world working with our software partners – I try and keep an eye out for interesting and effective marketing campaigns.  Today as I changed planes in Boston Logan airport on my way to London and then Bangalore, I saw a series of adds for Dentyne gum that caught my eye.

Here’s one of the ads below -

And then another one next to it was -

Given that my wife and I were living in Boston and Washington DC during our year of engagement, and our wedding anniversary is today (don’t worry – we celebrated with a fine dinner at  Sequoia in Georgetown last night!) – I can relate this image in a special way!

But more importantly, from a marketing point of view, these ads seem to be pretty effective at a nice juxtaposition of the online world with the real world.  And if you check out their web site, it has a 3-minute limit on it (check out the creative different  “clocks” you can choose from in upper right corner), so that you can get back to the business of face-time with real people.

Kind of an interesting marketing campaign, check it out and let me know what you think!

Cloud Workshops Now Available

Yesterday I mentioned our new arrangements with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and cloud computing.  Since this is all new, we’ve created two workshops – and we’re planning more – to help get you started:

For startups: Running IBM on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Server (S3): Learn how to use IBM product images in the Amazon EC2 to create and deploy applications in the Amazon cloud. We will show you how to add your own product functionality to the IBM images by rebundling them.  More info here…

Getting started with IBM software on Amazon Web Services featuring sMash & DB2: Learn how you can get an existing application up and running in the Amazon EC2 environment with pre-loaded IBM middleware.  Details here…

You can contact your local IBM Innovation Center to find out about these and other upcoming workshops for partners.

IBM Software available in the cloud….

Given all the excitement around cloud computing, as I travel around meeting with partners I’ve been receiving a lot of questions about the IBM-Amazon partnership to feature our IBM Software on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform.

Quite simply, clients told us that they wanted IBM software available on AWS and we’re delivering it.  Customers and developers can now use IBM software on a public elastic cloud environment.  Our partnership provides a new “pay-as-you-go” model that provides unprecedented access to development and production instances of many IBM software products.

There are three ways to take advantage of this cloud solution:
1) Development and Test Environments – Those of you building commercially available solutions can access IBM Development Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) that include product-level code – with all features and options enabled on a scalable, secure, and cost-effective cloud computing environment. You pay AWS only for your time and the capacity – there is no charge for the IBM software component.  Have a proof of concept project?  Need to do some training and don’t have idle server capacity?  Use any of the Development AMIs in EC2 and only pay for the minimal EC2 charges which start at just $0.10 an hour.  Find out more here!

2) Production Environments – All developers and customers can run development and full production instances of IBM software for an hourly price per instance and these can be used for revenue generating activities (unlike the development only environment above). The Production AMIs include the IBM software, the Novell SUSE operating system and the Amazon EC2 service for a single hourly charge per instance.  All charges are billed by Amazon Web Services and use of service is governed by Amazon Web Services.

Do you have an event you’re planning?  To get the project moving quickly and avoid lengthy procurement cycles and capital expenditures etc, you can get started in a matter of minutes with the WebSphere Portal Server with Lotus Web Content Management AMI.  You pay hourly for use – there’s no license, no contract needed.  And – you can bring down the site when the event is over without a penalty or additional charges.  Details are  here!

3) Run your existing IBM Software in the cloud – new licensing guidelines now allow you to run your already-purchased IBM software on Amazon EC2.  Do you have licenses sitting idle because you can’t get the hardware in place?  Just need more compute infrastructure? You can now move your licenses into the cloud without additional capital expenditures for your customers!  Here is how to get started with BYOL….

Let me know if you are using these environments and how it’s working for your business!

Energy and Environment most need to get smart!

As a follow-up to my post yesterday about Smarter Utilities – a colleague pointed me to the ibm.com smarter planet site today since it has been running a poll to determine which industries most need to “get smarter globally.”

I’m a bit surprised that there’s such an large agreement on the industries that need to get smarter – Energy Production and Environmental Protection, as seen below.

Feel free to check out the site and vote!  I’ll check back in a few more days and see how if and how it’s changed!

My first taste of Smarter Utilities

As I caught up on the pile of “snail mail” at home this past weekend after being gone on holiday to the beach for a week (photo below) – I opened and almost

Beach Holiday 2009

discarded an envelope from our local power company here in North Carolina, Progress Energy.  Since I pay the bill with a checking account debit and we keep our house fairly efficient to keep costs low (78-82 degrees in the summer, and ~67 degrees in the winter), I rarely read all the inserts that some with each statement.

But this one was different – it was an invitation to join the Progress Energy Residential Load Control program.  Under the program, customers can volunteer to join the Progress smart grid, enabling the utility to add a smart device to the customers’ AC unit that allows Progress to cycle the unit off for up to 15 minutes per hour during peak demand times when the electrical grid is experiencing extreme loads.   Besides the benefit of supporting the environmental value of this, customers who opt in are given a $25 annual credit on their bill.

While this might seem minor and is just a small step toward a full Smart Grid, Progress Energy claims in their regulatory filing for this and other related programs that they will achieve nearly 450 megawatts of peak-demand reduction, the equivalent of several large power plants. That’s a lot of power consumption savings.

The company has proposed a 50/50 shared- savings model, under which the costs and benefits of these programs will be evaluated together, and the benefits of reducing peak electricity demand will be shared between customers and the utility. The model is consistent with the provisions of the North Carolina’s energy bill enacted last year.

Given all the focus on green energy lately, it’s encouraging to see it trickle down to my neighborhood.  I’m also intrigued by the shared cost savings model that they articulate – a 50-50 shared savings model with the consumer, which seems pretty equitable to me.  As my wife and I talked about it, it was a pretty short “why WOULDN’T we do this?”  Not only do we help the environment, we get a cost savings, all for a few minutes of potential reduced cooling during peak week day loads. And I suspect that’s just what Progress was hoping for  – the “why wouldn’t we do this” reaction.

Today Progress extended their program further with launch of a twitter ID – EnergyAdvisors – that they will use to tweet energy saving tips to consumers.  Some green tweeting!

I find their approach an interesting contrast to another vendor, in a different industry who could take a similar approach – Charles Schwab & Co brokerage.  As I’m sure many of you do – I receive a pile of mail from them related to the various accounts I have (Retirement IRA statements, Education IRA statement, etc) at the end of each quarter.  While they offer to send the statements to me electronically, given the importance of financial records for tax purposes, I am a bit old-fashioned and still prefer the paper copy. Since each envelope Schwab sends me costs them $0.26 in bulk postage, and probably ~$0.04 to print, that’s $0.30 per envelope.  And I get typically 5 envelops per quarter, costing them $6.00/year  If however, Schwab offered to share the cost benefit with me of stopping these mailings – and agreed to deposit 50% of the savings in my account each quarter – then I might reconsider.  Over 25 years (assume costs are linear for simplicity) – that would add up to about $150 in savings – $75 for me and $75 for them.  Multiply that for Schwab (or any other brokerage) times  >1M account holders and they would see a material bottom line benefit.     Maybe they should consider this type of shared benefit incentive to go green!

Just over a week ago – IBM also extended our commitment to help companies and clients “go green” by announcing the creation of the Green Sigma coalition. The coalition members will work with IBM to integrate their products and services with IBM’s Green Sigma (TM) which applies Lean Six Sigma principles and practices, to employ real-time metering and monitoring with advanced analytics and dashboards.  This will allow clients to make better decisions about energy and water usage, waste and GHG emissions to improve efficiency, lower costs and reduce environmental impact.  So far it’s been pretty well received in the industry as evidenced by the praise from IDC.

What experiences do you have on incentives to “go green.”  Let me know!

mikeriegel1@gmail.com

What If We Had Smarter Insurance?

Over this past weekend I spent part of Father’s Day watching the U.S. Open Golf Tournament, which was once again a striking display of how competitive pressure and being atop the leaderboard can result in rapid changes in the standings and an unexpected winner.  More on that some other time….

During the final two days of the tourney, the commentators were abounding in “what if” analysis given the rapid changes in the standings as the final rounds of golf were played.   As  I watched, I was also struck by how Metlife  has changed their marketing slogan to be “for the IF in life” as evidenced by presence of the Metlife Blimp in the skies over the U.S. Open course.

Then just a few hours later I was off to Toronto and Montreal to meet with two of our key software partners that have solutions to help our clients in the Insurance industry become “smarter.”   As many of you know, Insurance is one of the 13 key industries that IBM is focused on with our Smarter Planet initiative, and for Insurance companies we have a very defined point of view on the future of insurance that you can understand by viewing these videos.

Camilion Solutions is focused on helping insurance companies develop “product agility” for their products – or said differently – increase the speed and flexibility of how insurance companies can develop new offerings and solutions for their clients.  Most insurance firms have to invest significantly in IT each time they create new products, since as information based businesses they have to link their IT and their products so the right information is collected from clients to enable the rating, pricing and risk management associated with the each policy that is issued and the overall insurance risk pool they carry as a company.     Obviously this doesn’t seem like a fast, lean process for most insurance firms – thus the opportunity for Camilion!  They help clients define products as collections of re-usable “components”, store all product information in one central place, and make this accurate and consistent product information accessible by all stakeholders and systems, across products and even lines of business.   The intended result – increased speed to market, lower risk, and reduced costs.  And for us as clients this means better tailored, more flexible products for our insurance needs.

Then on Tuesday I spent most of the day with Silanis Technology.  If you have ever applied for any type of insurance, you know full well the mountains of paperwork that are required during the application process, and then again once as you are issued a policy.   Despite all the technology in the world, most important transactions like insurance, or buying a home, require an avalanche of paper to be printed out and signed.  Now however,  we can be smarter – with the solution offered by Silanis.   They invented the technology and the business process management solution to handle this type of complexity and they automate the business processes requiring secure, compliant and legally enforceable, electronic signatures and records. They pioneered the electronic signature market more than 17 years ago, and have developed a very large client base.   In many ways they automated “the last inch” of so many processes – where all the documents are created electronically (thankfully no more typewriters and carbon copies!) – but we still print the docs to sign, and then send them off to somewhere to be scanned into electronic records!

It seems like adoption of this type of solution has also accelerated since new legal guidelines for e-signatures were issued in most countries beginning in 2000.  Next time you get an insurance policy, or close on a new home, you might be able to do it all online – saving all that paper printing, all the courier fees, and even the fees to show up at the lawyer’s office in person.  Imagine a world where we don’t have to print all those docs  and how that will contribute to saving our environment!  That sounds like a good first step toward a smarter planet.

Even BIGGER breakthroughs are possible when we then combine real time indicators of risk with real time analytics and business model innovation.  One cool example was unveiled today at the Global Humanitarian Forum in Geneva.   Farmers in developing countries can now take advantage of new Index Insurance contracts to help them insure their crops from a severe drought.  These contracts link the insurance to a measure of the weather in a certain region (i.e. rainfall amount), so that the insurance company can measure the index without having to visit each individual policy holder (huge field cost!) to assess the risk and damage claims. Now farmers who often live on $2 per day can get access to bank loans and lines of credit that are backed by these insurance policies, and can significantly improve their quality of life in a way never before possible.  So far more than 2 million farmers have been aided by this new type of insurance.

Now that sounds like a smarter planet to me!