Flexibility and choice with new hybrid cloud capabilities on IBM Power Systems

The unprecedented disruption we have experienced is driving enterprises to prioritize between business continuity and innovation and to rethink how they accelerate digital transformation and modernization.

With the new hybrid cloud enhancements we are announcing today (which will be generally available during this quarter), IBM Power Systems clients can be assured they have the right compute platform to help provide continuity of key business operations and processes and enable digital transformation by easily extending these workloads to private, public or hybrid clouds. They can continue to do so with the same performance, adaptability, resiliency and security they have come to expect from IBM Power Systems.

IBM Power Systems servers, new consumption models, and cloud capabilities are designed to help you optimize costs and improve continuity as you build a seamless hybrid cloud environment on the platform ranked the most reliable mainstream server for mission-critical applications. With IBM Power Systems combined with Red Hat OpenShift, IBM Cloud Paks and Red Hat Ansible Automation, you have the keys to a robust modern IT infrastructure that to help enable you to adopt new technology on your terms, whether driven by rapidly changing business requirements or global situations. Executing your hybrid multicloud strategy is simplified with IBM Power Systems:

◉ Flexibility and choice of cloud consumption models in on premises and public cloud

◉ Certification of SAP HANA and SAP Applications on IBM Power Virtual Servers

◉ Expanded global access, capacity and workloads for Power Virtual Server

◉ Simplified hybrid cloud management and AIX/ IBM i applications modernization for cloud agility

IBM Power Private Cloud, more servers, more choices

In 1Q20 we announced IBM Power Systems Private Cloud solutions for our scale-up servers; today we are expanding the offerings with dynamic capacity for the S922 and S924 scale out systems. The idea of dynamic capacity is not new to us. IBM Power has been offering capacity on demand since year 2007, and now with the IBM Power Systems Private Cloud solutions you can:

◉ Optimize your resource utilization and associated costs by sharing pay-per-use capacity across systems of the same model. Available for the E980, E950, S922 or S924

◉ Reduce CAPEX with new base minimum capacity, as low as 1 core and 256GB, and pay by the minute for capacity used above the aggregated base across systems

◉ Make informed decisions on capacity requirements utilizing IBM Cloud Management Console with granular, real-time & historical views of consumption

◉ Realize greater flexibility to co-locate existing AIX/IBM i and new cloud native applications with 3.2X more containers per core, 2.6X better TCO with OpenShift and 2X throughput improvement with our enhanced scale-out servers.

SAP HANA certification on Power Virtual Server

We are also announcing SAP Certified IaaS to deploy SAP HANA on IBM Power Virtual Server, extending the value we bring to SAP HANA clients. With this new solution, we combine the flexibility and choice of a hybrid environment to SAP customers, from classic SAP ECC on AIX to SAP S/4 HANA on Linux. IBM Power Systems has extended their lead in performance with the most powerful SAP certified server in our IBM Power Systems Virtual Server offering, measured using SAPS benchmark published by SAP.

More locations and capacity for Power Virtual Server

With growing demand and positive feedback from our clients, we are expanding the Power Virtual Server with more capacity in NA and EU and new availability in AP coming in the second half of 2020. These offerings encompass AIX, IBM i and Linux on Power.  These are engineered so that customers running these operating systems can accelerate their hybrid cloud strategy execution development, pre-production, production and disaster recovery.  With a consistent compute platform, clients can avoid refactoring business-critical applications, move data and processes to the cloud, and seamlessly extend to new Linux workloads.

Simplifying hybrid cloud management and automation

IBM Power Systems together with Red Hat OpenShift, IBM Cloud Paks and Ansible Automation is the modern infrastructure foundation for your digital transformation that will streamline the cost, deployment, automation and management of your hybrid multicloud environment. With 98 percent of surveyed organizations saying that they will be using multiple hybrid cloud environments by 2021, the future is clearly hybrid multicloud, and IBM Power Systems is the hybrid cloud compute platform specifically architected for your business-critical processes and operations.

Source: ibm.com

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IBM is recognized as a Leader in Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery Solutions for the ninth consecutive year

This week IBM has been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery Solutions for the ninth time in a row. IBM is being recognized for its completeness of vision and its ability to execute in the data protection market.

According to Gartner, vendors in the Leaders quadrant “provide mature offerings that meet market demand and have demonstrated the vision necessary to sustain their market position as requirements evolve. The hallmark of Leaders is that they focus on, and invest in, their offerings to the point where they lead the market and can affect its overall direction. As a result, Leaders can become the vendors to watch as you try to understand how new market offerings might evolve.”

Why IBM?

“IBM’s ability to maintain its position as a Magic Quadrant Leader  has been a result of continuous improvements to IBM’s award-winning modern data protection and cyber resiliency portfolio,” says Eric Herzog, CMO and Vice President of Global Channel Sales for the IBM Storage Division. “Organizations struggle with the cost and complexity of protecting data as they embrace digital transformation, manage massive data growth, and the need for always-on services. The IBM modern data protection solutions address these challenges by combining simplicity, cyber security, and flexibility to optimize data backup, recovery, retention, and reuse across enterprise workloads in hybrid multicloud environments.”

This recognition comes right after IBM announced the latest enhancements to its acclaimed modern data protection portfolio.

In particular, the new release of IBM Spectrum® Protect Plus offers a wide range of further benefits like broader data protection for Amazon Web Services (AWS) workloads and enhanced container protection includes enhanced SLA management to enable SLA policy definition and assignment and the ability to back up and recover logical persistent volume groupings using Kubernetes labels.  Also, with the Spectrum Protect Plus agentless technology, users can now back up, recover, reuse, and retain data in Windows file systems running on physical servers or in virtualized environments.

In addition, IBM announced enhancements to IBM Spectrum Protect: The latest IBM Spectrum Protect release includes retention set to tape, which is the ability to efficiently copy and store data on tape for cost-effective and secure “air-gapped” long-term data retention. IBM Spectrum Protect also now enables users to back up the IBM Spectrum Protect database directly to object storage, including IBM Cloud Object Storage, AWS S3, Microsoft Azure, as well as other supported S3 targets.

And, IBM Spectrum Copy Data Management’s new release helps users simplify and improve SAP HANA Point in Time (PIT) recovery with native log backups using IBM Spectrum CDM and IBM Spectrum Protect for ERP. With the new log support, recoveries can be much more granular.

Source: ibm.com

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The Qiskit Optimization Module starts a path to frictionless quantum computing

Software developers expect to run their programs in the language they use, knowing a smooth ballet of technology is working behind the scenes for their results. It’s with this expectation that we’ve started our journey towards a frictionless quantum development experience with the release of the Qiskit Optimization module. It’s an initial step towards our vision for creating a programming environment where the intricacies of the underlying technology are no longer a concern to users. In the future, a program will be handed off to the cloud and vast quantum and classical resources will be employed, and within the blink of an eye the solution is returned perfectly optimized. Everything else is handled and just works.

When we first launched IBM Quantum Experience, we recognized that for quantum computing to be successful, there would need to be an evolution of the access points by which a diverse community of developers and researchers could contribute and add value. With our original interface, programming was initiated through OpenQASM – a representation at the level of logical operations  (“gates”)of the underlying qubits, allowing the development of quantum circuits. Subsequently, we made access further down the stack possible with OpenPulse, permitting researchers and scientists interested in understanding noise on real hardware to explore how to design better gates through mitigating errors. Now, we’ve gone back to the top of the stack, and released the Qiskit Optimization module, starting our journey to create a truly frictionless quantum development experience for the user.

The Qiskit Optimization module enables easy, efficient modeling of optimization problems using DOcplex – IBM Decision Optimization CPLEX modeling. Programmers need only program as they normally would for the problem they are trying to solve. Just as today’s software developers do not need to concern themselves with transistors, NAND gates, assembly language, or even algorithms for linear algebra, the new module abstracts away a layer in quantum programming. This gives an optimization expert access to quantum resources through a standard library of circuits and algorithms. Quantum circuits represent the complex calculations that quantum computers perform, whether it is, for example, optimizing business functions, modeling financial risk or measuring the energy of chemical compounds for the development of new battery technology.

How it works: Qiskit Optimization Module

How it works: Built in Python, the Qiskit Optimization module enables easy, efficient modeling of optimization problems for developers and optimization experts without quantum expertise. It uses classical optimization best practices and masks complex quantum programming.

Our team developed the new module with help from our open source community, in particular our IBM Q Network collaborators at JPMorgan Chase, to boost research, development and benchmarking of quantum optimization algorithms for near-term quantum computers. A uniform interface as well as automatic conversion between different problem representations allows users to solve different types of quadratic problems with help from fundamental quantum algorithms provided by Qiskit. In addition, the modular design facilitates rapid development and testing of new algorithms. Compatible classical optimizers are also provided for testing, validation and benchmarking. The new module offers a glimpse of the vast number of applications where quantum optimization may have an enormous impact in the future, once quantum systems are available at the required scale.

A Code Snippet of Qiskit Optimization Module

# example to solve a quadraric problem using a Quantum optimization algorithm

from qiskit.optimization import QuadraticProgram

from qiskit.optimization.algorithms import GroverOptimizer

from qiskit import Aer

from docplex.mp.model import Model

# construct problem with DOcplex

model = Model('docplex_model')

x, y = model.binary_var_list(2)

model.maximize(x*y + x + y)

# convert DOcplex model to Qiskit Quadratic Program

qp = QuadraticProgram()

qp.from_docplex(model)

# define a Quantum backend on which to run the optimization

# a Qiskit simulator in this case

backend = Aer.get_backend('statevector_simulator')

# use the Grover Adaptive Search (GAS) to solve the optimization problem

grover = GroverOptimizer(num_value_qubits=3, quantum_instance=backend)

result = grover.solve(qp)

# printing results: x=[1.0,1.0], fval=3

print(result)

By creating modules that make functions such as optimization easier to program on quantum computers, we are working to change the way people who are not experts in quantum theory or quantum mechanics view quantum computers. In doing so, we hope to expand our Qiskit community from hundreds of thousands of programmers today to tens of millions in the future. In giving a broader cross-section of programmers access to quantum computing, businesses will be able to better understand how a quantum computer will solve different problems and how those solutions could scale to meet their enterprise’s needs.

Qiskit’s Optimization module allows for classically simulating the algorithms as well as testing them on real quantum devices, including IBM’s quantum systems available today to our open users and the IBM Q Network users. We have likewise made tutorials available explaining how developers can model their own optimization problems and on how to use the different optimizers to solve them. This release is a significant step on the path to frictionless quantum development, which will eventually impact users in about every application area imaginable.

It took 60 years to abstract software in classical computing to the point where users could input a simple line of code into a templated program in order to build an app or website. Quantum computing needs to go through a similar process in the next two to three years. In the coming weeks and months we will further extend and improve the Optimization module by adding support for new types of problems and new algorithms. We will also release new modules that tackle a wider variety of applications important to businesses and science.

The final stage of technological adoption is when the technology itself becomes invisible. All the parts you care about are exposed, the rest are hidden. Our vision for quantum computing is exactly this.

Source: ibm.com

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QAD turns cost centers into profit centers with IBM Cloud

Cloud has been an important part of our strategy at QAD for well over a decade. In fact, among the established global manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain software providers, QAD was one of the first to offer cloud-based solutions, starting with QAD Supplier Portal in 2003 and then ERP in 2007.

Despite our early start in the cloud, it took several years for cloud ERP to reach critical mass in general and in particular the manufacturing markets, which are QAD’s focus. IT departments, comfortable with running their own data centers, were cynical about cloud’s ability to deliver the right level of availability, scalability, security and performance.

Driving manufacturing cloud ERP adoption

There were two key drivers behind increased cloud ERP adoption. First, the recession in the late 2000s forced IT departments to move away from being cost centers and toward being profit centers. For example, IT departments found ways to increase speed to market, added efficiencies to processes and provided decision-makers with useful analytics. This segued into the second driver of the move to the cloud: removing the burden of running ERP and allowing more time for business differentiation. Moving to QAD Cloud not only provides support 365 days a year, but also delivers 99.987 percent application uptime, disaster recovery and a complete suite of Defense in Depth Security.

Another milestone in QAD’s evolution toward the cloud came in 2015, when we unveiled an initiative, called Channel Islands, to begin rearchitecting our applications and the underlying platform for the cloud era, for Industry 4.0 and for smart manufacturing. We also started to take better advantage of emerging technologies.

Moving to a global cloud provider

These drivers have sustained cloud growth of roughly 30 percent year over year for several years for QAD. While we were already working with a few cloud providers, it became clear to us that we needed another cloud provider that was strong outside of North America. IBM, which had acquired SoftLayer a few years earlier, and which had an excellent reputation for cloud management, was operating IBM Cloud in places like Australia. We investigated further and found that IBM had international cloud facilities in several key regions that matched well to our expanding customer base, including Paris, Singapore and Hong Kong.

IBM was also a front-runner vendor based on its system availability run rate. Its data centers are at the high-tier classification and are designed to provide the highest level of availability and security that manufacturers need. These factors, coupled with its crisp and consistent execution, made IBM the obvious choice.

Maximizing IBM Cloud collaboration opportunities

IBM’s delivery of service has continuously met our needs. We have service level agreements (SLAs) with IBM, and we extend those SLAs to our customers. Our track record working with IBM has been excellent. The company understands that the job is not done by simply delivering to current SLAs. We have weekly operational calls with IBM to align our business and track the KPIs that drive our excellent service to our customers. We also collaborate at monthly strategic meetings to discuss short-term technology roadmaps such as improvements to our VMware deployments to ensure we maintain the highest availability. Finally, IBM’s recent acquisition of Red Hat cements our relationship even further since Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the primary OS used for QAD Adaptive ERP in the cloud.

Speaking of collaboration, I was recently invited to join the an IBM customer advisory board. In that role, I’ll be providing feedback as the voice of the customer and the voice of the customer’s customer. With this kind of input, IBM can continue to provide technology that supports the next generation of ERP and supply chain solutions. IBM has had a really open mind in terms of working from the outside in when it’s developing on its cloud technology roadmap.

What is the number one benefit to working with IBM? Understanding that the highest availability is assumed, and that teamwork and collaboration produce results that exceed the SLA in terms of service delivery. IBM provides enterprise class service delivery to us and we extend that to our customers.  Whenever we pick up the phone and ask for guidance or support, it’s always there. I cannot think of a single time when we needed IBM and IBM wasn’t responsive.

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Flexible payment model enables more companies to digitize and automate supplier transactions

Recent global events have convinced companies with complex, global supply chains and multiple tiers of suppliers that they need a better way to engage with trading partners. Eliminating manual processes is a critical step on the path to more efficient supplier onboarding and collaboration. But after decades of trying, over 66% of companies still use email, phone, fax and postal mail for B2B transactions with at least 30% of their trading partners.

To overcome the technical challenges of digitizing and automating B2B transactions with suppliers – including suppliers that lack the technology and expertise to support EDI transactions – companies have implemented solutions like IBM Sterling Supplier Transaction Manager. Users can create or exchange business documents easily through a web portal, and the solution converts the documents into a format each party can view and use without manual intervention.

While companies and their suppliers can see great benefits in an electronic alternative to paper-based communications, some need a way to share the investment of eliminating costly, manual processes. To help, IBM is launching a spoke-pay payment model as an alternative payment option.

Traditionally, the investment to eliminate manual, error-prone processes has been absorbed entirely by the sponsor of the trading partner network. While this model works for some companies, it may not for others. Suppliers also gain business value from digitization and automation as they benefit from better data quality, faster time to revenue, and additional business opportunities as a result of being easier to work with –but  are not sharing in the costs..

IBM’s new spoke-pay option enables companies to share costs with their suppliers. The sponsor invites the supplier to sign up and accept payment terms for their participation in the trading partner network. The supplier can register, pay and access the network through a web portal in a matter of minutes.

By reducing the technical and financial barriers to digitizing and automating B2B transactions, companies and their suppliers eliminate the pain of manual transactions and make leaps forward in supply chain efficiency.

To help companies get started, we are offering eligible organizations special discounts on Sterling Transaction Manager.

Schedule a consultation to explore how your business can benefit from Sterling Transaction Manager and the payment model options.

Source: ibm.com

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How computer vision can help with cost reduction and smart investments

How can businesses survive and thrive during and after a recession? And can cutting-edge computer vision solutions help?

A 2010 Harvard Business Review (HBR) analysis of 4,700 companies over 3 recessions (in 1980, 1990 and 2000) identifies that only 9% of companies flourish by the end of a recession. Most take an additional 3 years to return to growth. The successful companies applied a balanced strategy of reducing costs in a manner that drives ongoing, sustainable operational improvements while making business development investments to provide greater customer value.

There are many ways AI empowers businesses to succeed (even during COVID-19), and the use of computer vision on manufacturing lines provides a great illustration of how technology can help organizations with cost savings and innovation.

The business case for AI

Digitalization of manufacturing provides visibility into real-time operations, and AI adds the ability to predict and respond to operational disruptions. Applying these techniques can help manufacturers lower operational costs, not just today but into the future. Evolving into a resilient manufacturing operation positions you to better serve your customers and invest in the right things, whether that’s by adding more flexibility in your product mix, personalizing offerings or making design improvements based on product usage in the field.

With AI, you can combine multiple data sources to create a clearer picture of how to proceed intelligently in a general business process. In manufacturing, those data sources might be heat detection sensors, indoor/outdoor weather data, PLC data from a machine or conveyor system, or visual data from a camera. You can then use AI to gain insights into the integrity of a weld or to predict potential product failures for warranty purposes. AI can also help with re-manufacturing to reuse parts and materials, or with designing new product possibilities.

Building an AI model for manufacturing lines

I work with various industrial companies that design and build specialty trucks, military vehicles, truck bodies, and airport, fire and access equipment. These businesses find that they’re spending large quantities of money on warranty repair due to failures during the product production process, and they’re looking for ways to more proactively address potential manufacturing line issues.

Some of the most expensive and potentially life-threatening repairs in the manufacturing process are welds and part assembly. This is where object detection technologies can help, by using images from cameras on conveyor belts and manufacturing lines to detect anomalies. Computer vision technology can help businesses more easily deploy deep learning vision models for challenges like this. Here’s how it works: First, we work with experts on the assembly line to train a computer vision model using deep learning technology to recognize defects. Once the model is trained, we set up a camera and inference against that model. The manufacturer gets real-time alerts so that they can remediate problems early in the engineering process, before it’s too late and materials are damaged.

Organizations can recover significant revenue if their manufacturing facilities introduce computer vision on manufacturing lines. IBM offers one such solution using IBM software and hardware with deep learning and proven analytics algorithms. Solutions like this can help your business survive and thrive even in difficult times by investing in high-quality products and reducing the amount of waste and rework.

Source: ibm.com

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IBM Certification: Your Key to Success

What Is the IBM Professional Certification?

The IBM Professional Certification is a way to earn credentials and demonstrate your knowledge of IBM technology. IBM Certification programs vary from entry-level to advanced and include many different job roles for IBM professionals. The plan consists of reading/study material and a test. Once you pass the test, you will receive a sparkling new professional certification badge.

Why Pursue IBM Certifications?

There are numerous benefits to earning certification. Certification shows your capability and expertise in a particular subject, which allows partners to recognize potential opportunities to utilize your skill-set.

In the scenario I mentioned above, IBM stopped to grant the client certain access rights and permission in their environment. They did not require the client to accidentally break the situation and then be called to fix things. IBM surely would have been less wary had the client had an IBM-certified employee to act as admin.

Who Can Obtain IBM Certifications?

The Program is for any IBM professional who recommends, sells, supports, and uses IBM products and solutions. You can go with IBM Analytics, IBM Cloud, IBM Security, or IBM Watson, to name a few.

How to Ace Your IBM Exam?

To help guarantee your success at exam time, IBM gives several test preparation options:

• Sample tests can help familiarize you with the test form and the types of questions. Answer keys are included. Sample tests are offered at no charge.
• Assessment tests assume the certification exams. They are an excellent gauge of whether you could benefit from additional study.

Be careful where you locate these tests, as usual, found on the Internet are questionable legality or currency. IBM gives the tests at the IBM Professional Certification website.

Value of IBM Certification

The Prometric and Edge Research survey also shows that IT decision-makers believe that certification benefits an organization in these critical areas:

• Skills and knowledge
• Retain employees’ skills current
• Show staff to new products
• Troubleshoot problems without the help of outside support
• Productivity
• Help staff do their jobs better
• Lead to more active implementation of IT solutions
• Increase the reliability and efficiency of the IT environment
• Reduce network downtime
• Staff value and productivity
• Benefit from robust return-on-investment
• Show competency to clients
• Make staff more valuable to the organization
• Increase staff retention

Document the Value of IBM Certification

IBM and Prometric have created the Why IT Certify website to find solutions to common questions about the value of IBM certification, including:

• Does certification aid you make more money and move up the career ladder faster?
• Does having certified employees help your business?
• Does certification help make faster quality solutions to the market?

The site includes salary surveys, industry reports, white papers, recommendations, and links to other certification resources.

Once you are certified, you are welcome to join the IBM Professional Certification Community. This members-only conference is an excellent way to continue to improve your skills, learn about new certifications, and make a lifetime of contacts critical to your professional success.

The Benefits of IBM Certification

1. Employability and Job Security

Certifications do more than validate professional expertise. They affirm a professional's responsibility to career-long learning. For employers, this matters. According to a study, 91 percent of hiring managers consider certifications when assessing potential candidates. Another 86 percent said they believed IBM certifications of high or ordinary importance.

It would improve if you also kept in mind that some certifications may be more in demand than others. Publications occasionally publish lists knowing some of that year's highest-demand IBM certifications.

2. Bigger Paychecks

IBM certifications do not inevitably carry automatic salary increases, but they can still quite literally pay off. According to a report from IBM, professionals who had earned an IT or project management certification within the last five years gained $5,242 more than their uncertified counterparts. Keep in mind that earnings tend to change from one certification and location to the next. Many resources can give more insight into the value of specific certifications within certain geographic markets.

3. Networking

Certified IBM professionals are a club all their own, and the company has its benefits. IBM reports that some networking communities and events are sold through particular vendors; others are established by motivated professionals online or through discussion networks. Certified professionals may also have more support on social networking sites, notes IBM. These networks can hold power for those looking for new employment opportunities or help on specific projects.

4. Career Flexibility

IBM certification, which offers certification training tools and materials, many IBM professionals have multiple certifications. These credentials do not just focus and certify their current skills, but also serve to diversify them. This can open up new professional doors for those who might need to switch gears.

Conclusion

The IBM certifications will keep your IT staff up to date on the latest techniques and security best practices or elevate your income and marketability. But being security-aware is not only for IBM professionals. All business staff should have a foundational knowledge of big data, and the risks technology poses.

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How to pivot in challenging times with IBM Systems Co-Creation Lab

2020 has brought significant changes to the way we all do business, and many organizations are shifting priorities in response to current challenges. The IBM Systems Co-Creation Lab offers all of our workshops, consulting and minimum viable product (MVP) builds as virtual and digital co-creation engagements. We’re here for you as your organization pivots to address unexpected challenges or explore new business opportunities.

Co-creation gives you a chance to team up with IBM IT infrastructure experts to discover, plan and start building the IT solutions your business needs now. Here’s how virtual co-creation with IBM Systems works:

IBM Systems Co-Creation Lab offers flexible session options and focuses on defined objectives with the optimal group of participants, typically key stakeholders in your organization. Don’t worry about video conferencing fatigue — we’ve got you covered and will create a schedule that works for you. You get to work with leading technical subject matter experts in IBM Systems Worldwide Client Experience Centers who have a wealth of experience with hybrid cloud, enterprise security, AI and much more.

Co-creation workshops employ a proven set of collaborative tools, allowing for expert whiteboarding sessions using agile and Enterprise Design Thinking methodologies. Sessions are customized based on the current needs and priorities of your organization. Maybe you want to explore a brand-new opportunity in your business that came out because of current global events, or perhaps you’re working on an architecture design for critical infrastructure modernization that’s been in the works for a while. Wherever you are on the journey, we’ll tailor your virtual co-creation workshop to meet you there. You may even come into the session with a specific idea you want to explore and decide to change your use case based on its feasibility or new possibilities that emerge during the co-creation process.

At the end of a co-creation workshop, you’ll come away with an outline of the big ideas generated from the session, newly defined solutions and, most important, next steps to get you where you need to go.

“Inspiring ideas exchanged.”

—A large bank in Asia

“Intellectually stimulating.”

—A US-based healthcare startup

“Exceeded all of our expectations.”

—A financial startup in North America

Our team has co-created successfully with organizations across a wide spectrum of industries. We’ve delivered innovative, timely use cases focused on food safety, manufacturing floor physical distancing, healthcare diagnosis and wildfire management, to name just a few. With co-creation techniques, we can apply emerging technologies to help you optimize your business, including hybrid multicloud, modernization, cybersecurity, resiliency and high availability, AI and storage solutions.

Source: ibm.com

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IBM Storage builds your journey to AI

Data is the one area where every company has an equal opportunity to be great.

Knowing your own data can give your company a clear competitive advantage. Yet, according to a survey conducted by Forrester with global IT, data, and line-of-business decision makers, more than half of the respondents admitted they simply don’t know what their AI data needs are. If business leaders do not fully understand their data needs, they can´t be expected to understand their infrastructure needs.

There is no AI without information architecture (IA). But how do organizations turn their data AI aspirations into business outcomes? IBM calls the pathway to leveraging the power of AI the “AI journey”.  The AI journey starts by accelerating your ability to collect and organize data, gaining deeper insights by leveraging AI-driven data analysis, and then infusing your entire enterprise with these capabilities and insights.

Today’s IBM Storage announcements are about enabling enterprises of all types and sizes to build simple, high-performance, cost-efficient AI-optimized solutions that can potentially increase their ability to gain greater insight, value, and competitive advantage from data.

First up is the new IBM Elastic Storage System (ESS) 5000 (GA: August 7, 2020) powered by IBM Spectrum Scale, a market leader. The ESS 5000 is designed for data lakes with 55 GB/s performance in a single 8-disk enclosure node, scalable to yottabyte configurations. The ESS 5000 is ideal for data collection and long-term storage capacity. The IBM ESS 3000 — introduced in October 2019 — and also powered by IBM Spectrum Scale, is a 2u building block with 40 GB/s performance designed to meet the challenge of analyzing vast amounts of data. Both systems are optimized for different stages of your AI journey.

“The new IBM ESS 5000 is designed to bring market-leading performance using IBM’s latest POWER9 processors. With increased disk and enclosure capacities, together with the strength of IBM Spectrum Scale, CSI is pleased to recommend this to our clients looking to scale-out file storage for efficient data lakes.” Paul Cameron, Vice President New Business Sales, CSI.

Highly flexible, massively scalable ESS 5000 systems aren’t the only solutions available from IBM Storage that are the essential foundation for optimized AI infrastructures. IBM Cloud Object Storage (COS), another market leader, is designed to provide very cost-efficient on-premises and hybrid cloud object storage from any network location. Today’s innovations enhance its traditional roles of backup and archive and also move IBM Cloud Object Storage into the realm of potentially supporting faster AI data collection and integration with high performance AI, big data and HPC workflows.

The IBM COS (GA: August 7, 2020) storage engine has gone through a complete modernization. This upgrade is designed to increase system performance to 55 GB/s in a 12-node configuration, which can improve reads by 300% and writes by 150%, depending on object size. These updates make IBM COS an even better solution for collecting and accessing object data. Additionally, IBM COS will support a new technology of high-capacity disk drives (Shingled Magnetic Recording, SMR drives) which will provide 1.9 PB in a 4u disk enclosure. With new AI acceleration (GA: 4Q20), IBM Spectrum Scale will move data from object storage minimizing duplicate copies of data.

These innovations can help enable enterprises to leverage the high durability and lower costs of IBM COS to build optimized AI infrastructures. To gain a deeper understanding of data assets themselves, organizations can turn to IBM Spectrum Discover. This software is designed to provide file and object data cataloging and indexing that ingests and exports not only with heterogeneous storage systems but also with IBM Watson solutions and IBM Cloud Pak for Data.

IBM Spectrum Discover (GA: 4Q20) will be incorporated into Red Hat OpenShift environments. With this enhancement IBM Spectrum Discover hybrid multicloud deployment will be designed to be portable and more flexible across clouds and in any environment supported by OpenShift.  Plus, additions to the IBM Spectrum Discover policy engine (GA: September 7, 2020) can potentially help enable support for moving or copying data to optimize storage efficiency.

The journey to AI begins with the right information architecture (IA). To do it right and beat your competition, you need the right tools, advice, and technologies. Just as importantly, you need a partner committed to ongoing innovation and industry leadership. The announcements today demonstrate that IBM Storage is the best choice for your AI journey.

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Open for business with IBM z15

In a world where you need to be “always on” for customers and protecting your data is a must, the demands on IT have increased exponentially. You must deliver on today’s mission-critical demands while simultaneously adapting to rapidly changing consumer behavior and evolving digital operations. The choice of platform underpinning your hybrid cloud strategy is fundamental to meeting those business needs now and preparing you for the future.

Mission-critical now more than ever

IBM Z® has built a reputation as the platform that underpins mission-critical businesses with industry-leading levels of data privacy, security and resiliency — ranging from 44 of the top 50 global banks to two-thirds of Fortune 100 — and we continue to adapt and anticipate market challenges. According to Moor Insights Analyst and Forbes’ Contributor Pat Moorhead, “There’s a reason IBM’s Z line has been around for as long as it has, and a lot of it has to do with the way the company rises to the occasion to meet the changing times; workloads are evolving, the threat landscape is evolving, and IBM appears determined to not be caught flat footed.”

With the recent announcement of our new single frame air-cooled models of the IBM z15™ and IBM LinuxONE III, we are helping our clients gain a better cloud native development experience, with a highly resilient platform designed to protect your data and privacy, with built-in flexibility to accommodate businesses of all sizes.

Respond and protect with cyber resiliency

Companies realize that to protect their business they must be armed to deter sophisticated threats, recover from outages, and meet unforeseen spikes in demand, all while delivering to competitive service levels. IBM Z can reduce the impact of downtime in your private cloud with IBM z15 solutions designed to deliver up to seven nines availability.

IBM recently introduced a form of capacity on demand with IBM Z Instant Recovery designed to increase processor capacity during startup and shutdown, and to reduce the time it takes to process backlog after a disruption4. This is ideal for companies facing the highest service-level requirements. According to a large US healthcare company, the z15 speed boost worked miracles. Everyone was impressed at how quickly the systems started up.

Keith Sisson, Director of Technology at Compuware, was also impressed: “With System Recovery Boost we have cut our IPL time in half. Where subsystems used to take minutes to start, they’re now taking seconds. System Recovery Boost is a great example of IBM listening to their customers and delivering something very beneficial!”

Your private data… is private

To thrive in today’s rapidly evolving market, enterprises must become cyber-resilient enterprises. Security is built into the platform throughout the stack and we continue to innovate. Pervasive encryption enables encryption of data in flight and at rest and is designed to help reduce the costs associated with protecting data and help client address compliance mandates. We recently added IBM Data Privacy Passports, a follow-on to pervasive encryption, which can extend data protection and privacy for eligible data from your IBM z15 environment to your enterprise with Data Privacy Passports appropriate policy controls. This can help you reduce the risk and impact of collecting and storing sensitive eligible data as it travels throughout your enterprise, allowing access to only authorized individuals, on premises or off.

Newly introduced IBM Secure Execution for Linux is designed to provide scalable isolation for individual workloads. It can help protect and isolate workloads running on premises or in IBM LinuxONE and IBM Z hybrid cloud environments. Now you can deploy secured and isolated granular services such as VMs within a single IBM z15 or LinuxONE III server to help you support a scalable and secured solution for multi-tenant workloads.

Together these capabilities help clients protect their data, maintain privacy, isolate workloads and recover from disruptions throughout their hybrid multicloud environment.

Innovate faster:

The new IBM z15 models are designed to be an integral part of your cloud. Developers can build new cloud-native applications and modernize existing applications to interface with cloud services through APIs and integrated container services, using the latest cloud application development tools, languages, and processes. With Red Hat® OpenShift® you can build once and deploy across your flexible compute environment with consistent management and orchestration using Ansible automation platform.

Barton Robinson, CEO of Velocity Software is building a Linux-based cloud and noted: “Cloud on IBM Z is resilient, secured, and easy, allowing us to get from metal to cloud in two days using Z15 T02, DS8910F, and Linux on z/VM.”

Designed to drive business transformation

For IBM z15 and LinuxONE III, the market adoption and feedback has been strong. Clients continue to seek a scalable, hybrid cloud platform for transforming business-critical applications and infrastructure — one that is resilient, flexible, and secure — and can adapt to today and whatever tomorrow brings.

As analyst Charles King, PUND IT, says, “There has never been a time when the value of IBM’s Z mainframe solutions were clearer. As companies worldwide grapple with often unimaginable uncertainties, the remarkable resiliency, continuity, data privacy and security capabilities that define mainframe computing help ensure that companies can and will remain open for business.”

Source: ibm.com

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3 critical responsibilities of digital asset custodians

Blockchain technology is moving beyond experimentations and use in payments. Recent advances in cryptographic, security and distributed ledger techniques have opened the door to the widespread use of decentralized ledgers to create sovereign currencies, stablecoins, digital securities and other types of tokenized contracts.

At Hex Trust we provide an enterprise platform which allows financial institutions to use blockchain to integrate digital assets into their business operations in a highly secured, scalable and compliant solution.

While we agree with market estimates that widespread implementation could still be several years away, Hex Trust believes that the size of the digital assets market could reach US$ 10 trillion by 2023, causing a big shift in the overall structure of financial markets. Banks and other financial intermediaries will soon be forced to devise and implement new digital asset strategies.

Custodians: the foundation of a successful digital asset solution

The role of custodians will be a critical building block for the new financial markets infrastructure and will be necessary for the widespread adoption of digital assets. We believe there are three critical responsibilities for digital asset custodians: safekeeping, connectivity and compliance.

Safekeeping

Securely custodizing digital assets protects the private keys and develops secure workflows to support transactions in and out of custody (deposits and withdrawals). So far, custodians have relied on cold wallets created and managed in air-gapped environments to provide the clients with an acceptable level of security. Conversely, most hacks have concentrated on hot wallets, used to provide clients with quick access to their assets. Multi-signature wallets and wallets based on threshold algorithms such as state space search (SSS) and  model predictive control (MPC) mitigate some of the risks of hot wallets. In addition to storage of the private keys, custodians must build their technology architectures to manage cybersecurity risks when interfacing with a public blockchain to facilitate transfers of these assets.

As the blockchain market becomes institutional, the current wallet implementations will not be scalable enough to cater to the requirements of financial intermediaries. A new approach will be required to offer custody solutions which can scale and process thousands of transactions per second with the necessary levels of security.

Hex Trust’s custody platform, Hex Safe™, was specifically engineered leveraging IBM Hyper Protect Virtual Servers and IBM LinuxONE to enable trusted cryptographic transactions and to deliver the highest level of  security and scalability. In addition to a holistic protection compliant to FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) 197 and FIPS 140-2 Level 4 HSM (Hardware Security Module) standards, the IBM Z environment has memory enclaves with common criteria EAL (Evaluation Assurance Level) 5+ rated separation between partitions. Hex Safe integrates additional security measures to enhance the security of assets such as automatic encryption, hardware-bound signing, and immutable customized compliance workflows, protected by tamper-proof secure boot and Secure Image Build, defend the system from malware contamination or coding attacks.

Connectivity

At Hex Trust we believe that a key responsibility of digital asset custodians lies in simplifying the underlying complexities of blockchain technologies and creating a standard access layer to connect capital and service providers across the ecosystem. This is a critical building block to extract the maximum value that blockchain networks can offer to its users and an opportunity to design a new financial market structure fundamentally different from the current one.

Hex Trust is spearheading this transformation by providing its clients an open platform that can be used to securely store assets and to access services offered in the digital asset ecosystem, focusing on integrating brokers, prime brokers, exchanges, lending and borrowing platforms, staking solutions and other custodians.

In addition, Hex Trust is committed to providing a secure bridge between the traditional financial world and the new digital asset ecosystem, allowing banks and other traditional financial institutions to access and serve clients in the digital asset space. As an example of this effort, Hex Safe integrates a SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) interface to create a seamless communication channel with traditional financial institutions.

Compliance

Following the dramatic rise in cryptocurrency investments and trading activities over the last few years, regulators are setting their sights on this growing part of the financial services industry. An example of the regulatory interest is the new guidance published in June 2019 by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on how its 37 members should regulate cryptocurrency exchanges. Unlike regulated financial institutions, most cryptocurrency exchanges, and other digital asset operators, do not currently have a legal or technological framework to obtain, hold and transmit identifying information for their transaction counterparties. In addition, while there has been clear progress in various jurisdictions with respect to digital assets, service providers operating in different countries have different regulatory expectations with very limited global consensus on cross-border activities.

At Hex Trust, we believe that digital assets custodians will play a critical role in facilitating the adoption of regulatory and compliance frameworks in the industry. This role consists of various responsibilities including monitoring clients’ transactions to prevent AML/CTF (Anti-Money Laundering/Counter-Terrorism Financing) activities, reporting identified and transaction information to regulators, protecting clients’ data and providing clients and regulators with tools to perform their compliance activities.

Hex Safe has been specifically designed to meet the complex compliance requirements of our target clients — banks and other financial institutions. Examples of features include on-chain and off-chain account segregation, full audit trails, integrated AML/KYC (Anti-Money Laundering/Know Your Customer) tools to prove ownership and source of funds, and regulatory and internal reporting capabilities. Further, data privacy regulations can add additional levels of complexity, as custodians must be able to collect and transmit data without accessing and storing sensitive third-party data.

In line with our collaborative approach to the digital asset market, Hex Safe has already integrated third-party tools to enhance our blockchain analytics functionalities, with a long term objective of connecting various compliance platforms to satisfy the requirements of our clients and the jurisdictions they operate in.

Looking towards the future of the digital asset market

As blockchain technology and digital assets become mainstream, the role of the custodian is evolving from  simply providing a secure wallet to providing bank-grade security and transactional capability, securely connecting services and capital across the market, and ensuring compliance with relevant regulations and legislations in various jurisdictions. These responsibilities pose a complex challenge to invested entities and will ultimately define the future of the market infrastructure. Hex Trust, with IBM infrastructure, is well-positioned to lead the transformation in this area and offer digital assets players the first bank-grade solution to access the digital asset market.

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Illuminate transaction blind spots with IBM Sterling Business Transaction Intelligence Enterprise and Multi-Enterprise Editions

Disruption. Disturbance. Confusion. These are the palpable experiences supply chain and IT professionals face daily, particularly as they grapple with the growing complexity in their global business networks that rely on multiple supplier tiers to deliver finished goods.

Disruptions, by any name, continuously challenge global supply chain operations from every corner, every day and at any time. As the world is quickly changing and we face a new normal, the importance of enabling efficient, real-time supplier collaboration built on a foundation of transparency and trust has never been more critical to improve visibility into Procure to Pay or Order to Cash processes.

How do we get ahead of B2B transaction discrepancies before they become disruptions that impact supply, production, delivery and the bottom line? Can we leverage data and technology to make our supply chains smarter and more resilient?

At this very moment, there’s valuable information – and predictive insights – flowing through your business network. With the right combination of analytics, AI, and other enabling technologies like blockchain, you can harness your data to uncover discrepancies and be alerted to potential issues that may need action. In other words, you can be more responsive, adaptive, resilient.

Evolving B2B Supply Chain Collaboration with New Blockchain and AI Innovations

Today, you can remove supply chain blind spots and act on predictive insights from AI with the new IBM Sterling Business Transaction Intelligence (BTI) Enterprise and Multi-Enterprise Editions.

These editions build upon the IBM Sterling Business Transaction Intelligence Basic Edition complimentary capability of  IBM Sterling Supply Chain Business Network (SCBN). Sterling BTI Basic Edition leverages AI – including natural language search and anomaly detection –  to provide business and IT users self-service visibility of  transaction data in real time and in context.

Identify discrepancies before they become disruptions with AI

The new Sterling BTI Enterprise Edition AI machine learning capabilities empower you with alerts of all delayed (or late) orders so you can get ahead of issues. It also provides cycle time predictions which help determine the probability of events – such as when an order acknowledgement will be received or when an order will be shipped-in-full – so you can monitor the orders that may not make your on time, in full expectations.

Remove supply chain transaction blind spots to reduce disputes

The Sterling BTI Multi-Enterprise Edition leverages IBM Blockchain to create a secure, shared, single version of the truth for B2B transactions.

You can deepen trust and transparency across the partner ecosystem with invitation-only blockchain access that allows trading partners to see the same chronological history of events and documents. Each partner maintains control of what data is shared with whom in the relationship.

Embedded AI machine learning provides proactive discrepancy alerts and predicts completion of events to get ahead of potential issues.

You can realize immediate business benefits by building upon existing EDI investments and quickly and easily connect your digital transactions to the blockchain relationship with IBM Sterling SCBN , or use RESTful APIs. Additionally, self-service onboarding allows you to add partners to a relationship in hours – not days or weeks.

Why blockchain and what’s the advantage of shared, multi-enterprise visibility?

Visibility, transparency, collaboration and trust are needed to build a smarter, more resilient supply chain.

Data silos, point-to-point communications and a lack of visibility and transparency across partners prohibit the transparency that engenders trust. Imagine, for example, a buyer, supplier and carrier across a typical B2B transaction relationship. What does the situation look like today?

◉ The buyer doesn’t tender the freight and doesn’t get the status of the goods in transit. Thus, the buyer is unaware of delays, unable to proactively adjust receiving resources and gets involved in a time-consuming process to understand the status of shipments when the expected doesn’t happen.

◉ When a supplier is made aware of a shipment delay to goods in transit, buyer notification becomes a top priority. This results in extensive time spent via phone and email to provide shipment status – while dedicated teams update buyer portals. Plus, penalties hang in the balance because of carrier delay.

◉ In the meanwhile, a carrier often wonders why clients believe a mistake occurred or performance wasn’t executed according to the contract. They have no visibility into overall Procure to Pay and Order to Cash events. Accordingly, it’s difficult to determine why the deliveries aren’t in-full or are late.

With blockchain, the buyer, supplier and carrier can now join a secure, immutable relationship and gain consensus on the data they want to share to create one version of the truth. This keeps everyone on the same page, at the same time to reduce frequency and volume of disputes.

In turbulent times, seizing value in digital transactions, removing blind spots between partners and getting ahead of potential issues with predictive insights is key to maintaining a robust and healthy supply chain.

Source: ibm.com

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The future of retail returns

Evolving customer expectations have forced retailers to figure out how to better manage the ripple effects that the current global crisis has created. This includes the realm of returns. Let’s look at some of the trends that 2020 has seen so far:

◉ Extended return windows: Many retailers have instituted extended return periods that go beyond the average 30-day window for customers.

◉ Increased returns: With physical stores closed, ecommerce is on the rise. But with this shift comes increased returns, as customers can’t be certain what they’re buying online will be what the right size and fit.

◉ Not accepting returns: In the face of health concerns around coronavirus lingering on surfaces for extended periods of time, some retailers have stopped accepting product returns at all.

But these trends aren’t the only thing on brands’ minds when it comes to return management. There’s also the issue of dealing with returned items post-pandemic: Can they be resold? If nothing else, handling returned items will come with extra precautions and consumer concerns with worries surrounding the virus’s staying power.

Retailers need to get strategic about how they handle returns moving forward so it doesn’t eat away at their margins, customer experience, and sustainability for the long-term.

7 ways to avoid returns

Sell the right item. One major step that eliminates a possible return is to make sure you sell the right item to the right customer. Tactics for successfully accomplishing this include implementing sizing charts that provide the customer’s “optimal size” based on fit from known companies/designers, past purchasing history, plus data-driven technology that decodes individual style, fit, and size. Nordstrom does this well: they allow shoppers to compare sizing on similar items from popular brands side by side.

Learn 3 reasons why you need a better view of your inventory

Save the sale. The ‘save the sale’ method is key for businesses who are looking to compensate for returns through a loyalty incentive. One example would be to offer customers to keep the item and provide them with a coupon towards their next purchase.

To avoid this long and complex process (especially if the value of the item is less than the cost of the return), there’s more to gain by focusing on the customer satisfaction angle. Instead of a return, fuel additional shopping by offering store credit.

Smart returns. Think of this tactic as the ease of “click and collect”, but extended to “click and return.” Smart returns will require a connected network of inventory visibility, as well as predicted demand. The idea is that a shipping label could be printed and/or a customer instructed on where to go in real-time as a return is being processed. One such scenario might be a shopper in New York who purchased a bathing suit in December for a trip. Instead of returning to a local store, a brand would provide a shipping label to mail the bathing suit to Florida since there is an increased likelihood that the item would sell there.

Predict returns. Data plays a vital role when it comes to predicting returns. Specifically, data that tracks the reason for a return: whether it’s done directly (item was damaged, didn’t fit, wasn’t as pictured, etc.) or learned through predictive analytics.

Empower your brand to analyze purchasing and returns data to accurately predict likelihood of a return based on factors such as:

◉ Duplication: Two of the same items, but two different sizes included in a single order. The downstream effect of this is to more accurately disclose whether a product runs big/small to further enable customer satisfaction.

◉ Cart size: Average number of items in order—especially if they belong to the same category.

◉ Timing: For example, if the shipment was delayed and the Halloween costume was no longer needed.

Buy online, pick up (or return) in-store. Retailers can give shoppers greater flexibility by allowing them to purchase online and then pick up in-store. While they’re there to pick up, they can test or try products they’ve ordered and make an exchange via curbside processing if needed. This also provides an opportunity for sales associates to cross-sell or up-sell other products during the visit.

Virtual or personal shopping. Whether it’s a virtual showcase of new items for your most loyal customers, or enabling sales associates to set aside items for shoppers based on their past purchase history, these tech-enabled shopping solutions should help lower the risk of returns (since the associate knows what the shopper typically likes, sizes needed, etc.)

Virtual shopping can also be a context-rich form of customer engagement where shoppers see products on an actual person in real time. Direct-to-consumer shapewear company, Shapermint, for example, has been using Instagram Live to spotlight try-on sessions with influencers. During the live session, they answer product questions from viewers to help guide shoppers towards making a purchase that best fits them.

Augmented Reality (AR) tools. Help shoppers visualize what the product will actually look like with contexual images using AR. For a furniture retailer, this might mean building 3D models of products so shoppers can upload a picture and see what a product will look like in their space. This helps cut down on returns related to product sizing, color combinations, and a variety of other variables that can only come from seeing the product in its intended, personalized context.

From predicting returns, to saving the sale and beyond, the strategies covered above can help brands cut down on returned items and protect their bottom lines. No matter what route you decide to go, remember: the customer experience should always remain a top priority.

Source: ibm.com

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BrainCreators transforms asset monitoring with digital intelligence

Look around you. You’re probably surrounded by some kind of infrastructure, whether it’s the walls of your home or your office, the rails under the train you’re commuting on, or the sidewalk beneath your feet–by the way, please look where you’re going.

All this infrastructure has to be managed by someone. You already know how much work it takes to keep a house or apartment in good condition. Imagine how complicated it gets when you ramp that effort up to enterprise scale. Companies that work in asset-intensive industries–utilities, railways, construction companies and manufacturers for example–should inspect their infrastructure continuously to monitor the condition of their assets and conduct repairs or replacements when necessary.

These organizations devote huge amounts of resources to managing physical assets. Many have teams with acres of domain expertise built up over years of practice. At the same time, as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more commonplace, these companies want to explore how they can use new techniques to make asset management more efficient.

At BrainCreators we bridge the gap between planning and reality allowing domain experts to apply intelligent automation for asset inspection. And we use IBM Power Systems to do it; let us tell you how.

Choosing the right starting point

BrainMatter uses the latest developments in AI to apply end-to-end intelligent automation for effective physical asset monitoring and control. Many businesses are exploring AI by experimenting with data science tooling. As a result, lots of AI models are developed that never make it to production. BrainMatter goes beyond AI experiments to provide a platform for intelligent automation of tasks that follow a perceive-decide-respond pattern.

We combine rapid recognition, direct assessment and immediate action to enable an intuitive and transparent workflow. A BrainMatter user can automate thousands of tasks without ever needing to consult a data scientist.

Behind the scenes

To build BrainMatter, we scoured the market for the best accelerated servers and tested them. IBM Power Systems was the clear leader, combining NVIDIA NVLink with IBM CPU technology to outperform competitors. Using the same technology that powers two of the world’s fastest supercomputers, Sierra and Summit, we knew that Power Systems was the right platform to make short work of highly data-intensive use cases.

In designing our architecture, we replicated the IBM-recommended approach, opting for a containerized design built on Linux and orchestrated by Kubernetes.

With BrainMatter up and running, we can now construct AI models for asset inspection, monitoring and control, quickly and easily. With the powerful IBM server platform, we can rapidly train the models with millions of images, enabling them to identify patterns and make accurate predictions about asset condition.

BrainMatter in action

Our platform is exceptionally good at turning domain expertise and skills into intelligent automation to make life easier for your employees and optimize your processes. It’s designed to perceive through rapid  recognition, decide by instant reality check against norm or plan, and respond with immediate action.

For example, we just announced a partnership with Unihorn to intelligently automate their road inspection solution. Until now, they have relied on cars equipped with cameras to drive thousands of kilometers of road. A team of road inspectors analyzes the footage over the course of five weeks, classifying defects that deviate from the norm, raising tickets and determining the next best action. With BrainMatter, they’ll shrink the road inspection process from five weeks to seconds, happening as their cars drive around. In addition, they can augment road maintenance work orders in IBM Maximo with better insights and immediate action enabled by BrainMatter.

We also recently won the Schiphol Pointcloud Innovation Challenge, which challenged participants to harness data from 3D/Pointcloud scanners to deliver new or improved products and services to people working at Schiphol Airport.

In just seven days, we developed a solution that monitors maintenance-related assets in Schiphol Terminal 1 nonstop. Members of our team taught BrainMatter to recognize approximately 25,000 assets in nearly 2,000 high-resolution panoramic images with an effort of only a few hours each day.

The judges scored us the maximum number of points for showcasing immediate value for Schiphol and its main contractors, high feasibility and applicability, scalable and intuitive UI, along with a strong commercial approach. The solution will replace manual inspections with automated alerts through tickets when assets such as lighting, smoke detectors and surveillance cameras require maintenance. Consequently, Schiphol and its main contractors can improve their first-time fix rate, enhance their ability to exchange information, reduce costs and better identify risks.

These are just two instances where we’ve delivered tangible value with help from IBM Power Systems. From manufacturing to real estate, airports to logistics, at BrainCreators we know that even when offloading tasks to machines–it is ultimately all about people. It is about curiosity and linking that to experience. About opening the windows to the world of AI and machine learning. All of us live and learn . . . so let’s harness the power of our collective brains.

Source: ibm.com

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Open treasures: Why we contribute to open source projects

Open source is the winning approach in software development today. Take modern cloud computing for example, which is built on open source projects governed by the Linux Foundation and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Open source is having a transformational effect on the industry and driving innovation in the IT ecosystem. More and more organizations are leaning in and engaging in open source because, counterintuitively, it can pay off to allow your IT professionals to not just use open source software but contribute back to it.

Open source: The big picture

Consider enterprise open source for a moment: Next-generation data center solutions are software-defined, with concepts such as infrastructure as code and immutable infrastructure quickly gaining traction in the marketplace. In many areas, such as cloud, big data, machine learning and DevOps, open source software is on the cutting edge of innovation. Industry-leading open source projects include the Hadoop ecosystem, OpenStack, Docker, Kubernetes, Hyperledger, Ansible, TensorFlow, Kafka and many more. Such projects are embedded into ecosystems that promote the use of open source licenses by default. As a result, the industry at large is pivoting toward open source software.

IBM is committed to fostering the use of open technology. IBMers contribute more than 15,000 commits per month to open source projects, making IBM top 3 in the world, along with Google and Red Hat. IBM heavily invests in open source, and this trend is expected to continue and further increase following the Red Hat acquisition.

Three benefits of participating in open source for IT professionals

IT infrastructure professionals need to constantly gain new skills to remain essential for clients that are adopting next-generation data center solutions. Active participation in strategic open source projects and communities is an effective way to stay up to speed in a fast-moving industry. Active participation in open source communities helps you gather essential skills at the forefront of development.

Contributing to open source projects has further benefits for IT infrastructure professionals:

◉ Expand and sharpen skills: Adopting innovative technologies often means working with upstream (open source) projects, and active contribution to such projects allows you to acquire and deepen your knowledge. Clients implementing new applications learn by contributing as they receive feedback from more experienced users.

◉ Establish the community as a communication channel: Open source projects facilitate collaboration, knowledge sharing and asset reuse. This allows IT professionals from different companies to build an effective (virtual) community, breaking through the borders of their own department or company — and more collaboration across the industry means faster innovation, which all participants benefit from.

◉ Find the best experts to work with: Those looking for expertise in a particular area can find skilled consultants in open source communities. Clients have found consultants from my team, IBM Systems Lab Services, through their community contributions, resulting in improved reputation, eminence and ultimately in new service engagements. This is not only relevant to IT service consultants though; recognition and the feeling of producing value for others is “the fuel” of open source.

Source: ibm.com

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