Innovation: The Fourth "I" for a Smarter Planet
At a recent IBM event (Pulse, in Las Vegas), the theme of an instrumented, interconnected, intelligent world was reinforced. Their emphasis is consistent with my own work over the last decade, and I applaud their efforts wholeheartedly. There is, however, a need for a fourth "I" - Innovation - on the part of vendors and users alike, to ensure that the smarter world we are building is the one we really want.In 1999 I taught a course on e-business at NYU. I remember giving two optimistic, yet cautious, examples of an instrumented, interconnected, intelligent future that went something like this:
1) Assume that I am driving South on US 1 from my home in CT to my office at NYU. As I pass Stew Leonard's (the "World's Largest Dairy Store" according to Ripley's), a message pops up on my car's head's up display, notifying me that there is a sale on Ben & Jerry's ice cream. How fortunate, as my son just finished the last of it from my freezer last night. Of course, it is no accident that I see this message, as my refrigerator keeps track of these things and updates my smart keyfob when I am running low or out of a commodity. My refrigerator, like my key fob and most of the artifacts of my life, are instrumented - they know and can report things about themselves. Many are interconnected, via the net, and together with a little intelligence, they may know or reveal things about me, too.
I won't stop to make the purchase now, but not because I think the ice cream will melt before my class is over, I have a much more serious concern. The keyfob isn't smart enough (yet) to know that my son ate the ice cream, it just knows that it is gone, that I can buy more, and that it has just negotiated a deal for me with Stew's. It isn't integrated with my home finance system, so it doesn't know that my insurance premium includes a notation that I am on Lipitor, and eating that ice cream isn't a great idea for me. It doesn't know that my insurance company, like most, will be happy to raise my premiums or deny my coverage if I engage in risky behavior, or fail to maintain certain habits designed to keep me healthy. It doesn't know that the insurance company has made a significant investment in business intelligence and analytic software that harvests enough data to predict that a left turn into the parking lot now means I am a higher risk customer. So I continue on to my destination...
Welcome, Joe Clabby
I'd like to welcome Joe Clabby as an associate of SIG411. Joe is one of the most prolific analysts focused on systems, storage, networking and infrastructure issues, and we look forward to featuring his insights and collaborating on custom projects together. Joe is President of Clabby Analytics. Check out his bio here.
Charting IBM’s Smart Journey from Linux to Cloud Computing
SIG411 is happy to announce that we are working with Cabot Partners to expand our coverage of cloud computing technologies and related business issues. This is part of our plan to offer new content and services in three key areas beginning in Q2: Cloud computing, virtualization, and green-it. Look for major changes to our site in April as we roll out these new offerings.
In the meantime, our colleage Srini Chari of Cabot recently completed a white paper for IBM, in which he details the IBM strategy for Linux and cloud computing. IBM has allowed us to publish that paper here for our readers:
Preliminary Maturity Model for a Citiplex
A few weeks ago I thought about the idea of creating peer groups of cities that band together to share ideas, data, and ultimately analytics to make them smarter individually and collectively. I was inspired by the work IBM is doing in Dubuque, and later by what I saw at the Smarter Cities event in NYC.Tonight, I started to think about what the connections between these cities might look like and how the collaboration process might evolve. I decided that I should post a draft model and open it up for discussion rather than wait until I had a fully baked, hence this note. (You can register for the site and respond, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it me, or catch me on Twitter)
I'll use the term citiplex to refer to such a community of cities, with similarities in several of the following basic properties:
o Population size (similar educational, safety and healthcare issues)
o Population density (similar housing and transportation issues)
o Climate (energy requirements)
o Natural resources (agricultural potential, energy sources...)
o Government (easier for culturally similar groups to make a conscious effort to share)
At first, it may appear that the more that is shared the better. However, I believe that nature teaches us the value of diversity, so I'd like to see several such citiplexes emerge for each global peer group, and learn from each other without creating too many dependencies (fault tolerance is important for operational continuity and safety).
SIG Notes
