Even Greater Than A Grand Slam — Quintuple Leadership!

As clients transform their businesses to embrace cloud, mobile, and big data – our teams in WebSphere have been relentlessly re-inventing our portfolio to drive new innovations in these areas to accelerate client adoption and value from our portfolio. We all know the many stories about tech companies losing their way because they “missed a wave” or missed a shift in the marketplace, and certainly inside WebSphere we are vigilant to make sure we never make that mistake.

Given the magnitude of the marketplace shifts – it’s incredible to see the evolution of WebSphere over the past fifteen months. In just that short time-span our teams have:

• Launched a new portfolio and brand for Mobile – IBM MobileFirst
• Launched a new set of solutions for API Management
• Developed whole new set of capabilities for Smarter Process – our business process software portfolio
• Invented and launched a new line of services for the Internet of Things – our MessageSight offerings.
• And developed new sets of composable services for our core WebSphere portfolio around WebSphere App Server, DataPower, MQ, and Cast Iron.

And the good news is that the investments and transformation of the portfolio is being recognized. For the first time ever, our WebSphere portfolio is now cited as the leader in five broad areas in the Gartner Magic Quadrants:

1. Application Services Governance – leadership for our new WebSphere API Management, Datapower and SOA solutions
2. On-Premises Application Platforms – leadership for our WebSphere Application Server solution
3. Mobile Application Development Platforms·– leadership for Worklight solution
4. On-Premises Application Integration Suites – leadership for WebSphere MQ, Integration Bus & Cast Iron solutions
5. Business Process Management Suites – leadership for our BPM and Decision Management solutions

Obviously to be cited as the leader in all five areas is quite an accomplishment – congrats to our Product Management and Development teams around the world!

So what is better than a grand slam? I guest best analogy would be a five-point play, which is one of the rarest feats in basketball! Quintuple is the official word for “five of something” so here’s the WebSphere’s Quintuple Leadership!

IBM Cited as the Leader in new market of API Management

As new technology trends emerge, it’s always reported that upstart companies who are “more nible and can move faster” than big ole IBM tend to get early leadership in new markets.    So we are more proud than ever to be recognized for our newly crowned leadership position in the only Gartner magic quadrant that covers API Management—the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Services Governance.  In this quadrant report, Gartner coins the term “Application Services Governance,” to encompass the technologies of APIs, API management, SOA, and service management, demonstrating their belief (and our IBM viewpoint) that the two areas (APIs and SOA) constitute a single market.

So while there is lots of noise about the some upstart competitors like Apigee, Mashery, and Layer 7 in the API management space, IBM is the one cited by Gartner as the clear leader in both our strategy and our ability to execute.

But that’s not all. The emergence of an Application Services Governance segment signals the renaissance of Service Orientation. It’s the reinforcement that exposing and managing services – and their latest incarnation as web APIs – is the foundation to support mobile and cloud initiatives. With the emergence of the API economy, and the need for our new capabilities for developer self-service, and service metering and analytics, IBM is uniquely positioned to lead the API and Service Management space.  

To that end, we are continuing to strengthen the linkage of our WebSphere SOA and API management products – IBM DataPower, WebSphere Service Registry and Repository (WSRR), and IBM API Management – to simplify integration and deliver on the value of service orientation in an API-centric world.

This leadership deserves a special shout-out to Nicolas Robbe and his extended team – he’s our leader for the API Economy solutions and has done an incredible job building our portfolio of offerings and establishing IBM as the clear leader in the API market.

Mobile is Everywhere and Nowhere At The Same Time

One of the biggest challenges facing clients who are trying to become mobile enterprises is that mobile is everywhere – and nowhere. Mobile is everywhere – we all have mobile phones, there’s a constant buzz about mobile technology in the media, and across all industries leading companies are levering mobile to gain competitive advantage, to deepen their customer relationships and engagement, and improve their employee productivity in ways never before imaginable.

And yet – mobile is nowhere. It is nowhere in the sense that it’s very hard to find technical talent with good mobile skills.  These top skills are nowhere to be found!

At IBM, our Center for Applied Insights just recently completed our 2012 Tech Trends Study – and the findings have some great insights on mobile, cloud, social and analystics skill gaps.  As you might expect – I zoomed right to the mobile section. The report indicated that –

• 49% of respondents have deployed Mobile
• 69%  plan to increase their Mobile investment in the next two years, with 35% planning to increase it 10 percent or more
• Over the next two years, 31% of respondents will start allowing BYOD – making it the norm for 76% of respondents

So clearly mobile is being embraced by clients rapidly – with 49% having already deployed projects, and 69% are planning to increase their investment in the next two years.  Mobile is certainly everywhere in this sense, and is a critical imperative for companies both large and small across all industries.

The problem is that mobile skills are nowhere.   Back to the TechTrends Report  and it reports that –

• Only 9% of all companies think they have all the Mobile skills they need
• 25% of IT/LOB decision makers report a major Mobile skills gaps, with an additional 40% percent seeing moderate skills gaps
• 77% of students and educators see major and/or moderate skills gaps

So – given how important this is for our client and our partners – I recorded a brief video discussing about this issue and giving some advice to IT professionals and students around the world on how and where they might want to focus on their skill development for Mobile.

Finally – if you are interested in learning more about the challenges for mobile, social, cloud and security, below is a pretty cool infographic that lets you explore the trends and insights.

And as you might expect, given IBM’s focus on helping our client and partners solve these skills gaps, today IBM is announcing a whole range of new programs to help students and universities create and scale new courses around mobile, security, cloud and social IT skills.   The most exciting part of it all – we’re making our IBM Mobile Worklight development platform available for free classroom use by schools all around the world.  You can get it here!

Hot Mobile Topics Broadcast – Next Week!

It’s been a busy first few weeks for me as I dive into my new Mobile role at IBM. One of the big projects has been working with our product teams to think through the right solutions to best help our clients all around the world.   I’ve also been canvassing as many industry peers as I can who are leading thinkers on mobile to learn their perspectives and insights.

The great news is that on October 10 from 12:00-1:00 pm ET , we are hosting a virtual broadcast, “Speeding innovation and extending reach with Mobile Enterprise”.  We will be bringing together a range of mobile experts from across industries and geographies to examine mobile trends, challenges, and opportunities to transform how we work, sell and communicate. The in-depth discussions will focus on the latest mobile technologies and how successful enterprises are ahead of the trend.

In all my travels to talk with clients and experts over the past thirty days, one thing is abundantly clear – mobile is the hottest topic in the industry – more so than even cloud, security or social (and yes, they all do fit together as well.) What makes mobile such a hot topic is this – it’s deeply personal, we can all relate to it and have experience with it, and everyone admits we’re just scratching the surface of it.

When you consider that in 2012, the shipment of smart phones and tablets is expected to exceed that of traditional computers and laptops, and consider that in 2013 there will be more mobile devices in existence on the planet than people – many of us must be carrying lots of devices! (Going out on a limb here – remember 9% of the world population is under age of 5 – they probably don’t have devices yet. Another 8% are age 5-9 and most probably don’t have devices either!) (see data here for details).

This data was confirmed by my very unscientific crowd survey at the ITExpo Keynote I gave in Austin, TX earlier this week. When I asked the crowd how many of them had 3 or more devices (laptop, tablet, smartphone), over half the room raised their hand, and almost 1/4 of the room carried two or more smartphones!

Both business and IT executives at companies large and small know they need to take advantage of mobile devices to provide access to their internal systems and processes for employees, as well as to enable easier purchasing and support services for their customers. Most also recognize that mobile devices are also creating a unique opportunity to connect with and interact with employees, customers and partners, leveraging real-time data, information and expertise to drive better, and more meaningful engagement and transactions.

But — embracing mobile is difficult — and it’s not as easy as just creating a simple app because you also have to think about:

· The variety of devices used
· Employees who increasingly wish to use their own devices at work
· Application level and device management
· Cost controls
· Security concerns

And yet, on the positive side, the clients see the real opportunity to use mobile technology as the catalyst to improve employee productivity, increase customer satisfaction, grow market share, drive innovation and improve client loyalty.
During our broadcast on October 10th, the group of experts we’re convening will discuss how to:

· Extend existing business capabilities to mobile devices
· Transform your business by creating new opportunities around mobile solutions
· Build mobile applications and connect them to, and run, back-end systems in support of mobile
· Manage mobile devices, services and applications, and secure your mobile business

TV host and technology expert Katie Linendoll will moderate the broadcast that features some of the leading IBM thinkers, a case study of Tire and Battery Corp (TBC)’s use of mobile to transform their business, an Air Canada example (for all you Road Warriors out there) and IT analysts and other experts who can share the new opportunities they’re seeing.

If you’re building out a mobile strategy, or looking to improve your current mobile capabilities, you definitely cannot afford to miss this broadcast.

You can follow online conversations around the broadcast by following the #ibmmobile tag.

The BIG opportunities — and the IBM Recipe Book for Success

Despite all the hype about the big opportunities that exist in the IT marketplace – and the debate about how BIG the big data opportunity is, or how quickly the mobile revolution will overtake us, or how the cloud transformation will cause all sorts of problems to rain down on IT systems (see Steve Wozniak’s comments), or how cities need to become Smarter Cities to better handle the massive urbanization that is taking place around the globe, everyone agrees these are big opportunities for IBM and our partners to help clients transform their business.

As you would expect, IBM needs a broad range of partners to help us deliver solutions and services to clients in all of these areas – and we’re very focused on make it simple and clear to partners where the best opportunities are — and how partners can work with us in each of these areas.  We have thousands of client wins in these areas and most of them involve partners as part of the client value equation.

This week I’ll be at our Silicon Valley Innovation Center talk about these BIG opportunities and laying out the partnering receipe book for success.  I’ll be hosting our ISV Leadership Forum that is open to partners and software vendors from all across the Valley and I look forward to seeing many new partners at the event!   It’s a great opportunity for you to come and learn from other partners who have found great success in teaming with IBM!

If you want to attend — here’s the info and registration page.

I hope to see you there!

Great new content for developers and startups unleashed at IMPACT yesterday

As I’ve written about several times before – every developer I meet talks fist about the cool cloud and mobile projects they are working on, and our Tech Trends survey backed up the enthusiasm with these two areas outdistancing all others as the hot topics for developers and startups around the globe.

So yesterday at IMPACT we unleashed some incredible new free tools for developers up on our developerWorks site:

PureSystems Cloud Sandbox/Free Trial Environment – to help individual developers create their own patterns of expertise to optimize their applications for either IBM PureSystems, or the IBM Smartcloud, developers can now use a completely free cloud development environment up on our cloud. That’s right — free access to our IBM PureSystems technology on the IBM Smartcloud. This is our first ever totally free cloud environment for developers to leverage. I’ll be posting more later today on why this is such an advantage for developers — and offers so much more than other cloud sites.

PureSystems Virtual Patter Software Development Kit — if you are thinking about how to optimize a home-grown application, or want to work develop “off-line” from the cloud – they you can also download the new SDK that we made available yesterday, enabling you to create a pattern of expertise for your own application. Once you complete the pattern work, your app can then run on IBM PureSystems, or the IBM Smartcloud. One pattern – runs seamless on either platform. Others have promised this, but so far we’re the only vendor to deliver it.

New Mobile Zone & Community Tools — we also unveiled a big new Mobile Zone on developerWorks, and released IBM Mobile Foundations to provide developers and IT practitioners the tools they needs to create and manage an end to end mobile environment. The new Mobile Foundations includes content from our Worklight acquisition, Endpoint Security from Tivoli and technology from our Cast Iron acquisition.

Make sure you check out these toolkits and especially the Free Cloud Environment from IBM!

ps – Stay tuned for my next post – I’ve gotten lots of questions about how our Trial Environment compares to a free trial on Amazon – so I’ll be posting some key points on that next.

Live from IBM Pulse 2012!

This week we’re holding our annual IBM Pulse event out in Las Vegas…. and we have a record crowd of 8000+ clients and partners attending.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the hot topics are cloud, business analytics, mobile computing and security!   Just recently I talked with the onsite broadcast team about these key trends.

Check it out!   Pulse Video interview — live from IBM Pulse event 2012!

Congratulations to our new IBM Tivoli Champions!

Earlier this week Steve Mills and I had the privilege of naming twenty new IBM Champions for IBM’s Tivoli solutions on the Expo Broadcast stage at our IBM Pulse event.   If you ever wanted to be around the best of the best technologists, then you need to hang out with some of these folks!

IBM Champions are innovative thought leaders in the technical community — they have a track record of success in both implementing solutions and helping others replicate their best practices, and they are well known leaders among their peers across the industry.   Some are full-time IT professionals, others are business leaders, developers, or educators who influences and mentors others to help them make best use of IBM software, solutions, and services.

As you can see from the list of the 20 new Champions below – they hail from all parts of the globe:

Gerald Beasley USA – MN Westgroup
Harald Biedermann Austria OVB Österreichische Bundesbahnen
Brenda Collins USA – MN Medtronic
Andrew Cunningham UK British American Tobacco
Celeste Grone USA – OH Ohio Health
Tom Hughes UK Butterfly Software Limited
Ronda Kiser-Oakes USA – VA Wellpoint
David Murray USA – SC Premier Systems Management Solutions, LLC
Nathan Owens USA – MI Blue Medora LLC
Julie Rampello USA – OH Projetech
Sergei Rodionov Russia Axibase
Cheryl Ruckel USA – OH CDW
José Carlos Stipp Brazil NaskiGi SGTI Ltda.
Frank Tate USA – WV Gulf Breeze Software
Paolo Tortiglione Italy Connet Consulting
Michael Urwin Australia Kalibrate
Jason Verly USA – MN Davisco Foods
Jos Verschuuren Netherlands Atos
Yves Vlamijnck France Icaro Technologies
Paul Webb UK International Power – GDF Suez

As IBM Champions they are available to you for advice, networking, speaking engagements, or even just comparing notes on how best to implement your current project!   This group joins their fellow IBM Champions from all of IBM’s solution areas – and bring our total number to just 400 IBM Champions around the world!  You can find the full list that is searchable here – so make sure you reach out to them and get connected!

New Observations on Cloud Computing

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been at both the All About the Cloud event out in California which is the premier event for cloud focused ISVs, and then the IBM Innovate event, which is the premier event for software development.  Quite naturally cloud computing was a hot topics at both events.

In reflecting on what’s “new and different” about the cloud discussions of late – three observations come to mind –

1) The tone is much more serious and business oriented

While past events were full of hype, hoopla, hyperbole, and evangelists spouting about how cloud will change the world and change IT forever, the tone has now shifted.  Off all the presentations I saw or took part in, only one still had the mega-hype tonality.  The rest of the dialogue has finally shifted to cloud driving business results – cost savings, speed of innovation and implementation, deployment flexibility, etc.  These better business outcomes are always required for broader adoption of any technology solution, so it’s nice to see the shift finally taking place in the cloud space.  As Bill McNee of Saugatuck Technology pointed out in his keynote address – sometimes it just takes a good recession to get people focused on business outcomes again.

2) Growing recognition of IBM’s prowess in this space

Now that IBM has completed 2000+ cloud projects — and is working with 5 of the Fortune 10, and 50% of the Fortune 500 on cloud projects — clients and partners are realizing how powerful our solutions portfolio is for cloud computing.  We now have all of our major software available via the cloud, we have CPU, storage and compute functions rentable in the cloud, and we have a whole range of design, test, and implementation services for public and private cloud deployments.

3) Growing recognition of the importance of open standards and interoperability.

Given the growth of both public clouds and private clouds – there is now tremendous demand for a set of standards and interoperability.  IBM was pleased to be help the OMG Group launch the Cloud Standards Customer Council that now has over 150 members and meets again next week to continue the important work of building out a set of open standards.  You’ll see the members range from large telcos and Fortune 50 clients to small service providers and even universities.  The group already has some important use use cases and requirements for open cloud computing being drafted – so be sure to join (its free to join) and contribute to this important work for our industry.

What are your thoughts?  Are you seeing similar trends and themes?

IBM Software Now All Priced For the Cloud!

Today at our Impact event in Las Vegas, we’re excited to announce two new great opportunities for partners to take advantage of as they capitlize on the demand for cloud computing solutions.

To help start-up companies and IBM Business Partners more easily build their own cloud applications and infrastructures with IBM technology, today we announced:

1. New monthly rental pricing of IBM software for any ISV delivering their Software as a Service application with IBM middleware.  This allows ISVs to deliver their SaaS applications with IBM software and scale up or down the software licenses needed monthly, complementing the flexible manner these ISVs bill clients for their SaaS applications.
2. New financing programs specifically designed for IBM Business Partners building cloud computing technical environments.  With low cost to 0% financing and deferred payments up to 6 months on IBM technology and services, the company will offer qualifying partners the opportunity to avoid large up-front costs as they start their cloud businesses.

One of the coolest features of the new pricing models is that you can commit total usage across a range of 20 key products and true up at the end of each month in total.  This is one of the key areas our partners told us would really help – so we can all get out of trying to forecast usage at each product area and instead focus on driving new business.

You can get all the details at ibm.com/cloud.   Full press release here.

The new offerings come on the heels of IBM’s newly announced enterprise cloud service delivery platform, the IBM SmartCloud, announced last week!  And of course they build on the IBM Cloud Computing Specialty program for partners and the new Cloud Computing Community we announced in late February which will enable IBM to develop the IT industry’s broadest ecosystem of companies providing a wide range of cloud computing services and technologies.
And in case anyone wonders if we are embracing Cloud – just a reminder that our recent 2011 Investor meeting, we laid out the company’s 2015 roadmap on the continued transformation of IBM with focus on higher value capabilities.  Our CFO, Mark Loughridge stated that IBM projects $7 billion in Cloud  revenue by 2015.

Yup – $7 billion.

Special thanks to our IBM Business Partners TOTVS, GROUP Solutions Group, CloudOne, Availity, along with many other early  adopters of our pilot pricing program, for helping us refine the monthly software rental pricing models.