IBM IT infrastructure fuels hybrid cloud

The global pandemic and ensuing economic disruption have accelerated plans for nearly every organization to digitize their business and operations. Our clients are increasing their investments in AI and cloud while moving swiftly to reduce costs and address security with approaches like confidential computing and resiliency.

IBM’s hybrid cloud approach coupled with Red Hat is at the epicenter of this swift and massive transformation.  Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform, gives organizations the flexibility to choose where to deploy workloads. It also balances the need to keep workloads close to the data on premises or in a private cloud, while also taking advantage of the agility and flexibility of a public cloud such as IBM Cloud.

Across IBM IT infrastructure, we’re seeing three key use cases for hybrid cloud adoption:

◉ Modernization and containerization of applications to increase developer velocity and provide consistent hybrid cloud management;

◉ Establishing low-latency integration between applications and business-critical data by co-locating cloud-native and traditional applications; and

◉ Making cloud-native apps secure, scalable and resilient with co-optimized software and hardware infrastructure that deliver encryption everywhere and vertical scalability.

As part of this effort, this week we announced new and upcoming hybrid offerings for IBM Z, Power Systems and Storage that give our clients even more flexibility to choose where best to deploy applications in the hybrid cloud, including:

☉ Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform: enables new cloud-native applications to be developed and existing applications to be modernized, with the speed and flexibility to respond to change in a multicloud world. These applications can take advantage of the enterprise qualities of IBM Z, IBM LinuxONE and IBM Power, such as increased performance through co-location with core data. And the choice of enterprise-class data services for hybrid cloud is available with IBM Storage and Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage.

☉ IBM Cloud Pak for Applications: Red Hat and IBM runtimes that help modernize existing applications and develop new cloud-native apps faster for IBM Z and Power Systems.

☉ IBM Cloud Pak for Data: enables organizations to infuse AI throughout their business with a fully integrated data and AI platform that modernizes how data is collected, organized and analyzed already available on IBM Power Systems, planned for November on IBM Z.

☉ IBM Cloud Pak for Integration: helps clients to power digital transformation by efficiently connecting applications and data on IBM Z.

☉ IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management: provides consistent visibility, automation and governance across the hybrid multicloud for IBM Z and Power Systems.

In addition, earlier this week, we announced new Red Hat OpenShift capabilities and support for IBM Storage. Some of the enhancements include the IBM Storage Suite for IBM Cloud Paks expanded support for container-native data access on OpenShift and CoreOS with IBM Spectrum Scale. Furthermore, IBM Cloud Object Storage adds support for the Open Source s3fs file-to-object storage interface bundled with Red Hat OpenShift.

For more than twenty years, IBM has worked closely with Red Hat to bring application portability to our clients at every major technology reinvention from Java to Linux; driven by our shared values to provide a flexible, open, hybrid and secured enterprise platform for mission-critical workloads. Together, we are focused on delivering hybrid cloud innovation and differentiation to clients globally.

By working with Red Hat to maximize the value of Red Hat OpenShift on our platforms, we are redefining how organizations create and deliver value, work, compete and transact—all supported by the strengths of the IBM IT infrastructure portfolio: industry expertise in mission-critical business processes; proven security, compliance and governance; the ability to build and run anywhere with consistency; helping clients to automate, predict and modernize workflows and leverage the world’s innovations from confidential computing, to the bleeding edge of security innovation and more. These are all key attributes that will be critical to succeed in the era of hybrid cloud.

This is an exciting next step in our journey to leverage our unique capabilities and help our clients realize the potential of a hybrid cloud business model for their most critical work.

Source: ibm.com

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Storage made simple for containers and hybrid cloud

Announcing new enhancements that are designed to:

◉ Enrich protection for containers, and expand cloud options for backup, disaster recovery, and data retention

◉ Expand support for container-native data access on Red Hat OpenShift

◉ Increase container app flexibility with object storage

Today, IBM Storage announces new capabilities and enhancements to its storage and modern data protection solutions. These enhancements are primarily designed to support the rapidly expanding container and Kubernetes ecosystem, including RedHat OpenShift, and to accelerate our clients’ journeys to hybrid cloud.

This announcement aims to further extend IBM’s innovation in cross-platform data needed for enterprises to fully adopt containers, Kubernetes, and Red Hat OpenShift as our standard across physical, virtual and cloud platforms.

According to Enterprise Strategy Group, 74 percent of organizations are using containers in production now or planning to do so within the next year.

As container adoption grows year-to-year, businesses are also facing storage challenges that require more specialized strategies and offerings, such as data management, data protection and backup.

IBM introduced its first storage for containers in 2017 to enable enterprise storage to be persistently provisioned for containers and Kubernetes. Building on this depth of experience, and working closely with Red Hat, IBM is announcing new capabilities designed to advance its storage for containers offerings:

The IBM Storage Suite for Cloud Paks is designed to expand support for container-native data access on OpenShift. This suite aims to provide our greatest flexibility for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) teams who often need file, object, and block as software-defined storage.

IBM packages Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage, Red Hat Ceph Storage, and IBM Spectrum Storage software under a common license. In this 4Q 2020 release, IBM Spectrum Scale adds a fully containerized client and run-time operators to provide access to a leading filesystem for HPC, AI, and scalable data lakes on any Red Hat OpenShift cluster. In addition, IBM Cloud Object Storage adds support for the open source s3fs file to object storage interface bundled with Red Hat OpenShift.

“As we embark on a journey to modernize our infrastructure with containerized applications and Red Hat OpenShift we needed an infrastructure that could support our application modernization in a safe and secure way,” says Christoph Buchstätter, Head of Computing and Platform Services, Porsche Informatik. “We chose IBM Cloud Object Storage because of the built-in security and stability with high availability it will provide our containerized applications. The system is simple to manage and maintains the data in our control.”

For those who are evaluating container support in their existing infrastructure, IBM FlashSystem provides low latency, high performance, and high-availability storage for physical, virtual, or container workloads with broad CSI support. The latest release in 4Q 2020 includes updated Ansible scripts for rapid deployment, enhanced support for storage-class memory, and improvements in snapshot and data efficiency.

In the most exciting news, IBM Storage has laid out plans for adding integrated storage management in a fully container-native software-defined solution. Building on IBM’s long-standing experience in scale-out storage, this solution will be managed by the Kubernetes administrator, and is designed to provide the performance and capacity scalability demanded by AI and ML workloads in a Red Hat OpenShift environment.

IBM intends to enhance IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, its industry leading modern data protection solution, to protect Red Hat OpenShift environments in 4Q 2020. Enhancements include ease of deployment with the ability to deploy IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server as a container using a certified Red Hat OpenShift operator, the ability to protect metadata which provides the ability to recover applications, namespaces, and clusters to a different location, and expanded container-native and container-ready storage support. IBM is also announcing the availability of a beta of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus on Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

“IBM Storage continues to drive innovation in a direction where customers are moving,” says Richard Potts, General Manager, Enterprise Software and Solutions at IBM Business Partner SCC. “Bringing new innovation and solutions to Kubernetes containers and the Red Hat OpenShift hybrid cloud platform shows IBM storage has a good pulse on the industry. Innovations with new IBM Spectrum Scale container-native storage access or integrating IBM Spectrum Discover with Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage (OCS) are examples of commitment to the hybrid cloud data center.”

Completing this announcement, IBM is announcing expanded hybrid cloud support for IBM Spectrum Protect, new Gen7 b-type SAN switches and directors with new IBM SANnav management software, both available in 4Q 2020, and plans for products based on new LTO 9 tape technology designed to enhance cyber resilience, expected in 1H 2021.

Just as Red Hat matures and hardens open source innovation for enterprises, IBM Storage bridges the gaps between traditional IT platforms and concerns and the rapid evolution of open source projects. Once again, IBM Storage provides consistent data services across physical, virtual, cloud and containerized workloads on high-performance storage solutions or as software-defined storage. IT professionals can extend their current storage and data protection infrastructure or establish new platforms that bring together open source innovation and enterprise data services. In this way, IBM Storage helps organizations as they work to protect their business and accelerate innovation.

Source: ibm.com

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Engage with IBM Servers & Storage in 2021

Over the past several years, the ways in which the IT infrastructure community interacts have changed radically. We’ve listened to your feedback and have evolved to provide new and updated digital and interactive resources that center around peer-to-peer engagement, streamlined always-on access, and extending the reach of IBM experts, no matter where you are in the world.

Below are some of the ways for you to connect with—and get inspired by—this vibrant community of users, experts and innovators.

Join our virtual community

As a recently launched online platform, the IBM community is a global network of customers, partners and IBMers. The community is not only built for you, but by joining this inaugural year it will also be built by you, as you take an active part in shaping the foundations of this experience.

By joining, you’ll be able to:

◉ Collaborate with your peers in forums, user groups and discussion boards

◉ Share and receive advice and expertise by reading and writing blogs

◉ Build skills through virtual courses and by earning points and badges

◉ Access the latest technical content, free trials, code samples, tutorials as well as thought leadership and customer stories – all in one place

◉ Share best practices and resources you’ve found valuable yourself – everything from videos to articles and insights to practical advice.

Stay up on trends

◉ Visit and read the IBM Servers and Storage blog for articles on building digital transformation strategies, go behind the scenes with tech trailblazers and get the latest news on products and services.

◉ Join live and on-demand events for dedicated technical sessions, tips from experts and simulcast product announcements.

Develop your skills

◉ TechU has long been a popular event and community spot featuring highly technical content that is specific to IBM’s IT infrastructure category. Now, the same great content will come directly to your computer as part of the new virtual TechU conference.

◉ IBM Training provides a full catalogue of courses you can take to expand your knowledge and improve your skills.

◉ Master the Mainframe—currently underway until January—is a competition where students can learn skills for mainframe. The competition also allows customers to earn industry-recognized digital badges.

Explore more of IBM

◉ The IBM Garage is now set up for IBM Systems customers who are ready to explore more IBM products and solutions. Here you can co-create a solution in an interactive digital workshop to find the answers to your biggest IT issues. Work with experts in design, architecture, agile development, data science, AI, automation, blockchain, security, and more, while benefiting from the latest hybrid cloud and AI technologies.

As a result of this digital transformation, we will be retiring IBM Systems magazine for IBM Z and Power Systems at the end of 2020. We want to thank the team of publishers, editors and writers at MSP TechMedia for the years of great partnership and collaboration in producing the magazine on our behalf.

We remain fully committed to our IT infrastructure customers and to our IBM Z and IBM Power Systems platforms. The IT infrastructure category is integral to IBM’s hybrid cloud growth strategy, as the IBM hardware that your enterprise relies on for your most mission-critical computing needs integrates with the hybrid cloud platform to allow for cloud-native development to capitalize on the unique capabilities of IBM’s servers and storage.

Source: ibm.com

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3 strategies for a holistic approach to cybersecurity

Staying ahead of cybersecurity threats is the top business challenge for executives according to IBM research. As organizations move more data to the cloud, this creates more access points through which the data can be hacked. Continued remote work mandates have also created new, vulnerable attack surfaces. Keeping data secure and compliant in this environment is a tall task for even the most sophisticated organization.

The solution is to build in security throughout your hybrid multicloud environment, creating an IT infrastructure that provides holistic end-to-end protection. This means leveraging the security capabilities architected into all levels of your hybrid cloud environment (hardware, firmware, operating system, software), and securing the data itself at-rest, in-flight and in-use. 

Below, we’ll outline three strategies for shifting your approach to cybersecurity. You’ll learn how the technology and expertise backing IBM Z® and IBM Power Systems™ make IBM the best partner for you on that journey.

Strategy 1: Encrypt data at scale with IBM Z 

Encryption is one of the best ways to protect data, as it renders stolen data useless without the encryption key. Selective encryption can be used to secure specific types of data within specific layers—at the database, application, data set or disk level. However, this approach is costly and resource-intensive, forcing organizations to make risky decisions about which data they choose to encrypt. 

Pervasive encryption on IBM Z lets you encrypt all enterprise data in-flight and at-rest, without costly application changes, to keep it secured within your environment. This method better equips you to meet compliance mandates.  

Strategy 2: Protect workloads against threats with confidential computing 

There are many benefits to using a hybrid cloud environment, but from a security standpoint this also means the introduction of new risks, including insider threats from cloud and system administrators.  

The traditional model for managing IT environments relies on “operational assurance”—trusting that administrators are doing the right thing. At IBM, we believe that a zero-trust approach necessitates the move from operational assurance to “technical assurance”—in which protection controls are built into the technology to eliminate the need for administrators to access sensitive data within those environments.  

As we look to the future of data protection in hybrid cloud environments, confidential computing—the use of trusted execution environments (TEE) to protect data in use—can provide organizations with the technical assurance they need. IBM has been investing in confidential computing for over a decade, and we are on the fourth generation of our Secure Service Container technology, which is the underpinning for IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services, available through the IBM Cloud and hosted on LinuxONE servers. With the latest generation of the Z platform, IBM z15 and LinuxONE III, we introduced a new hardware-enforced trusted execution environment called IBM Secure Execution for Linux.

Strategy 3: Build security into your IT stack with IBM Z and IBM Power Systems 

You can build security into your IT stack by working with various third-party vendors. However, this approach compounds the complexity that already exists with hybrid cloud and introduces more potential points of exposure to your network.  

Or, you could leverage the security, technology, and expertise of IBM through IBM Z and Power Systems. Both platforms offer comprehensive, end-to-end security that integrates across the entire stack—from chip to hypervisor, apps to network resources, up to security system management.  

IBM owns the security throughout, giving you more control and insight into what data is being stored and where. By identifying data flow and where it’s vulnerable, you can make informed decisions around the measures to take to protect it.

Source: ibm.com

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Expanding choice for blockchain workloads with R3 Corda Enterprise on IBM LinuxONE

It’s an exciting time for IBM LinuxONE. Over the past several months, we’ve been doubling down on new hardware, Red Hat OpenShift and new Cloud Paks for LinuxONE, and new confidential computing capabilities. More than ever, our clients of all sizes looking to win in the era of hybrid cloud are focused on key areas: resiliency, performance demands, security, flexibility and modernization.

Other areas of growth for LinuxONE are emerging workloads and industries like blockchain and digital asset custody. While the importance of safeguarding business and customer data is well known, the nature of blockchain use cases often include the initiation, transfer and custody of financial assets for your business and your customers—which further increases the importance of building applications with security and privacy first.

News from R3’s CordaCon

Today at R3’s CordaCon conference, IBM joins R3 on the virtual stage to announce a new open beta program to bring R3’s enterprise blockchain platform, Corda Enterprise to IBM LinuxONE next month both on premises and the IBM Cloud, delivered using IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services. The R3 on IBM LinuxONE beta program will open on November 2, 2020. General availability (GA) is expected in Q1 2021.

For IBM, bringing R3 Corda Enterprise to LinuxONE is another example of us opening up the platform to deliver the flexibility and choice clients want with the security they need. Not only do blockchain and digital asset custodians face the same traditional security threats as every other business, they also have concerns around data residency, standards compliance and needs around deployment flexibility—all concerns that must be resolved at the infrastructure level.

IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services are designed following a zero-trust security model, not trusting anyone by default, even those within the network perimeter. With IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services, client data is fully protected, while at rest and in flight, even from those with elevated system credentials who should not have access. This is done using technology to enforce that those with elevated system credentials cannot access your data. And, IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Service gives you access to IBM’s industry-leading hardware security module (HSM), certified to be the industry’s first and only FIPS 140-2 Level 4 certified Hardware Security Module (HSM) available in the public cloud.

What this means: IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services provide you with a cloud environment that is engineered for technical assurance of data privacy (in other words, administrators should not access servers or data), as we use technology to enforce those boundaries. This means that you can run your R3 Corda Enterprise workload in the IBM Cloud, with no technical ability for cloud administrators to gain access to your encryption keys or data.

Today’s announcement isn’t an anomaly. We’re also working with clients in the digital asset custody space like OnChain and Hex Trust—as well as clients who need to protect important IP like CDG and Mainbloq. It’s also the same technology that is found in our IBM Cloud for Financial Services and Apple CareKit’s IBM Hyper Protect Software Development Kit (SDK) for iOS—demonstrating that when it comes to open and secure, LinuxONE is part of our clients’ hybrid cloud strategies, from startups to the Fortune 100.

“Corda Enterprise deployment on IBM’s LinuxONE is another exciting step forward within the Corda ecosystem. Specifically, it stands to augment CorDapps such as Ivno that require secure, resilient, and performant node-hosting strategies; ultimately benefiting the wider Corda client base,” said Ryan Gledhill, CTO, Ivno.

Source: ibm.com

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Q&A: How to deliver more data value across the enterprise

A s enterprises amass data, they need better ways to organize it to align with business needs. We spoke with expert Neal Fishman about his book, Smarter Data Science: Succeeding with Enterprise-Grade Data and AI Projects, which delves into using information architecture (IA) to make data accessible and valuable for AI and applications in hybrid cloud environments.

Tell us about your book …

Organizations realize that data is an intrinsic asset that needs to be managed. This aligns with the idea that data is the new oil, a new type of energy and asset that can maximize business opportunities.

Increasingly, a lot of peoples’ jobs involve data and data science, so the book is intended for both IT professionals and executives and puts cloud computing and AI into a business perspective. It takes a big-picture look at cloud computing and how organized data is needed for intelligent workflows and the cognitive enterprise.

What about data management?

There’s a perception that data is somehow alive, that it does something. But for me data is inert: it’s not self-aware and it’s not self-organizing. This is why an IA is an imperative to helping AI and other applications make data valuable. IBM Executive Chairman Virginia (Ginni) Rometty said “there can’t be AI without IA.” The book explores this concept.

To make data actionable, some type of host is required. This could be a computer program, a SQL statement, or an algorithm in a machine learning model. In the book, I address moving from being data rich and information poor (DRIP) to effectively organizing data—not just collecting more of it, which doesn’t solve the problem for an effective IA.

You mention making IA adaptive and more flexible …

A common challenge is how IT should build solutions for businesses that are continuously morphing. The book addresses IA in the context of being adaptive so that the architecture can keep up with the changing pace of business.

Consider that a chess master can plan 15-20 moves ahead as well as their opponent’s maneuvers. Similarly, anticipating where IA needs to be to align with your company’s strategy and future planning is key. To help with creating an adaptive IA, the book describes three essential pillars: data flow, data zone, and data topography.

What data science problems do businesses face?

The fact is that data-centric projects are challenging and often fail to meet expectations. Many companies have a data warehouse or a data lake; if one data lake fails, they create a new one. Data lakes typically fall short from an IA standpoint, specifically how to build IA for AI in a prescriptive way.

A specific data science problem is how to add humanity into your cognitive enterprise, which involves improving user experiences. The book delves into how to support a hyper-personalized experience for both the employee and the customer.

With hybrid and multicloud computing, as well as with edge computing, not every piece of data and process needs to happen everywhere; you can optimize processes and workloads to the most appropriate node. We can use architecture to help us with think about how to distribute data for resiliency in complex data topologies.

What does smarter business mean to you?

As we embrace AI, intelligent workflows and the cognitive enterprise in business, it comes down to modeling and organizing data in a manner that helps us meet current and future needs without breaking the assets we’ve already built.

In our modern world, data has the power to dramatically improve lives. In many ways, we are a data-dependent society. Experiencing a lag in access to information or not having the right data can result in dire consequences. Smarter business is about being adaptive and responsive, providing ultra-personalized experiences and being automated and intelligent. It’s recognizing that a dependency on data means treating and managing data as an essential asset.

Source: ibm.com

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Unbound Tech unlocks liquidity and security for proven digital asset management

From time to time, we invite industry thought leaders to share their opinions and insights on current technology trends to the IT Infrastructure blog. The opinions in these blogs are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of IBM.

There are very few scenarios where security is more important than in the world of digital assets. If the key protecting a digital asset is compromised, then it’s game over.

At the same time, trading digital assets will only enter the mainstream when it’s possible to do it quickly and easily. For financial institutions accustomed to making transactions within a fraction of a second, waiting hours or even days for different keyholders to sign off on a digital asset trade is unthinkable.

At Unbound Tech, we saw an opportunity. By combining our unique multiparty computation (MPC) software with the IBM Hyper Protect Digital Assets Platform built on IBM LinuxONE, we’re bringing unprecedented liquidity and security to digital asset management.

Sizing up the challenge

Unbound is a pioneer in the use of MPC to secure cryptographic keys from every angle, splitting each key into multiple shares that are never united. By distributing trust, we ensure that a breach of any single machine never compromises the integrity of a key.

In the cryptographic world, there’s no such thing as “too secure.” However, we recognized that existing enterprise-class digital asset management solutions are forcing customers to choose between security and agility. What use is the most secure platform in the world if it’s unusable in real life?

We set out to build a new offering that pushes the boundaries of security without limiting liquidity of digital assets.

Creating the Unbound Crypto Asset Security Platform (CASP)

Developed with help from IBM, the Unbound Crypto Asset Security Platform (CASP) solution introduces lucrative benefits for digital assets service providers, including:

◉ The elimination of any single point of failure across the full digital asset lifecycle. IBM LinuxONE infrastructure offers unique resiliency features such as triple-redundant environmental sensors and Redundant Array of Independent Memory (RAIM) to keep applications running even in the unlikely event of a component failure. IBM LinuxONE can withstand a severe earthquake, with the mean time between failures (MTBF) measured in decades(!).

◉ Strict policy enforcement and cryptographic signing support across nearly unlimited asset types (no need for programming multi-sig, smart contracts).

◉ Insider-resistant, hardened infrastructure for Unbound CASP’s critical software elements. CASP services, key management, vaults, databases, chain connectors, and server-side bots all run within IBM Hyper Protect Virtual Servers, which are securely booted, protected memory enclaves. These enclaves help assure that administrators and operators do not have even technical access to the applications managing digital assets, such as policy enforcement mechanisms. For example, if an administrator initiates a memory dump, the dump is encrypted and does not include administrative access to the private key.

◉ Unbound CASP’s code build, signing, and deployment services run within IBM LinuxONE specialized Secure Image Build enclaves. These enclaves help rigidly enforce software review and attestation procedures, to frustrate potential malware, ransomware, and backdoor attackers. These defenses help assure that MPC is properly deployed without human interference. They also help accelerate testing and deployment of legitimate, authorized code updates if there’s ever an application security vulnerability requiring a quick fix. Secure Image Build solves two critical dilemmas: 1) proving the deployed software image is the right one and has not been modified or replaced by a privileged insider, and 2) proving the signed image is what it was supposed to be through the use of the secured source code manifest.

◉ Exploitation of IBM Crypto Express Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) for the CASP cold backup key and CASP disaster recovery. IBM Crypto Express is one of the only commercially available FIPS 140-2 Level 4 certified HSM, meaning it meets or exceeds the most rigorous standards for tamper protection and response. It enables exceptional business continuity, which is mandatory for enterprise-grade financial institutions.

◉ Only clients or their trustees control their assets—not Unbound Tech, nor IBM. Clients are issued special IBM smart card HSMs. During a trusted key ceremony, these smart cards collectively generate AES256 bit key parts that are securely transferred to the platform’s HSM and assembled into a master wrapping key inside an isolated HSM domain. Only the client retains control of their master wrapping key. HSM domains are highly isolated and protected by 360-degree envelope tamper detection and response.

◉ Solutions can be deployed to the IBM Cloud, on premises, or in a hybrid deployment, giving institutions and service providers full freedom to decide how and where they’d like to manage their digital asset platforms.

Better together

In partnering with IBM, Unbound achieved a real meeting of minds. IBM demonstrated that they understood our marketplace and our vision.

We participated in a two-day strategy session that helped us home in on what prospective customers are looking for, and how to deliver it to them. The result was a platform that combines our unique software with the IBM Hyper Protect Digital Assets Platform to bring something unmatched to the market, at a surprisingly competitive price point.

By building security into every transaction on the platform, we’re unlocking new liquidity around digital assets. Users don’t have to worry about risk or meeting even the most stringent regulations, as that’s taken care of for them.

Finally, the digital asset market can start reaching its full potential. Alongside IBM, Unbound is offering a platform that means no compromises for customers.

Source: ibm.com

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Hybrid cloud security

In our interconnected world, an organization’s ability to thrive is based on a foundation of operational resiliency, flexibility, and agility and the assurance of data security and privacy. The flexibility and resiliency of a hybrid cloud environment enables organizations to innovate more cost effectively and efficiently.  Our new physically disparate workforce demands a greater level of self-service, which requires us to focus even more on security. In fact, CCS Insight’s Senior Leadership IT Investment Survey (August 2020) showed that IT security is the highest investment priority for senior leaders over the next 12 months.

Security attacks, vulnerabilities, and data breaches are among the leading causes of downtime for many organizations, with resulting costs of up to $150,000 to $1,000,000, based on company size. Greater than two thirds of businesses have suffered a data breach in the past 3 years, according to CCS.  No organization is immune; it’s not a matter of if, but when.

A holistic approach to security planning

So it is key that everyone in an organization co-creates together to develop a holistic security solution based on common goals.  That’s exactly why in our upcoming webinar, Secrets from the C-Suite: Building a Secure Hybrid Cloud, we discuss the importance of a collaborative effort across an organization to develop an end-to-end security strategy.

Comprehensive evaluation is key

Many organizations work on security in a piecemeal manner, addressing specific applications or employing individual tools or strategies. That approach can leave an organization vulnerable. Comprehensive planning should assess the security landscape taking all stakeholders into consideration–both the business and technical organizations–to encourage collaboration. This will ensure a complete view of the entire organization’s goals, vulnerabilities, risks and existing solutions. Your approach and your infrastructure architecture need to consider not only your needs today but also your needs tomorrow.

We often hear that leaders are aware of the risks but don’t consider a holistic plan to be an important goal for their organization — until they are impacted by a breach. That’s why it’s never too early to get started.

Multi-faceted hybrid cloud security

A multi-faceted approach to hybrid cloud security is the most comprehensive. This strategy should take into account both internal and external vulnerabilities — because internal breaches often occur with greater frequency and can incur as much damage as external threats. Equally important is the approach to encryption. Selective encryption can result in obvious vulnerabilities; bad actors can identify specifically encrypted data as their target, as it is clearly the most valuable.

Pervasive encryption protects data, at rest and in-flight, across your entire organization. Eliminating vulnerabilities with pervasive encryption prepares your organization to comply with regulations such as HIPAA and GDPR, providing a safe harbor to avoid potentially significant fines for non-compliance.

Security is a crucial focus for all industries.  In the healthcare industry the protection of proprietary information such as test results can impact patient outcome; patients need to feel confident that their information is protected. In the financial industry, trust is imperative. Individual or corporate financial data must be considered safe to be trusted. Across all industries, a comprehensive security strategy is an opportunity for competitive advantage.

Source: ibm.com

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Become an IBM Cognos Controller Developer: Revive Your Tech Career

IBM Cognos Controller Developer sets a new model for financial consolidation software with a comprehensive set of skills for financial consolidation and management and financial reporting.

IBM Cognos Controller Developer: Accelerate Your Career

IBM Cognos Controller Developer on Cloud is a robust solution that offers both power and flexibility for streamlined, best-practice financial consolidation and reporting solutions. Its full set of capabilities gives an extensive financial results portfolio and provides an integrated platform for financial and management reporting. IBM Cognos Controller Developer on Cloud enables easy delivery of financial statements and reports to stakeholders, managers, line-of-business executives, and governing bodies.

Cognos Controller on Cloud allows finance organizations to establish and maintain all financial consolidation rules and methods. It gives an audit trail to track data flow throughout the consolidation process to provide internal and external auditors' demands. Finance users can drill down into parts to investigate and examine financial information and know user activity types and times.

Operated and managed by the finance office, Cognos Controller assures the accurate collection and reconciliation of financial results. It delivers timely, detailed information that finance organizations need for regulatory acquiescence, planning, analysis, and performance management.

IBM Cognos Controller Developer is a member of an integrated Financial Close Management solution built on a practical, purpose-built platform. It helps you deliver comprehensive financial results, create financial and management reports, and give the CFO an enterprise view of key ratios and metrics. IBM Cognos Controller Developer is financial consolidation software supporting the entire close, compact, and report process, all in one solution managed by finance and accounting.

IBM Cognos Controller Developer is a complete, web-based solution that offers power and flexibility for streamlined, best-practice financial reporting and consolidation.  It provides built-in financial intelligence and advanced analytics to provide timely, accurate information for enhanced decision support and regulatory compliance.

IBM Cognos Controller Developer requires neither extensive development resources nor tedious, costly programming. Managed directly by finance, it allows users to make their amendments to entities, account details, and organizational structures as requirements arise.

Cognos Controller proposes this transactional nature of the consolidation process with a relational data model from a database perspective. As such, data principally continues in tables with a row and column structure and a uniquely identifying key per row. This individual key may even be a technical one and is not significantly visible at the reporting front end.

Benefits of IBM Cognos Controller Developer

• Finance owns the consolidation method: Define and manage all financial consolidation rules and procedures from the finance office - no IT assistance required.
• Full financial close control solution: Address your extensive financial immediate process.
• Scalable to help both midsize and larger organizations: Manage simple to complex close, consolidation, and reporting process requirements.
• Integration with both IBM and non-IBM systems: Work with financial data in a variety of formats.
• Local and global financial consolidation: Meet the complete range of consolidation and reporting requirements, including International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

Want to Become An IBM Cognos Controller Developer?

The Controller Developer is responsible for setting up a Controller application by creating an account, company structures and to set up the consolidation methods such as currency conversion, intercompany transactions, and investments in subsidiaries. The developer must also be able to design and create financial reports used for economic analysis. This individual will be ready to participate as an influential team member on implementation projects.

The IBM Professional Certification Program gives you the ability to earn credentials to show your expertise. It is designed to prove your skills and capability to perform role-related tasks and activities at a specified competence level. The achievement of an IBM Cognos Controller Developer Certification shows your colleagues and employers your expertise in the related IBM technologies and solutions.

Conclusion

IBM Cognos Controller Developer is a powerful application to support Financial Consolidation and Close. It is a finance-owned solution managed and supported by Finance and offers out-of-the-box consolidation capabilities without the obligation to do any programming or scripting. With its pre-built capabilities to maintain the close process, including workflow, review, and reporting, it is a system that vastly simplifies and streamlines the month-end process and provides a robust foundation that improves control and compliance.

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3 steps to smarter application management

For the last decade or so, cloud has been the driver for business innovation and agility, an answer to increasingly complicated IT challenges. But despite its problem-solving promise, many organizations still hesitate to move their ‘core’ applications to the cloud.

Gartner predicts,  ”By 2025, 90% of current applications will still be in use, and most will continue to receive insufficient modernization investment.”

Parallelly, organizations have tried some sort of ‘lift and shift’ approach giving them infrastructure efficiencies. In the process, they have realized moving most of the core applications would require rearchitecting to leverage full value of containerization. Moreover, they perceive the need for ‘hybrid multi cloud’ reality rather than a single cloud. Whether it is to support various types of applications, or to be future ready with M&A activities etc, there is a consensus to establish an IT ecosystem, which enables ‘managing’ the hybrid multi cloud environment.

This has constrained clients ability to adopt cloud as originally projected. Even today, more than 80% of these applications are still not on cloud, because of the complicated nature of managing applications in a hybrid multi cloud world where enterprise portfolios reside both ‘on-premise’ and across different clouds. The traditional methods (on-prem based) of application management have become outdated, ineffective, costly, and uncompetitive for the ‘hybrid multi cloud’ reality.

Following three capabilities are essential for you to reinvent your business processes and manage applications in a combination of on-premises and multi-cloud environments, striving for greater agility and building ‘Smarter’ next-generation applications.

1) Manage the “complex” hybrid multicloud environment with enhanced visibility

It’s critical for your IT team to have a single-pane view to manage how business processes behaves from start to finish as it cuts across cloud stack, middleware and applications. Capabilities such as AIOps, FinOps, and SmartOps will be essential to monitor, control and optimize your application portfolio and provide transparency for effective management of multicloud platform.

The platform also need to enforce operations policies that ensure compliance across applications and hybrid infrastructure. Moreover, Covid-19 has necessitated, that this single-pane needs to be fungible and enable application management from anywhere in the world thereby reducing the concentration risk and need for collocation.

2) Transform your software engineering processes and upskill talent

Blurring lines between ‘continuous modernization’ and ‘management of applications’ requires your IT talent to adopt software engineering practices which are more holistic. These include –

◉ Experience of Agile delivery methods for improved throughput

◉ The ability to use DevSecOps and Automation platforms to ensure continuous adoption of self healing and recovery

◉ SRE principles to infuse focus on quality, availability and resiliency to realize zero-touch operations

◉ Finally, ensuring security of data, code and environment at all levels

Covid-19 has further accentuated the need for ‘virtualized workforce’ and its talent to adopt ‘smarter’ ways of managing, using hybrid labor (i.e. Human and Robots together). Digital enablement is critical—adapting processes to not only allow for remote work, but to actually embrace it. When training and onboarding team members, virtually or otherwise, make sure they have the right tools and skills to deploy specialized management and testing processes for next-generation applications like blockchain, Internet of things (IoT), Edge Services and big data.

3) Achieve the full value of cloud through digital transformation

Use ‘smarter application management’ as a catalyst to accelerate modernization and digital transformation within your organization. Organizations should drive ‘self funding’ modernization opportunities thereby making application management sustainable. Insights coming from service integration and management will be key to prioritize continuous modernization and help reduce technology debt by keeping the application landscape current. In the hybrid multi cloud world, use event-based telemetry architecture and quality engineering for open source to increase operational resilience, enhance reliability and encourage cloud adoption.

Approaches for Smarter application management in the new ‘hybrid multi cloud’ environment needs to be holistic. The approach should weave through all three essential capabilities to be ‘future ready’. As your IT environment gets more complex, so do the challenges your business faces. See how smarter application management can help you lead and innovate in a hybrid multi cloud world.

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Rethinking cost transformation for the “next normal” in food retail

It seems every week brings news of how food retailers are pivoting and innovating in response to COVID-19. For example, Walmart recently announced a partnership with Instacart in four markets, supplementing its existing delivery capabilities. Amazon is launching technology-infused, fresh grocery stores featuring smart carts and customer service powered by its virtual assistant Alexa. As discussed in our previous LinkedIn series outlining “the next normal” in food retail, the pandemic is driving changes in consumer behavior as well as a restructuring of the food retail value chain, leading food retailers to adapt their business models. These moves highlight two important challenges faced by food retailers:

◉ The surge in demand for eCommerce

◉ Heightened focus on convenience in stores and online.

Undoubtedly the larger challenge for food retailers has been the surge in demand for eCommerce which has increased pressure on already thin margins. While these retailers, especially grocers, are seeing a boost in profitability at the moment as consumers stay home and shift restaurant spend to them, demand will normalize when the pandemic subsides.

Ultimately, the “next normal” in food retail will usher in a new era of profitability that reflects lower demand overall with higher levels of margin-dilutive, digital demand than food retailers experienced pre-pandemic.

While most retailers will look for ways to cut costs to protect margins  in the post-Covid era, cost transformation programs  in food retail must simultaneously relieve margin pressure while seeding sustained revenue growth. To do this properly, companies must first define a set of core strategic capabilities through which they will differentiate in the new industry landscape. An effective cost transformation campaign should be highly targeted, focusing any cost-cutting on non-core elements of the business model, in a way that funnels savings directly into revenue-driving innovation plays.

Additionally, the food retail leaders of tomorrow need to realize efficiencies in a way that preserves the employee experience while simultaneously growing market share through differentiated experiences for customers. Retailers quick to embrace this growth mindset will reap outsized return on investment.

Historical approaches to cost transformation just won’t work

Even before the pandemic started, cost transformations were limited in their effectiveness for two reasons.

First, food retailers attempted to apply a broad vs. strategic lens in identifying where to apply cuts. Rather than identifying core strategic capabilities to protect and focus cuts in less critical and commoditized functions, companies often slashed a percentage of their expenses across the board. While this approach introduced short-term relief, it negatively impacted a broad set of remaining staff, and maintained the profit margin status quo.

Second, food retailers tended to focus on using technology for process improvements and reducing headcount rather than enabling employees and increasing productivity. Applying technology to process improvements or using it to displace staff is a short-term move that does not help an organization systematically take costs out of its core business.

Growing importance of employees to cost transformation

Prioritizing the experience of staff as well as customers will be critical for effective cost transformation programs in “the next normal”. Retailers today understand that associates are assets who have played an outsized role in stores and the customer experience since the pandemic took hold. High performing companies also know that there’s a race for talent. If you destroy culture through ill-conceived cuts to staff or improper application of technologies, it will have a negative impact on  employee recruitment, retention, morale and performance, which in turn will negatively impact the customer experience. In fact, some studies show that after firm layoffs, remaining staff experience a 20% decrease in job performance, 41% decline in job satisfaction, and 36% in organizational commitment. In contrast, when done properly, digital initiatives implemented in service to employees can enhance associate performance, reduce operation costs up to 10%, and increase annual revenue growth up to 10%.

Four strategic plays for successful cost transformation

To succeed at cost transformation in “the next normal”,  food retailers must protect their core capabilities, cut non-core capabilities and reinvest for growth. This will involve identifying the elements that are critical to the customer experience with a focus on things that differentiate them from the competition (for example, assortment, convenience, price). Food retailers must also determine how to approach their non-core capabilities in a more cost-effective way. Ideally, the savings from cutting non-core elements should be aggregated  in an investment pool that can be used to fund customer- and employee-facing innovations.

Overall, we recommend the following four strategic plays:

1. Re-envision your business model, identifying core capabilities in which to reinvest savings to drive innovation.

Identify core capability areas that will constitute your enterprise advantage in the evolved industry landscape. For each, leverage human-centered design to define a future state, assess gaps in capabilities to move from current- to future-state, and conduct a corresponding build vs. buy vs. partner analysis as to how best to achieve this evolution.

2. Apply intelligent automation to non-core capability areas to achieve cost-savings that pave the way to sustained revenue growth.

Explore “plug-and-play” intelligent automation solutions with proven results in driving tangible savings. Set success metrics for each capability area and measure performance against them continuously.

3. Define a strategy to upskill your staff.

As your organization becomes more “intelligent” with robust data insights, upskill staff to leverage information to improve their own productivity and that of their store. Build a reskilling roadmap, taking into account input and recommendations from your primary users – the employees themselves. Explore adoption of agile ways of working to further improve employee productivity and engagement.

4. Develop procedures to harness up-front operational savings and fund ongoing innovation through partnerships, reinvestment and gainsharing.

Build a self-sustaining mechanism to capture operational savings and fund ongoing innovation (e.g., tools to improve employee experience and productivity). Engage partners to help fund and sustain ongoing innovation, architecting any financial arrangements to align incentives and build trust across retailers and their partners (e.g., proportional bonus to service providers based on savings achieved, capped at an agreed upon limit).

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3 myths (and truths) about third-party Oracle software Support

Enterprises across industries might use Oracle software support for their business operations, from databases to back-office applications to entire software stacks. Support cost is a factor and increasingly important as companies undergo hybrid cloud transformations and seek cost savings to navigate the global pandemic’s economic impact. Third-party Oracle software support offers companies a way to help ensure streamlined support, business continuity and long-term cost savings without vendor lock-in.

Let’s examine three myths—and truths—about alternative support solutions to Oracle direct support and how they can add value to your business.

Myth: Third-party support doesn’t offer high quality service

Businesses looking to improve their Oracle software support experience might assume that alternative solutions are inefficient or unreliable. In fact, there are viable options. Personalized, responsive, even proactive service can provide an advantage. Also, efficient service delivery processes and highly skilled people create business value. And many providers go beyond break-fix with services such as open-source migration and integration expertise.

Myth: Third-party Oracle software support doesn’t address security

Companies might hesitate to go outside of Oracle direct support, assuming that other options are less secure. Again, there are viable choices. It’s important to find a provider with a security-enhanced solution to support Oracle technology. Also critical is finding one that helps resolve Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) as soon as information is available, so you don’t have to wait for quarterly reports.

Myth: Other support won’t protect my technology investments

Understandably, companies don’t want to jeopardize their Oracle software investments. Qualified, third-party support can help you increase your cost savings and minimize disruption. For example, a provider can freeze and archive your current environment while you migrate to their support platform; or it can offer support improvement and efficiency—ongoing risk management is just one example of that.

The key is to elevate your Oracle software support experience, while helping to generate cost savings, to achieve positive business outcomes… and stay agile for innovation.

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Are you ready for tougher data security regulations?

An organization’s ability to comply with data security legislation has become absolutely critical. Any business that obtains client data has a responsibility to comply with regulations for handling and disposing of that data.

Major organizations have come under scrutiny for non-compliant data destruction and protection of devices bearing sensitive client information. Non-compliance with secure data destruction protocols presents financial and legal impacts—even more so for highly regulated industries such as financial services, government and healthcare, where mishandling of client data can have devastating consequences.

Traditional methods of data destruction are falling short. It is no longer sufficient to take data offsite, throw away devices without physical deformation, wiping and degaussing, or dispose of data without a tracking mechanism to certify the data is properly destroyed. Uncertified degausser tools exist, but without an industrial-strength magnet, the overwritten data can still be retrieved and misused.

Often, the dangers posed by data-bearing devices are hiding in plain sight. Common risks of data-bearing devices include:

◉ You cannot securely destroy what you do not possess. If you operate business on leased equipment, you cannot validate that the data or the data-bearing device is properly destroyed.

◉ More access is more exposure. Uncontrolled access to drop safes or storage solutions means greater susceptibility of data going missing. Drop safe combinations can be shared.

◉ Offsite is exposure. As soon as media leaves a data center, the risk of data loss increases exponentially.

To successfully control the availability of potentially sensitive data, organizations of all sizes and industries have to control the disposal of media that might contain sensitive information. Such compliance requires deep insight into the potential dangers posed by data-bearding devices in your environment and an environmentally compliant solution to mitigate those dangers.

Track, contain, destroy, verify

Compliant data destruction happens in four stages:

1. Track data with RFID/PIDs tagging, creating a transparent record of the data through its destruction and removal.

2. Contain data using a secure storage appliance or “smart safe” where access is exclusive to your organization.

3. Destroy data using industrial-grade methods to comply with the government definition of “destroyed”—media rendered smaller than two particles.

4. Verify with a two-person process to avoid potential errors or missed media.

Automating data destruction processes can help streamline the entire process and ensure compliant data handling every time. Using automation, you can electronically track and validate data from the time it is placed in a secure storage container to the moment that it is destroyed, with RFID/PIDs tagging to verify destruction.

Now is the time to evaluate your organization’s data destruction processes and make necessary adjustments to avoid non-compliance. Similar regulations to the European Union GDPR are expected to reach the United States in late 2020/early 2021. New regulations will require all businesses to safeguard client information and strengthen the rules for protecting and verifying that data is securely destroyed.

Source: ibm.com

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3 lessons in personalization from the retail industry

Waves of COVID-19 cases and varying regulations have created complexity for companies trying to maintain customer relationships in a new reality. By necessity, companies have digitized many touchpoints in the customer journey that used to involve in-person interactions. And as a result, customer expectations are higher than ever for how companies are using past purchases and browsing data to shape these experiences.

There’s an increasing need to create a seamless, highly personalized digital journey that replicates, and even exceeds, an in-person experience. No industry has mastered personalization yet, but some have fared better than others, according to our recent research with Forrester. While leaders in personalization include expected tech companies and digital natives like Facebook and Netflix, Retail stands out as one of the more digitally mature industries. Retail companies like Sephora, Nike and Starbucks, have been able to hyper-personalize the customer experience through dynamic content and real-time segmentation.

Understanding key areas where Retail does well in personalization will help other industries mature their strategies. Here are the specific ways where Retail commands a wide lead compared to lagging industries and how these differences have a tangible impact on business results and the key lessons for any industry.

#1 – In Retail, the entire organization works together on personalization

Retail stands out over other industries in having a cohesive personalization strategy for the organization, while other industries tend to have a siloed approach. 53% of Retail respondents report having a single, enterprise-wide B2C personalization strategy, while only 39% in Travel and Hospitality and 32% in Financial Services report the same.

Many companies struggle with lack of coordination and cooperation across the organization, using fragmented approaches by channel or product. Some make personalization an “IT” focus or a “Marketing” focus, while others argue over ownership. Instead, a successful approach to personalization starts with a cohesive strategy and is enabled by effective ways of working. The organization needs to think about personalization in all key channels and critical steps in the customer journey. Amazon has evolved Whole Foods to adopt a more holistic approach to personalization—when shoppers place online orders for groceries, they’re reminded of their past in-store purchases. Rather than operating in silos as in-store and online teams, Whole Foods teams work together to create a single view of the customer and recognizes that customers use different channels for different occasions.

#2 – Retail cares about more than lagging and vanity metrics

Compared with other industries, Retail tends to use leading metrics and more closely track success for their personalization strategies. 47% in Retail report they’re very effective at purchase frequency, compared to 33% in Telco. And 57% of Retailers report that they’re very effective at tracking revenue per visit, compared to only 39% of Travel and Hospitality companies. Retail also routinely reevaluates their metrics more than other industries, demonstrating their commitment to evaluating what success is.

Understanding and measuring leading metrics helps organizations prioritize initiatives that have the most impact. While some industries have historically focused on lagging indicators, Retail’s focus on leading metrics gives them the ability to dynamically adjust their approach. For example, a marketing campaign on Twitter and Instagram may result in an uplift in measures of brand equity and trust for a retailer, but they may shift their message depending on how the campaign translates into actual store visits and revenue per visit. Measuring and reevaluating the metrics that matter most will help organizations be more targeted in the specific ways they enable their personalization strategies.

#3 – Retail is deeply committed to a 360-degree customer experience

Most retailers have a fairly good 360-view of their customers and tend to include more touchpoints in their personalization strategies, including technology-driven ones. Retail companies are 18 percentage points more likely than Financial Services and 10 percentage points more likely than Telco to use social media in their strategies. Retail is also 10 percentage points more likely than Travel and Hospitality and 8 percentage points more likely than Media and Leisure to use chatbots and virtual assistants.

Organizations that are effective at personalization recognize that customer segments aren’t static, and customers move fluidly across segments and touchpoints. By including more touchpoints in their strategies, companies gain more customer data and can provide a consistent experience across channels. For instance, Sephora uses a chatbot and artificial intelligence to help customers find personalized product recommendations based on their face and skin tone. By using customer data and automation, Sephora is able to replicate the in-store experience in a highly personalized and effective way.

As a result of their approach to personalization, Retail experiences significantly improve business results

From the research conducted by Forrester Consulting commissioned by IBM, Retail sets a benchmark for many KPIs. Of respondents who reported benefits from their personalization strategies, Retail report better results across key metrics:

◉ Greater than 10% improvement in cross–sell/upsell opportunities: 68% of respondents in Retail compared to 41% of respondents across all industries

◉ Greater than 20% in decreased marketing costs: 34% of Retail respondents compared to only 14% across all industries

◉ Greater than 10% improvement in conversation rates: 40% of Retail respondents compared to 33% across all industries

These differences are substantial and are playing out during the pandemic for Retailers who’ve invested in personalization. Nike serves as a great example of how effective personalization is at impacting business growth. Onboarding data, past purchases and mobile app engagement are all used to personalize recommendations for workouts, shoes and apparel across Nike’s ecosystem of touchpoints. Nike also uses purchase frequency to target customers who are overdue for new shoes.

And while some retailers have struggled recently, Nike reported a dramatic 82% increase in digital sales in its most recent quarter, an acceleration that be attributed toward consumer preferences toward online shopping and Nike’s ability to create hyper-targeted recommendations.

Retail hasn’t fully mastered personalization, but other industries can learn from them 

Despite Retail’s success, the industry faces challenges in executing their personalization strategies like many industries. Retail struggles with managing customer data, using customer data effectively, and data integration. However, Retailers serves as a bright spot for other industries to learn from. Retail tends to start with an organization-led strategy, focus on leading metrics to enable dynamic segmentation and approaches, and include technology-driven touchpoints to capture real-time customer data. By adapting this approach, other industries can start to mature their personalization strategies and realize more impactful growth.

Source: ibm.com

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How to solve for the high cost of inventory challenges and disruptions

The ripple effects of the pandemic continue to generate massive disruptions for global supply chains. According to ISM, 77% of companies are reporting increased lead times for inputs from China, 83% are reporting delays from Europe, and 57% or more are reporting disruptions from North American suppliers. In response, most companies (81%) are adjusting their inventories – with half holding more inventory than usual to weather disruptions.

How companies react can have a significant impact on their bottom line. Public companies that mismanage inventory substantially under perform compared to peer companies in financial and stock performance.

Even in “normal” times, inventory management and reaction to disruptions can have significant impacts:

◉ Out-of-stock situations cost retailers more than $1 trillion annually

◉ As much as 12% of potential revenue can be lost as a result of markdowns

◉ As much as 20-30% of a manufacturer’s inventory is dead or obsolete

◉ Inventory holding costs represent more than 25% of total unit costs

So how do you address disruption without holding onto excess inventory? Increasingly, organizations are turning to purpose-built control towers to optimize inventory visibility and management.

IBM Sterling Inventory Control Tower helps companies manage inventory in disruptive environments in several ways:

◉ Establishing end-to-end inventory visibility by correlating data across siloed systems and combining it with external event information to provide actionable insights into potential imbalances and disruptions. The solution includes a personalized dashboard that provides visibility into critical inventory KPIs with detailed information such as average days of supply, expiring inventory, potential out-of-stock situations, etc. The solution provides visibility, trend and analysis of the differences between planned and actual inventory.

◉ Better predicting disruptions and improving resiliency with AI that provides smart alerts and actionable insights to help users understand the upstream and downstream impact of events on customers – and then prioritize mitigating actions. IBM Sterling Inventory Control Tower is unique in that it integrates both demand and planning intelligence, including external event detection, to help predict demand changes and disruptions – and the impact on revenue and customers.

◉ Better controlling, collaborating on, and managing disruptions and exceptions across the entire supply chain with AI-powered Resolution Rooms and Digital Playbooks that help users quickly respond to unplanned events, hone execution to drive KPI performance, and reduce costs like expedited shipping and safety stock. Resolution Rooms allow users to easily collaborate with the right team members across the organization and with partners. Users are provided with immediate access to information through Resolution Rooms, which leverage natural language search and conversations resulting in easy interaction. The Digital Playbooks provide users guidance in scenario responses and issue management based on best practices – and preserve organizational knowledge to speed issue resolution over time.

Sterling Inventory Control Tower leverages open APIs and dozens of out-of-the-box connectors for easy integration with data sources so it can be up and running in just weeks to speed time-to-value.

Source: ibm.com

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