Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Welcome to the Experts on current IT challenges series. My name is Massimo Leoni and I’m
an IBM Systems and Technology Group Distinguished Engineer. This video introduces to IBM Smarter
Computing, explaining the underlying transformation both in technology and in the enterprise.
This transformation requires a new computing model, designed to solve a new class of problems
and to create a competitive differential for the enterprises. The ability to solve these
problems, matched with a new class of IT infrastructure, will allow businesses to gain efficiency both
in terms of cost reduction, innovation capability and insight.
To understand why Smarter Computing is so important for IBM Smarter Planet strategy
and for society and enterprises, we have to analyze the major trends that are the mainstream
forces for the change. In the information technology scenario we
have two of these trends at work, the technology evolution and the society transformation involving
both people and enterprise’s needs. If we have a look from the technology side,
we see a shift in how leading performance is achieved. The Moore’s law, namely the
prediction that the density of integrated circuits doubles almost every eighteen months,
continues to remain valid, designers have more and more room inside the chip but the
heat barrier force them to stop the Gigahertz rush to gain new performances. The space inside
the chips is then used to host other components: multi-core with low frequency, cache memory,
specialized processors etc. bringing in new capabilities inside the chip architecture.
Networking is also under transformation; the classic physical hierarchy approach - from
access level to aggregation and core level - that has characterized until now the network
design, is flattering because of the virtualization. Network switches are now part of both computing
systems and hypervisors while virtualization techniques are in a widespread adoption from
layer 2 to layer 3. Those protocols like Openflow, Trill and overlay techniques such as Distributed
Overlay Virtual Ethernet (DOVE), are now shaping the networking landscape with new design opportunities.
The need to obtain more optimization fosters the developing of new techniques to achieve
performance with current technology constraints. This trend coupled with advances in virtualization
is now driving the creation of new systems’ build blocks which are characterized by high
density, new intelligent functions and easy of aggregation.
In parallel with the technology transformation, we have on the other side the changes in society,
enterprises and clients. Enterprises are more and more evolving into networks of people
that even span across their physical and organizational boundaries. In this movement, to find their
competitive gap, businesses require to evolve their way to make question and answers: from
structured, form based query, centered on structured operational data, to a new class
of queries that are characterized by dynamicity, context awareness and that need to analyze
big amount of data, in whichever form it shows.
On the background the scale of Information Technology’s users is also changing: users
growth from thousand of IT professional and millions of clerks to billions of employee-customers.
The mobile has transformed the business and social scenario, the BYOD (Bring your own
device) style is making employees always connected as customers and vice versa.
In this landscape new applications have to deal with a huge amount of structured and
unstructured data that is growing to an incredible pace. Just to figure out the unexploited data
available, think about the 5 Millions of Terabytes of data available on the Internet. The surface
web, that is the set of documents reachable using search engines like Google, is only
the 4% of the entire internet space leaving the remaining 96% still unexplored. On top
we also have billions of streams of data generated by mobile devices, sensors and social networks.
This transformation asks for efficiency, not only enterprises have to face this change
but they also have to dramatically reduce costs to fund innovation, accelerating a process
that forces them to quickly transform OPEX to CAPEX.
IT departments have to align themselves to the best in class in their industry, adopting
their practices, processes automation and resource management’s styles.
But which are the main directions to obtain such efficiency?
We as IBM have identified three areas to become best in class:
• Cloud ready. This means to be able to leverage new sourcing capabilities offered
by cloud computing but also organizing the IT services infrastructure in a more industrialized
and standardized way like cloud datacenters do.
• Data ready. Being able to manage, store, protect and analyze huge amount of data it
is a key competitive differentiator. The ability to gain new insights enables the displacement
of the competition and fosters innovation. • Security ready. The eternal recurrence.
Security has always been the underlying element that enabled the growth of the business. And
more and more on these times it is continuing to be so important. The need to protect information
from new threats and to be in compliance with new regulations brings IT security back on
the stage.
We have seen until now how technology trends and society transformation are producing new
building blocks and best in class capabilities for IT which would enable enterprises to win
in their marketplace.
IBM systems and storage put all this together. The systems design is now moving from scale
up and scale out, that characterized the transactional and e-business era, to a new “Scale In”
approach that is putting all the components inside, close each other. This allows systems
to match new technology challenges “scaling in” from chip design to systems construction,
and “building in” the IT best in class capabilities: cloud ready, data ready and
security ready:
• In the new PureSystems family all the components of the IT stack are scaled in,
from computing to storage and networking, with built in “a la cloud” management
through the adoption of patterns of expertise aimed to ease the management and to speed
up the deployment of the entire infrastructure.
• In the Enterprise systems, like the new IBM System z EC12, advanced operational analytics,
IBM DB2 Analytic Acceleration, is scaled in close to its unmatched transactional capabilities
and coupled with its hybrid workload management. Besides security is brought to the highest
level with ultimate virtual systems isolation and enhanced cryptographic support for advanced
security implementation. Also in the Power7plus processor the scale in approach is applied:
main memory compression and cryptography logics are now part of the chip.
• In the Smarter storage systems the scale in approach involves both new intelligence,
like the Easy Tier function that helps to move the data on the right device, from Solid
state disk to high capacity disk, based on its usage and performance requirements, to
on line compression, data cryptography and advanced copy services.
In summary we are facing a time in which the technology enables the ability to answer to
a new class of problems that matches the society and enterprise transformation, driving the
Information technology to a new dawn of computing. IBM named this computing change Smarter Computing.
IBM Smarter Computing is therefore a new approach to computing in order to be effective on a
new class of workloads that will grow standing by the classic enterprise transactional workloads
and eBusiness applications. It addresses the technology transformation applying those new
principles to the entire IT stack, from systems to applications.
A clear example of these new types of systems is IBM Watson, an IBM research grand challenge
aimed to participate to a quiz game, Jeopardy, challenging humans on their most difficult
playground: language interpretation and disambiguation. Watson exploits big data analysis capability
with a tuned to the task system, enabling real time data analysis that allowed it to
win a special edition of the game. Watson not only plays the Jeopardy game but it also
is exceptional for real world problems in the area of medicine diagnosis, financial
market analysis and in something very close to our everyday’s life: car repair support.
A major European automotive brand is evaluating Watson to help car repair. When diagnostic
data flows out car’s electronic control unit it is almost puzzling. IBM Watson can
then help to go through this data and find probable solutions to car malfunction.
So what’s next? In this exciting scenario IBM System and Technology Group technical
sales people can help clients in their journey to smarter computing. Just start here, in
the references you can find information and papers to deep your knowledge on smarter computing
and to find the right contacts that will help you in your journey.
Thank you