The right IT infrastructure is hybrid

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

Gartner forecasts worldwide public cloud revenue will grow 17 percent in 2020. While it’s clear that cloud is still being rapidly adopted, on premises and private cloud are growing as well. My team and I see this on a daily basis as we visit with enterprise clients.

To quantify this information and measure its impact, IBM recently commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate how organizations develop and implement their IT infrastructure strategies. Forrester conducted an online survey of 350 global enterprise IT decision makers across industries to explore this topic.

There are several key findings in The Key to Enterprise Hybrid Multicloud Strategy study which Forrester Consulting produced on behalf of IBM. One finding is that “on-premises infrastructure is key to enterprise hybrid cloud strategy. Enterprises are making strategic decisions about what types of IT infrastructure to use for which purposes — and on premises continues to play a key role, with 90 percent of IT decision makers agreeing that on-premises infrastructure is a critical part of their hybrid cloud strategies.”

What this data is telling us is that there is a business case for a solid hybrid cloud strategy. Every cloud journey is a bit different, but the common thread is that the business needs to continue to operate without a glitch.

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Foundationally where they start in the journey is important.  Oftentimes, the starting point is an assessment of the existing on-premises infrastructure.  Why is that?  Because the foundation matters. On-premises infrastructure continues to play a key role in decisions. The Forrester study found that 90% of IT decision makers agreed that on-premises infrastructure represented a critical party of their hybrid cloud strategy. At the end of the day, it’s important to find the right environment for the workload.  A hybrid approach often represents a solution that allows the IT team to work with a known system while gaining the scaling and flexibility that adding cloud services can bring.

In parallel, the demands on existing infrastructure continue to grow as organizations implement hybrid multicloud solutions. It’s important to critically examine the timeline around infrastructure refresh intervals. Too often, there are delays in that refresh cycle of mission-critical infrastructure which exposes the organization to unnecessary risk. The risk of not refreshing that infrastructure includes security vulnerabilities, interoperability and compatibility issues. The impacts end up affecting the bottom line by way of lost or diminished employee productivity as well as diminished performance per the study.

Lack of vision when it comes to hybrid cloud strategy and lack of spend when it comes to the infrastructure has a cascading effect not only for the infrastructure but also for the organization’s health and well-being.

Another key finding tells us that IT decisions makers select the right IT infrastructure strategy according to the job to be done. Technology professionals consider workload, security needs, and time-to-value when designing IT infrastructure strategies. When it comes to workloads, IT decision makers anticipate that more than half of mission-critical workloads and 47 percent of data-intensive workloads will be run either on premises or in an internal private cloud in two years.

It’s important to remember that every hybrid cloud strategy looks a little different. The range of choices to optimize IT may seem overwhelming. Making a choice between a public cloud provider, an on-premises private cloud, a hybrid solution or moving the application to a SaaS provider are options that are all in play. What works best is an alignment of your IT strategy to your business strategy. Understand your application portfolio. Take a look at what others in your industry and vertical are doing. The market and customer demand great products and great service, but racing to the cloud without a solid plan can only lead to shortcuts and potential errors. Cloud is a journey, not a race, and one size does not fit all.

Source: ibm.com

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Turning Supply Network Complexity Into a Competitive Advantage

Discover how one company delivered superior CX with improved order management

Manufacturing giant Parker Hannifin Corporation had a problem. It had dozens of decentralised divisions making hundreds of thousands of products and selling them through a network of thousands of distributors. With a supply chain this complex, Parker was concerned that its approach was fragmented, frustrating customers and limiting efficiency. And it lacked a single view of customers, inventory and orders across all its divisions, which created inefficiencies around stock management, fulfillment and marketing activities.

“We wanted to act as ‘One Parker’ and present a single face to our customers, making it easier for them to find and purchase the products they wanted, regardless of which divisions they were buying from,” says Bob McAdoo, Vice President, Worldwide Business Systems. “And we looked to enable this while allowing individual units to maintain the high level of local control and entrepreneurship that has been so critical to Parker’s success.”

Selling smarter and optimising order orchestration

To unify order management and fulfillment across multiple channels, products and sub-brands, and business units, Parker launched a new e-commerce platform. In it, customers get a single view of products from all of Parker’s manufacturing divisions and can place one consolidated order and receive a single invoice.

To complement the platform, Parker rolled out a global order orchestration framework that enables it to receive, ship and accept returned orders from anywhere. Tight integration with the company’s warehouse management environment ensures a seamless, end-to-end ordering process – from purchase to picking and fulfillment.

“In the past, if a customer ordered components from different divisions, they would receive a unique supplier number for each of those divisions,” McAdoo explains. “With the new approach, we can provide customers with a single supplier number, which removes a great deal of complexity and allows them to enjoy a much more straightforward ordering process.”

Delivering smoother experiences for customers

Parker’s improved visibility of inventory, orders and customers gives its teams the fast, accurate insight they need to optimise inventory control, drive more efficient order allocation and sourcing, and maximise sales and marketing efforts. “We are also gaining a more holistic view of how customers interact with Parker across brands and divisions, as well as their complete purchase history,” notes McAdoo. “Armed with this insight, our marketing teams can develop more targeted campaigns, while our sales reps can seize new opportunities for cross-selling – all of which will help Parker to lift sales and revenues.”

By providing customers with a superior shopping experience and helping teams all over the world process and fulfil orders a fast, consistent way, Parker is steering its business to new success. Now it’s both easier for customers to do business with them, and their teams are empowered to service those customers more efficiently. “As a result, we are opening up a much larger market for Parker products and driving more business to our distribution network. It truly is a win-win situation for everyone involved,” says McAdoo.

“We have only scratched the surface of what is possible with improved selling and order orchestration,” he concludes. “We are excited to see what the future holds as we work to drive even better business performance and shape a customer experience that is second to none.”

Source: ibm.com

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The power of reinventing your workflows

IBM commissioned Forrester Consulting to investigate the modernization of business processes and workflows by conducting an online survey of 450 global decision makers. Forrester found that firms understand the need to modernize their processes, but they struggle to overcome legacy tools and legacy mindsets.

The study yielded the following key findings:

◉ Flexibility, automation, and data are key to process modernization. Process professionals must consider three related attributes when reinventing workflows: flexibility (i.e., the ability to address process variability), automation, and the amount – and range – of data leveraged for insight.

◉ Misaligned investment in tech and services cause trouble for firms. The time for spreadsheets is over. Yet, enterprises continue to rely on the legacy tools that worked years ago while failing to capitalize on solutions like process mining and predictive analytics that could solve today’s challenges. Similarly, though they face issues that could be helped with the addition of professional services, they under-invest in the partners who can help them navigate these important elements of transformation.

◉ Companies who partner see exponential Modernizing processes is no easy task but the returns around CX, agility, growth, productivity, and cost reduction are clear. Furthermore, firms who partner to re-engineer processes experience far greater benefits than those who don’t.

Ultimately, process modernization that improves business outcomes requires partnering for guidance based on deep experience coupled with innovative design methods. Enterprises that leverage services to re-engineer processes set the pace of transformation and see the business results.

The luxury of doing business alone is quickly disappearing. Organizations are driving toward digital transformation, while many are under threat from more automated, agile, and responsive disrupters. The stakes are high, and the chances for failure are even higher. But there are success patterns emerging where smart organizations have recognized the value of architecting workflows which function across business silos.

Source: ibm.com

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A field guide to managing hybrid IT complexity

It’s a given that digital technology is dominating today’s business. Whether you follow the news, analyze stock markets or talk to industry experts, digitalization is disrupting many business models and will continue to do so. Based on analysis conducted by the World Economic Forum, more than 60 percent of the global GDP will be digitized by 2022.This means that enterprises not only have to focus on their own adoption of technology, but they also need to consider how their clients are using technology and how they want to consume services and products.

Organizations are dealing with the following challenges, which can lead to overwhelming complexity for many organizations:

◉ Rising complexity due to the growing number of base technologies that need to be managed simultaneously, including traditional IT, virtualized IT and multiple clouds

◉ Increasing risks around security, data hacks, compliance and new competitors

◉ Missing skills based on demographic change and increasing technological change

◉ Compromised governance caused by empowered business users operating without clear guidance, varying interpretations of guidelines, or lack of awareness of new risks and rules

Digital monocultures are no accelerator for growth

Based on perception and the need to act, many organizations are trying to simplify and regain control by implementing “digital monocultures” — for instance, releasing a single cloud vendor policy. However, what initially might sound like a good idea can backfire. Monocultures don’t pay off in the long term, especially when you take into consideration that the selection of your digital ecosystem significantly contributes to your future competitive differentiation.

Bottom line: If you follow a simple, imitable platform strategy, you won’t be able to gain a competitive advantage. And even if you managed to somehow achieve an advantage, your competitors can easily catch up by simply copying your digital monoculture approach.

Top 10 success factors for multicloud management

How to start managing hybrid IT complexity

An oversimplified solution to a complex challenge isn’t the best strategy to accelerate economic growth in a competitive world. To start building your unique set of differentiating business and IT capabilities, follow this this four-step approach:

1. Determine business demands and the IT capabilities needed to support them. As a first step, it’s necessary to determine the current and future business demands based on capabilities and business model changes. You’ll also need to determine the current and planned IT capabilities of your organization. This might include rethinking IT services distribution and redefining IT-related functions and roles.

2. Develop business and IT topology. To align business demands and IT capabilities, you’ll need to develop a topology map that enables you to easily identify gaps between business demand and IT technology and services. Such an approach will give you a sound basis for further analysis, what-if simulations and investment decisions.

3. Assign technology services. After establishing the topology of your business model and supporting IT services, the next step is to assign the best suitable technology service for each business demand. Which sourcing model fits best for the business can vary on a large number of factors, including service costs, delivery location, service capabilities, accessibility, service maturity and reliability.

4. Continuously adapt your IT operating model. The final step is to transfer the topology and associated choice factors into an AI-based decision model, perhaps supported by a decision-optimizer technology, that continuously determines the best operating model or variations of it. Following this approach will enable you to consider changing circumstances within your organization and the broader market ecosystem.

Being able to orchestrate and semi-autonomously manage a complex IT landscape can be the crucial differentiator in your market.

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Be IBM Certified Data Architect: What You Really Need?

Data Architect

A data architect is an information technology (IT) specialist who designs and maintains data systems, sets procedures for how data is stored and accessed, coordinates several data sources within an organization, and combines new data technologies into existing IT infrastructures.

Data architects may act as links between the IT side of an organization and other departments, regulating data collection and sharing policies with the organization’s operational and strategic objectives.

They also usually work with members of a data team, which may involve data engineers, data miners, data scientists, and data analysts in areas associated with data collection, data storage, data security, and data systems access.

IBM Certified Data Architect – Big Data

Designed for data architects, the IBM Certified Data Architect – Big Data certification needs passing a test that consists of five sections, including a total of 55 multiple-choice questions. It shows a data architect can work closely with customers and solutions architects to translate customers' business requirements into a big data solution.

Become a Data Architect

Just as there is no clear-cut, industry-wide definition of data architecture, there is no defined path to becoming a data architect. As a common rule, data architects are professions that have formal training and professional experience in IT management, computer programming, and data systems engineering, as well as in the methods by which data is worked, sorted, stored, and analyzed.

Data architects typically communicate with and respond to the needs of non-technical managers and business administrators within an organization, which may need some training in professional communication.

And it may be necessary for data architects to have familiarity or experience with business intelligence systems, data mining tools, and data analytics operations.

Training to become a data architect might start with an undergraduate degree in computer science, computer engineering, or a similar field.

Graduates from a bachelor’s or associate degree program who holds a strong knowledge in computer programming and IT systems may find entry-level employment in a data-intensive field, such as IT administrations, computer programming, data mining, or data analytics. This type of work experience can be a pathway to a career in data architecture.

While master’s program in data architecture is rare, there are graduate programs that give training and education in computer engineering, IT systems management, business data systems, many of which may involve advanced coursework in data architecture, data warehousing, and data engineering.

Master’s programs in these and related technical fields can give data professionals with the academic credentials and practical skills needed to advance in the field of data architecture.

Steps to Becoming a Data Architect

As noted, there is no formalized pathway for individuals who require to become professional data architects.

However, several common pathways include several steps, which may or may not include one or more of the steps listed here:

• Get a bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field.

• Increase experience in IT administration and computer programming.

• Complete a master’s program in computer science, computer engineering, business intelligence, or IT management.

• Work in the field of business data management, discovering about database systems, data analytics processes, and the data architecture of businesses and other kinds of organizations.

What Does a Big Data Architect Do?

Big Data architects have evolved to become vital links between businesses and technology. They are responsible for planning and designing next-generation big-data systems and managing large-scale development and deployment of IBM applications.

IBM architects are among the highest-paid professionals in the IT industry, earning on average between $93,000 and $168,000 per year, and as much as $131,704 per year.

If you require to pursue a career in this role, you will need to understand the requirements of IT organizations, how Big Data specialists and engineers operate, and how to help as a link between these two critical entities.

Any organization that needs to build a Big Data environment will require a Big Data Architect who can handle the entire lifecycle of an IBM solution including fundamental analysis, platform selection, design of technical architecture, design of application design and development, testing, and deployment of the recommended solution.

How Do You Get IBM Big Data Architect Certification?

In a field as technical and ultra-competitive as Big Data, you are acquiring an accredited, globally-recognized professional certification that may be the best way to not only learn the ins and outs of the domain but also back it up with authoritative validation.

Read: The Evolving Role of the Data Architect – Lift Up Your Career

AnalyticsExam's Big Data Courses gives you all the knowledge and the skills that will be needed to speed up your career as a Big Data Architect. The program has been designed to satisfy the high-in-demand terms of Big Data Architects in the field. This program gives access to 24 hours of high-quality simulation exams, a community moderated by experts.

Conclusion

Following this path will allow you to reach your destination as a Big Data Architect Professional. On your way, you will develop a general opinion of the overall IT landscape and its multitude of technologies.

Above all, you will be able to explain how various technologies work together. There is a lot to learn on your way, but patience and hard work will pay you with the data architect job of tomorrow.

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IBM Spectrum Virtualize: An obvious fit for hybrid multicloud

Has the siren song of hybrid cloud captured the hearts and minds of key decision makers in your enterprise? The allure of agility, centralization and automation is certainly strong in the world of IT, where we keep expecting the simplicity of a dial tone or light switch, with predictable price-per-pound cost models. But, for traditional systems and storage administrators, the path to that nirvana can seem at once threatening and technologically insurmountable. The feeling is not unlike attempting to scale Denali in sandals.

This is where a flexible storage solution like IBM Spectrum Virtualize can ease your anxiety. IBM Spectrum Virtualize started as IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC), an appliance designed to abstract the myriad complexities of disparate storage vendors to provide a single presentation for host systems. Over the 17 years that SVC has existed, it has evolved from being primarily a migration tool to a full blown “virtual array” in the enterprise landscape, consolidating storage resources the way VMware consolidated compute resources. Virtualization itself has evolved through monikers like “utility computing” and “software defined infrastructure.” What we now refer to as public and private clouds are essentially the same concept, combining hardware abstraction with a provisioning framework. In this way, it simplified processes and commoditized storage.

Simplifying processes

Spectrum Virtualize simplifies processes by having a common interface for not just a suite of IBM Storage products from entry level to enterprise (this ranges from the IBM FlashSystem 5200 to the 7200, then the 9200 and, finally, the SVC appliance) but also for storage from other vendors virtualized behind Spectrum Virtualize.

Processes that are simplified include advanced functions such as encryption, autonomic data placement (EasyTier), compression, deduplication, point in time copies and replication. Also, all of these products can be monitored by a simple-to-use, intelligent, cloud-based tool called Storage Insights that provides an enhanced support experience. Easier management means more day-to-day peace of mind for your admins.

Achieving commoditization

Spectrum Virtualize achieves storage commoditization with powerful data mobility capabilities. The ability to change backend storage without incurring host downtime empowers businesses to better take advantage of newer technologies and negotiate competitive pricing. This again simplifies the life of the storage administrator by eliminating the laborious process of coordinating the interests of application owners and the business to secure downtime.

Replication into public clouds

In the last two years, IBM has invested heavily in taking Spectrum Virtualize into public clouds. We started with IBM Cloud, then added Amazon Web Services (AWS), and are on the trajectory towards Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. It’s exciting to have the opportunity to work with Spectrum Virtualize in public cloud, which puts an instance of Spectrum Virtualize in IBM Cloud or AWS to serve as a replication target for disaster recovery, workload relocation or standalone development. Once it’s there, clients can leverage the investment they made in Spectrum Virtualize systems on-premises for automation. Having a public cloud replication target means being able to meet disaster recovery requirements without having to maintain a secondary data center.

Just as the screwdriver has evolved over time to have interchangeable bits or to include a flashlight, it’s good to see that some tools remain strong and relevant and can even guide how we decide to use newer technology. Spectrum Virtualize has evolved along with the needs of those who’ve made it successful by integration into provisioning frameworks and extending into public clouds.

Source: ibm.com

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Four key financial decisions to factor into your next IT acquisition

Maintaining your competitive advantage often requires tapping into the latest technologies. However, there’s much more involved than just determining if your technology solution will address your business goals and deliver the expected value.You’ll also need to understand the financial implications of your choice to mitigate the risks.

How do you evaluate those risks so you can be sure you’re making the right choices? Start with four decision points:

1. Return on investment. Will your new solution deliver a sufficient return on investment to pay for itself? And when can you expect to realize that return? If you’re acquiring an analytics solution so you can better understand customers and create more targeted ad campaigns, you need to gauge how quickly you’ll start seeing increased revenues.

2. CapEx versus OpEx spending. You might want to classify a new solution either as a capital expenditure or an operating expenditure for a variety of reasons. For example, in some industries, organizations need to sustain certain asset levels to qualify for government subsidies or maintain their regulatory status. Those organizations might want IT assets to be capitalized. In other fields, organizations might be trying to lighten their asset load and instead use an OpEx approach to spending. Understanding the various options for how a new solution can be consumed and paid for can help you find the right place for that solution on your balance sheet.

3. Budget utilization. Is your team paying for the new technology? And do you have sufficient budget remaining to pay for the solution in this quarter? Or this year? Even if you have the budget now, you might decide to spread out payments over several quarters so you don’t use up your entire allotment for new IT solutions.

4. Cash flow. If you pay in full for your new solution, how will it affect your cash flow for the next six months? When you’re making a significant investment, your treasury team might prefer to make payments over several years rather than restrict cash flow now. But of course, even if you decide to spread out payments, you will still need to anticipate how those payments will affect cash flow in the years to come.

Streamline financial decisions with IBM

IBM Global Financing can help you navigate these and other potentially complex decisions for your new software, hardware and services solutions. Our goal is to get your financial teams involved early in your solution evaluation process, so you can make technical decisions with all the facts at your fingertips.

We’re here to help you accelerate your financial decision-making. And we can provide customized financing solutions and consulting services, such as when you have complex solutions from multiple vendors that might span several consumption and deployment models.

There’s no doubt that technology will continue to play a key role in helping organizations stay ahead of the competition. With a thorough assessment of your financial options, you can make decisions that are right for your business goals and your bottom line.

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Maximizing Impact with Personalized Accessibility Training

There are many outstanding accessibility tutorials online. Yet, I’m finding that designers and developers are reluctant to go through them.

I always wondered why?

As I travel to many different IBM offices around the world training product design and development teams and understanding their needs, I believe I have found what makes them more interested and engaged. The key is to make the content as personal as possible.

Steps to Improve Inclusive Design and Development

Whether the training takes place onsite and face-to-face, or via online education materials, it is always useful to anticipate the needs of the learner.

For example, let’s say there is an informative image needs to be labeled. When we specifically look at the product or offering that the learner works with, and find an image that is not labeled, we can brainstorm on what would be the best description of what we are trying to communicate. The exercise immediately becomes more engaging.

It is slightly harder to achieve the same connection online, but we can at least anticipate the most common scenarios.

Also, I find that for a designer or developer, integrating accessibility into a solution often comes down to, “What’s in it for me?”.

It’s frustrating that this is the general attitude. However, instead of insisting upon “requirements,” it is important to connect it to a user need or a fulfilling experience. Before we even start thinking about accessibility, it is important to understand why.

We can connect with the learner through a variety of ways:

◉ Through the experience of having a friend or a relative with a disability;

◉ The learner’s own loss of vision or hearing due to aging; or,

◉ The desire and ability of doing something that benefits society, in general.

For example, when we talk about good contrast or readable content it gets more interesting when we ask the audience if they can think of a grandparent using glasses while on the computer. Instead of talking about the letter size or contrast ratio, once we can connect with the kind of text your grandma would be able to read, the specs become secondary, and much easier to meet.

Finally, it’s best to discuss the “usefulness” of accessibility. Accessible solutions can reach more people, therefore increase the audience and sales for a product. And, accessible solutions can help minimize the likelihood of legal risk, or unsatisfied users.

When we hear about litigation costs and impact, it is hard to argue against reducing corporate risk by developing solutions that are accessible to all.

Accessibility in an Investment in Customers and Employees

It is easy to look at accessibility as an additional time or cost commitment, and there is truth to it. Accessibility doesn’t come for free, as much as we would like it to be.

But let’s face it, providing an accessible solution is a good investment, and for that matter, a marketing tool. According the World Health Organizations, 15 percent of the worldwide population has some form of disability. This means, our products can reach more people if they are accessible.

Or, we can just leave that audience for our competitors.

My favorite argument is that as our life expectancy increases, the likelihood of acquiring age related disabilities does as well. What we make accessible today will benefit us personally tomorrow. The question then becomes: How can I design something today that can adapt and be useful to me when I’ll be 80 years old?

There is always a connecting point with a learner, let that be a designer, developer, tester, manager, etc. After the connection is established, accessibility turns into a personal challenge instead of just being another requirement and box that needs to get checked.

Source: ibm.com

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Accessibility Strengthens the User Research Practice

Inclusive design is the buzz term around the design community. Inclusive design can be interpreted in many different ways and have numerous outcomes. When narrowing the scope to user research, though, how does inclusive design make an impact?

As a user researcher, it is critical to talk with people using various offerings to understand their pain points and uncover areas of opportunity. This seems like a simple task but requires a ton of organization and preparation to run a successful ‘study’. The most important piece of this preparation work is finding individuals with diverse abilities to interview and with whom to test. The simple act of communicating with someone with a different set of skills or abilities can surface major accessibility concerns that should be addressed within the beginning design phase of a project.

The insights captured by talking with a diverse group of participants are what create inclusive design within the user research practice.

Uncovering User Insights

Uncovering accessibility insights from a diverse group of end users can create several opportunities for the entire offering team. The first opportunity is a perspective shift. End users all bring different backgrounds and challenges to the table. Inviting participants with a broad range of experiences allows the insights from the research to have more of an impact when implemented into the product. The impact from the varied perspectives adds more sides to an initial issue with a product and more guidelines to creatively problem solve for the user. The more thoughts and observations gathered, the better understanding the offering team will have when tackling what needs to be changed or added to the product.

Resource Saving

The second opportunity is resource saving. When including individuals with diverse abilities in the upfront research stage, the researcher is far more likely to catch accessibility needs. By communicating the accessibility concerns of a user to the offering team, the team can save time by implementing fixes into their current cycle to reduce overwhelming amounts of work later on. Accessibility insights can easily be translated into design prototypes through the checking of color contrast, creating ARIA tab labels, and flow redesign (just to name a few examples) before developers code the design. Fixes of that nature done up front save time and resources compared to accessibility fixes at the end of a development cycle. By moving the needle left on when accessibility is implemented, teams can save time by not redoing completed work and accomplish more by giving back the saved time to employees so they can tackle backlog cycles.

Expanded Reach

The third opportunity is to have world class products reach more people. IBM creates incredible products that benefit everyone. Wide perspectives, abilities, and skill sets should be introduced at the beginning of the product life-cycle to ensure inclusive design.

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Cloud innovation in real estate: Apleona and IBM rely on new technologies

Digitization does not stop at the proverbial concrete gold — real estate. In fact, the real estate industry is on the move. Companies are realizing the benefits of digital transformation and are capitalizing on the power of new technologies such as cloud, AI and blockchain.

Take, for example, Apleona GmbH, one of Europe’s largest real estate service providers. The German company has more than €2 billion in sales and manages properties in all asset classes in more than 30 countries. Apleona recognizes that it can broaden the established facility management model by strategically partnering with its corporate clients to transform and digitize their offerings. To this end, Apleona has been working with IBM since 2017 in a digital partnership that is continually expanding. The company has already implemented a range of innovative ideas, including the following new applications:

◉ Room Booking is the easy and fast way to book office conference rooms without spending too much time on mobile apps. The mobile terminal’s visual representation can also display which rooms are occupied or vacant. As a result, you can quickly find available spaces in the building.

◉ With Smart Ticketing, office workers can use a mobile app to create a “ticket” in just a few clicks if they notice a problem such as defective devices in the office. With this simple and straightforward solution, employees can track the ticket’s processing through the app. IBM Watson AI Services even allows them to “spot” problems so they can automatically create a categorized ticket.

◉ Finally, Energy Pods are convenient mini-booths for “power naps” in the office, optionally accompanied by music or guided meditations. Employees can recharge in these stylish pods and even book them with a mobile phone. Four of the units are in use and are very popular at the IBM headquarters; more are planned at other locations.

New technologies and agile methods are key to innovative solutions

Apleona team members and experienced IBM IT consultants co-created the new solutions in the IBM Garage in Munich, Germany. Most of the applications are hosted on IBM Cloud in the Frankfurt data center, but the customer-oriented flexibility of the IBM hybrid multicloud platform makes the applications available across platforms.

The Apleona and IBM team capitalized on existing real estate and facility management data in inventive ways to develop new offerings. To create smart environments that optimally adapt to people’s needs, the team used data analytics, cognitive automation, edge computing and AI. These technologies, in connection with sensor technology and the cloud, made it possible to process and transfer data streams.

The forward-thinking and agile principles of the IBM Garage Methodology also helped Apleona succeed in its digital transformation. Apleona and IBM continue to follow this methodology at the IBM Watson IoT Center, which serves as the team’s co-creation space. This location even boasts the Room Booking solution.

Expanding offerings and scaling solutions

While the real estate industry has recognized the general benefits of digitization, critical voices are still asking for detailed business cases and quantifiable cost savings. How do you quickly scale the new solutions? “In our industry, innovation and monetization must always be thought of together,” explains Dr. Jochen Keysberg, Chief Executive Officer at Apleona. “That’s why it’s so important that new ideas, such as those developed with IBM, always have competitive advantages, efficiency improvements and better resource utilization in mind.”

The real estate industry cannot shy away from digitization, and like Apleona, other facility managers will have to adopt modern solutions to succeed in the marketplace. “Simply start, develop agile and at the same time, bring the required expertise to the table. Then quickly validate and test it with the addressed users. In our experience, it usually works in a quite straightforward way,” explains Stefan Lutz, General Manager and Services Transformation Program Leader at IBM.

Indeed, new customers, including a major German bank and global companies in the technology, energy and automation industries, are already relying on the innovation of Apleona and IBM. In addition, other IBM locations will soon use Apleona’s cutting-edge solutions, and more applications will roll out in 2020. The joint team is excited to see the offerings expand and the solutions scale.

Source: ibm.com

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