OS/2 Celebrates 25 Years

Harry McCracken’s story (see 25 Years of IBM’s OS/2: The Strange Days and Surprising Afterlife of a Legendary Operating System) about OS/2 brought back a lot of memories. Seeing my picture in PC World magazine made me feel old — who is that young man? Bill Gates and I were both wearing purple shirts, but that was the only thing we had in common. OS/2 was a great product, but it failed in the end for many reasons that Harry described. From my perspective, the main thing that could have upped the odds for OS/2 would have been if we had tightly integrated the IBM hardware, software, and services that IBM had at the time. Unfortunately, there was a feeling of independence in the various divisions of the company; the PC Company, the Personal Sofware Products Division of which I was the vice president for marketing, the IBM Global Network, the amazing National Service Division of which I earlier was vice president for service business, the various industry vertical and marketing organizations of IBM, and the financial resources to put it all together.

But, we did not put it all together. The Apple iPad and Mac are successful because Apple put it all together so that “it just works”. IBM had a similar potential with OS/2. Three researchers developed a Web browser called the Web Explorer. It was the best Web browser at the time. The ThinkPad had just been introduced a year earlier. IBM was the only vendor that could offer a PC with an operating system, a suite of Internet tools for surfing, email, and news reading, plus the IBM Global Network — all bundled on a ThinkPad. That was 1994 and IBM had it all and no other vendor was even close. Unfortunately, IBM, at the time, wanted each division to stand on its own. The PC division believed they could sell more PCs if they put Windows on them instead of OS/2. The OS/2 team wanted to make their software work with all the industry software, but the Lotus division wanted just their products on the PC. The industry vertical groups wanted to sell whatever kind of PC the customer wanted, IBM or others. The service division wanted to service any brand and give-up the exclusivity of great IBM service. While Apple had one brand, IBM had multiple brands, each with its own advertising agency, that did not leverage the strength of one of the greatest brands of all times — IBM.  When Lou Gerstner took control, the company came back together again, but unfortunately, it was too late for OS/2. If you like technology history, read Harry’s story. He did a great job in pulling it together. In my basement, I have a collection of OS/2 hats on the wall. My grandchildren ask me, “Pop-pop, what is OS/2?”

Tags: IBM, IBM Global Network, IGN, internet, john patrick, os/2, ThinkPad, Web Explorer

The Future of the Internet

The following story was published in the April 2012 issue of  Sun and Surf Magazine

The Future of the Internet
By John R. Patrick

The future of the Internet in our lives is very positive but we are only about 10% of the way there. Of all the things that could be done online that would save us time and simplify our lives, only 10% of them are there. Travel and banking web sites are getting better, but we are still at the early stages of what is possible. Consider retail e-commerce. Although there has been continuous and steady growth of retail e-commerce, it still represents just 5% of total retail sales. Why isn’t it 25% or more? Much is written about that here at patrickWeb but the short version is that there are still a lot of lame web sites. “Click here for the location of our nearest dealer where you can visit” or “call to get a price on the product you just found” or “Click here to download this form, fill it out, and fax it to us”. It is no wonder that Amazon captured 28% of all online sales in the fourth quarter of 2011. One company out of 4 million retailers got more than a quarter of all the sales. Have you ever heard a friend complain about poor customer service at Amazon? They walk in the customer’s shoes and deliver a terrific experience. Most of the rest of the e-businesses in the world have a long way to go. And in the physical world, there are the ubiquitous clipboards at doctor offices where we take a pen and provide a lot of information that they already have.

The changes in Internet technology have been continuous for decades and there is no end in sight. For the past fifteen years, I have been writing about the evolution of the Internet by describing developments in seven key areas: Fast, Always On, Everywhere, Natural, Intelligent, Easy, and Trusted. In the following paragraphs, I will hit the highlights of some of the more important trends and developments.

Fast
Broadband in the U.S. is not a pretty story compared to other parts of the world. We are second after China in the number of broadband users, but 28th in the world in the number of broadband users as a percentage of our population. The problem is that there are too many lobbyists, and the FCC is a political organization. The new FCC head is a very smart guy with technology and business experience. He totally gets it. The only problem is that AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon have more lawyers than the FCC does. Meanwhile France is offering 100 megabit access for $90 per month and rolling out WiFi throughout the country. Thanks to the telco lobby, many states have banned the offering of WiFi by municipal entities. Every citizen in Greenland has Internet access. We have 31,000 post offices.

Always On
WiFi is part of the fabric of the world. The big shift is the streaming of data — not just tweets, but data from *things* — bridges, toll booths, traffic lights, buildings, cars, iPhones, Androids, handheld GPS devices, weather instruments, and health monitoring devices attached to people. The growth in creation of data is staggering. Of all the data in the world, 90% of it was created in the last two years. YouTube receives 60 hours of new video every hour – an hour every minute. Wikipedia has 4 million articles and 8,000 editors. Hospital physicians will soon be adjusting the drip rate on infusion pumps in the hospital from their office based on real-time data from the patient. WiFi-enabled infusion pumps will enable hospital administrators to know where the pumps are (they never have enough of them) and which ones need maintenance.

Everywhere
There are one billion computers (including tablets), one billion cars, 1.5 billion televisions, and 2 billion Internet users. Small numbers compared to cell phones — 5.2 billion paid subscribers. The Internet used to be where your PC is, but now the Internet is where you are.  Most of the cell phones are dumb but soon most of them will be smart and they will all have Internet access. The mobile web is unfolding and is taking part in creating data by streaming data to the Cloud and then consuming data by streaming it from the Cloud. When you take a picture on your iPhone, it goes into the photostream and from there to iCloud and from there to all of your other devices and, if you choose, to the devices of your friends and family.

Natural
Social networking has become fundamental to all aspects of our economy and society. Integration of social networking with a full range of web applications will evolve to become the primary means of finding jobs, finding employees, finding business partners, and collaborating on projects. The emerging issue is that many people, especially young ones, are a bit liberal with sharing their every movement — what they are eating, listening to, where they are headed, their current latitude and longitude, and where they slept last night. They are not thinking that some day they may run for office or interview for a job. A new protocol will emerge to enable people to “erase” things they placed on the Internet. The Europeans may legislate it. OpenSocial is an important new standard that will enable social media apps that work across all of the social media sites.

Intelligent
The Semantic Web is the next big turn of the crank for the evolution of the World Wide Web. Most web pages have links but do not have context. The words on the web page do not necessarily mean anything — but they could. For example, if a web page said “Join us for a concert by The Eagles at Kimmel Center in Philadelphia next Tuesday” that set of words could have a lot of context. Clicking on it could add the concert to your calendar, knowing what “next Tuesday” means. It would also know exactly where the Kimmel Center is and provide a map. The Eagles is a performing group that performs a particular genre and your music player would receive a list of suggestions of music they have recorded or links to live concerts under way at the moment and make recommendations about their music to your friends. This is the tip of the iceberg. The semantic web will lead us to a point where most of the interactions of web pages will be between computers, not between computers and people. The biggest growth of intelligence is occurring in the field of analytics. Exabytes of data are being stored. A byte is 8 bits (a bit is a zero or a 1) and represents one character. An exabyte is a 1 followed by 18 zeroes! Business Intelligence and analytics are poised to enable new insight into the mounds of data – “Big Data” — that are being accumulated. Analytics will enable businesses to make sense of the explosion of data, develop digital models of their business, and continuously adapt it to what is going on. IBM’s Watson successfully challenged humans on the Jeopardy Show, but what is more interesting is the ability for a primary care physician to call and get a recommendation based on patient symptoms and measurements they describe to Watson. Within a couple of seconds Watson technology will be able to review all available medical information in the world and make a useful suggestion.

Easy
Technology is not the easiest thing at times. There are many dimensions to “easy” but one good example is the Nintendo Wii. At a local senior center, members find the Wii to be their exercise coach. It is not just for kids! The iPhone and iPad have shown how easy it can be to get applications on a handheld computer. Amazon has done the same with the Kindle. Most companies still don’t get the idea that the Internet is about power to the people. If you can’t make it simple, people won’t buy it. Cloud computing has become the mainstay for me and for millions. The ease, convenience, and reliability of the Cloud is compelling. Add Dropbox to your laptop and your iPad and your iPhone and you have a completely replicated set of data – all of your data at your disposal wherever you are and with whatever device you may be using. How about the future of TV? Three of the most common remotes — BlueRay, Cable box, and TV — include 151 buttons. Even a savvy child could not possibly master this impossible user interface. Boxee TV has produced a good model of the future of TV – think of it like TV Guide on the web — but I suspect that an upcoming Apple TV will be what finally provides the needed regime change.

Trusted
This is the big one. Can we trust the Internet? Security technology is available to achieve much higher levels of security than is presently deployed both at enterprise and consumer levels. It is a constant battle and requires significant budgets and a lot of talented people to maintain the needed security. The equally important issue is privacy. The good news is that there are some good technology solutions available to help us control access to our Internet habits. The bad news is that politicians have gotten interested in the subject. Banks have our personal information and they are using it. Healthcare insurers have more information about our health than our doctors do. Nevertheless, there is much to be optimistic about when it comes to electronic medical records. Perhaps 25% of doctors and hospitals use them but they are not easily interchangeable and accessible. This will change over the next few years as the government adds dollar incentives to make it happen. The result will be better quality of care, better outcomes, and fewer errors. And, fewer clipboards.

In January, I gave a talk about the Future of the Internet and Healthcare at the SIIA Conference in New York. The slides and a video of the presentation can be found here.

About the author

John R. Patrick (john@patrickweb.com) is president of Attitude LLC and former vice president of Internet technology at IBM. Mr. Patrick was a founding member of the World Wide Web Consortium at MIT in 1994 and of the Global Internet Project. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives.  He is a director of Knovel Corporation, WebMediaBrands, Inc., and Western Connecticut Health Network. He is the author of Net Attitude: What It Is, How to Get It, and Why Your Company Can’t Survive Without It (Perseus, 2001).

About SUN and SURF

SUN and SURF Magazine is published quarterly and mailed to all property owners in Hammock Dunes in Palm Coast, Florida. The magazine currently has a circulation of approximately 1,000.

Tags: analytics, big data, cardionet, corventis, IBM, internet, Internet Technology, ipad, patientslikeme, social media, telemonitoring

Genesys XVIII

The 18th Annual Genesys Partners Venture Dinner — Gen XVIII– Monday night at the Union League Club in New York attracted more than 100 venture capitalists, investors, journalists, entrepreneurs, and industry executives. As always, Jim Kollegger — CEO of Genesys Partners and one of the pioneers of the information industry — was an elegant master of ceremonies. He introduced the various sponsors, next day panelists for the SIIA Conference, several startup CEO’s, and a few of us who have been around the block a few times, each to make some comments.

Like a broken record, I offered the normal upbeat view of the future of the Internet but prefaced my remarks by asserting that we are only 10% of the way there. In other words, of all the things that could be done on the Internet that would save us time and make our lives better, only 10% of them are there. It may sound low but consider retail e-commerce. Although there has been continuous and steady growth of retail e-commerce it still represents just 4% of total retail (as of the end of October). Why isn’t it 25% or more? Much is written about that here at patrickWeb but the short version is that there are still a lot of lame web sites. “Click here for the location of our nearest dealer where you can visit” or “call to buy the product you just found” or “Click here to download this form and fax it to us”. And of course there are the ubiquitous clipboards at doctor offices where we take a pen and provide a lot of information information that they already have.

I described one man’s view of the evolution of the Internet including the seven characteristics below. This parsed way of looking at the Internet has served me well for quite a few years. The things going on under each area continuously change and Jim asks me once a year to do a thumbnail sketch of my latest thinking.

Fast
Broadband in the U.S. is not a pretty story compared to other parts of the world. We are second after China in number of broadband users, but 28th in the world in number of broadband users as a percentage of our population. The problem is that there are too many lobbyists and the FCC is a political organization. The new FCC head is a very smart guy with venture and business experience. He totally gets it. The only problem is that AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon have more lawyers than he does. Meanwhile France is offering 100 megabit access for $90 per month and WiFi throughout the country. Thanks to the telco lobby, many states have banned the offering of WiFi by municipal entities. Every citizen in Greenland has Internet access. We have 31,000 post offices.

Always On

WiFi is part of the fabric of the world. The big shift is streaming of data — not just tweets, but data from *things*. Bridges, toll booths, traffic lights, buildings, cars, and health monitoring devices attached to people. Hospital physicians will soon be adjusting the drip rate on infusion pumps in the hospital from their office based on real-time data from the patient. The WiFi infusion pumps enable hospital administrators to know where the pumps are (they never have enough of them) and which ones need maintenance. The creation of data is staggering. Of all the data in the world, 90% of it was created in the last two years. YouTube receives 60 hours of new video every hour. Wikipedia has 4 million articles and 8,000 editors.

Everywhere
There are one billion computers (including tablets), one billion cars, 1.5 billion televisions, and 2 billion Internet users. Small numbers compared to cell phones — 5.2 billion paid subscribers. The Internet used to be where your PC is, now it is where you are.  Most of the cell phones are dumb but soon most of them will be smart and they will all have Internet access. The mobile web is unfolding and is taking part in creating data in addition to consuming it through streaming. When you take a picture on your iPhone, it goes into the photostream and from there to iCloud and from there to all of your other devices.  

Natural
Social networking has become fundamental to all aspects of our economy and society. Integration of social networking with a full range of web applications will evolve to become the primary means of collaboration. The emerging issue is that many people are a bit liberal with sharing their every movement — what they are eating, listening to, where they are headed, their current latitude and longitude, and where they slept last night. They are not thinking that some day they may run for office or interview for a job. OpenSocial is an important new standard that will enable social media apps that work across all of the social media sites. The Europeans may legislate it, but regardless, a capability is needed to be able to remove things from the social media.

Intelligent
The Semantic Web is the next big turn of the crank but the crank is moving slowly. Most web pages have links but do not have context. In other words the words on the page do not necessarily mean anything — but they could. If a web page said “Join us for a concert by The Eagles at Kimmel Center in Philadelphia next Tuesday” that set of words could have a lot of context. Clicking on it could add the concert to your calendar, knowing what “next Tuesday” means. It would also know exactly where the Kimmel Center is and that The Eagles is a performing group that performs a particular genre and your music player would receive a list of suggestions of music they have recorded or links to live concerts under way at the moment. This is the tip of the iceberg. The semantic web will lead us to a point where most of the interactions of web pages will be between computers not between computers and people. The biggest growth of intelligence is occurring in the field of analytics. Exabytes of data are being stored. Analytics will enable businesses to make sense of it, model their business and continuously adapt to what is going on. IBM’s Watson took on humans on the Jeopardy Show, but what is more interesting is the ability for a primary care physician to call and get a recomendation based on patient data they describe to Watson. Within a couple of seconds Watson will be able to review all medical information in the world and make a useful suggestion. Business Intelligence and analytics are poised to enable new insight into the mounds of data that are being accumulated.

Easy
Technology isn’t the easiest thing at times. There are many dimensions to “easy” but one good example is the Nintendo Wii. At a local senior center, members find the Wii to be their exercise coach. It is not just for kids! The iPhone and iPad have shown how easy it can be to get applications on a handheld computer. Amazon has done the same with the Kindle. Most companies still don’t get the idea that the Internet is about power to the people. If you can’t make it simple, people won’t buy it. Cloud computing has become the mainstay for me and for millions. The convenience and reliability of the clouds is compelling. Add Dropbox and you have a completely replicated set of data, wherever you are and with whatever device you may be using. How about TV? Three remotes — BlueRay, Cable box, and TV — include 151 buttons. Even a savvy child could not possibly master this impossible user interface. Boxee TV has produced a good model of the future of TV, but I suspect that an upcoming Apple TV will be what finally provides the needed regime change.

Trusted
This is the big one. Will we trust the Internet? Security technology is available to achieve much higher levels of security than presently deployed both at enterprise and consumer levels. It is a constant battle and requires significant budgets and a lot of talented people to maintain the needed security. The bigger issue will be privacy. (Stay tuned for the Firefox “do not track” feature). Banks have our personal information and they are using it. Healthcare insurers have more information about our health than our doctors do. Nevertheless, there is much to be optimistic about when it comes to electronic medical records. Perhaps 25% of doctors and hospitals use them but they are not easily interchangeable and accessible. This will change over the next few years as the government adds dollar incentives to make it happen. The result will be better quality of care, better outcomes, and fewer errors. And, fewer clipboards.

On Wednesday I gave a talk about the Future of the Internet and Healthcare at the SIIA Conference. The presentation can be found here.

Other patrickWeb conference related stories

Tags: broadband, fcc, future, health, health care, Healthcare, IBM, internet, ipad, iPhone, jeopardy, john patrick, Mobile, opera, siia, social media, supercomputer, union league, WiFi

Big Data

The storage capacities of laptop and desktop computers has been growing rapidly, but the growth may not be fast enough. According to IBM, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. Perhaps quintillions of bytes are not meaningful to most of us, but it is the growth rate that is staggering — 90% of all the data in the world has been created in the last two years. Where does all the data come from? Data comes from everywhere: from sensors used to gather climate information, physiological readings taken 1,000 times per second from a patient, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos posted online, transaction records of online purchases, and cell phone GPS coordinates to name just a few. Collectively, the phenomenon is called “big data”. (See  IBM Big data and information integration for smarter computing).

Note: Data is plural. The singular term is datum. Should we say data is or data are? There are many views on which is right.

 IBM describes big data as spanning three dimensions: Variety, Velocity and Volume.  Variety refers to the fact that big data extends beyond structured data like we might find in a spread sheet. It includes unstructured data such as text documents, email, audio and video recordings, click streams from the web, log files that record financial and business transactions, and much more. Velocity of data refers to the fact that data can be time-sensitive such as bid and ask data in a financial market or physiological data that affect the lives of patients. In these cases, historical data is interesting but real-time data is critical. The third parameter is volume. IBM says that big data comes in one size: large. Organizations are flooded with data — terabytes, petabytes, or even yottabytes.

Big data is a challenge in various technical ways, but more importantly, it is an opportunity to find insight in new and emerging types of data and to answer questions that, in the past, were not possible to analyze effectively. Data that has been hidden can be surfaced and acted upon. The result can be a more agile organization or in the case of health care, better outcomes for patients.  Picture a hospital neonatal environment where a plethora of medical monitors connected to babies are used to alert hospital staff to potential health problems before patients develop clinical signs of infection or other issues. There are breakthroughs on the horizon for how this will be done. Today the instrumentation generates huge amounts of information — up to 1,000 readings per second — which is summarized into one reading every 30 to 60 minutes. The information is stored for up to 72 hours and is then discarded. If the stream of data could be captured, stored and analyzed in real-time there could be a huge opportunity to improve the quality of care for special-care babies.

The Hospital for Sick Children in Ontario, Canada developed such a vision and is acted on it. Dr. Carolyn McGregor, Canada research chair in health informatics at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology visited researchers at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center who are working on a new stream-computing platform to support healthcare analytics. A three-way collaboration was established, with each group bringing a unique perspective — the hospital focus on patient care, the university’s ideas for using the data stream, and IBM providing the advanced analysis software and information technology expertise needed to turn the vision into reality. The result of the collaboration was Project Artemis which pairs IBM scientists with clinicians and`researchers to explore how emerging technologies can solve real-world business problems, in this case developing a highly flexible platform that aims to help physicians make better, faster decisions regarding patient care for a wide range of conditions. At the Children’s hospital the focus is real-time detection of the onset of nosocomial infection (often called hospital-acquired infection). Regulatory, ethical, privacy, and safety issues were addressed and then two infant beds were instrumented and connected to the system for data collection. The team then created an algorithm that deciphered the streaming data. By establishing the impact of moving a baby or changing its diaper, those things can be filtered out to help spot the telltale signs of nosocomial infection.

Dr. Andrew James, staff neonatologist, at the Hospital for Sick Children is optimistic that as they learn more they will be able to account for variations in individual patients and eventually be able to integrate data inputs such as lab results and observational notes. In the future, any condition that can be detected through subtle changes in the underlying data streams can be the target of the system’s early-warning capabilities. It is likely that sensors attached to or even implanted in the body will allow monitoring of important conditions from home or anywhere. Big data has the potential to improve the health of patients whever they may be.

Other healthcare-related stories on patrickWeb

Tags: analytics, big data, health, Healthcare, hospital, IBM, monitoring, neonatal

Atoms by the Dozen

IBM has just made a huge advance in atomic-scale magnetic memory. The MacBook I am typing this story on stores one bit of data in about 1 million atoms. With IBM’s new atomic-scale magnetic memory, 12 is the new million. The nanotechnology breakthrough will lead to storage that is 100 times more dense than today’s hard disk drives. IBM said that an entire music and movie collection could fit on a charm-sized pendant you wear around your neck. Hard drives have continually improved in storage and cost, but the current technology is running into physical limitations. Scientists at IBM Research have been working  at the atomic scale for decades, but only recently has it advanced to the point that it looks like their work will produce the ultimate memory chips of the future. Operating at incredibly cold temperatures, the IBM researchers have been able to manipulate 12 atoms into what they describe as a stable magnetic storage unit. Once a manufacturing technique is devised, putting many millions of atoms together will result in a highly energy-efficient, no-moving-parts, storage system capable of changing the way we think of information. For many people, today’s storage capacity is more than adequate, but the deluge of data from video, GPS locations, sensors, and social media interactions will demand significantly more storage capacity in the near future.  IBM says that everyday we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. The rate of increasing data creation is so fast that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.

 Smaller Magnetic Materials Push Boundaries of Nanotechnology – from the New York Times
 YouTube video of IBM physicist explaining the new breakthrough

Tags: antiferromagnetic, atom, IBM, nano, nanotechnology, research

Why You Should Embrace Your Company’s Heretics

CNNMoney’s Fortune published a story last week called Why You Should Embrace Your Company’s Heretics. The story was written by Polly LaBarre. I have not talked to Polly for ten years but we did attended a number of the same conferences back then. This new story described my evangelism of the Internet and she said some complimentary things. The story is accurate, but I never thought of myself as a heretic. One fellow board member who read the story sent me a note saying he thought heretics were burned at the stake. Back in 2006, Polly and Bill Taylor, founding editor of Fast Company Magazine, wrote a book called Mavericks at Work where they described 50 “mavericks”. I was one of them, but had not yet been promoted or demoted (not sure which it would be) to “heretic”. I was labeled with the term “rebel” by Gary Hamel in his Waking Up IBM: How a Gang of Unlikely Rebels Transformed Big Blue that appeared in the Harvard Business Review in April 2001. A few months before that, Fast Company magazine published an interview I did with Polly where we talked about technology futures (see Think Ahead: John Patrick). The only heretic I can think of is ”Homer the Heretic” — an episode of The Simpsons‘, which originally aired in 1992.

Tags: CNNMoney, Fast Company, Fortune, Fortune Magazine, Harvard Business Review, heretic, IBM, john patrick

IBM at 100 – A Day of Nostalgia and Optimism

I was not exactly sure what to expect when I arrived at the world famous T. J. Watson Research Center at IBM last week. I have been there many times over the years but never to a birthday party. I walked in to the arrival tent where light refreshments were being served and the crowd of 350 invited guests began to build. One of the first people I saw was Allen Krowe. Allen had been CFO of IBM and then Vice Chairman of Texaco. I was his assistant back in 1981. I remember the day that he turned 50 years old and thinking that was very advanced. That was 30 years ago and NOW I am 15 years older than he was then. Then I saw Spike Beitzel. Spike had been a sales manager in Philadelphia for IBM’s insurance industry customers, the same position that I held some years later. Spike is a pilot, as was Allen, and many other senior IBM executives, including Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Spike is 83 and still flies his own airplane. It was nice to talk about aviation. It was a privilege to say hello to three IBM CEOs — John Akers, Lou Gerstner, and Sam Palmisano. There were four current and former heads of IBM Research there. One of them was Ralph Gomory. I am not sure how old Ralph is but he got his PhD in mathematics from Princeton in 1954. Whenb he retired from IBM in 1989 he became president of the Sloan Foundation. The pattern became clear — this was not just a birthday party for IBM; it was an alumni reunion for executives that worked for IBM over the past fifty years. Then I ran into the former heads of IBM Japn, IBM China, IBM Italy, IBM Brazil, and various other parts of IBM from around the world. Former Chairman Thomas J. Watson, Jr., said in 1957 that IBM “is a company of human beings, not machines; personalities, not products; people, not real estate.” That observation was true long before 1957 — and it remains so today. Although every IBMer makes a difference, there is a list of IBM Builders that were the pioneers who helped to fashion the IBM of the 21st century. Most of them were were among those in the tent; it was humbling to be in their midst and a thrill to shake their hands. Everyone had a smile on their face. It was a happy and nostalgic day that none of us will ever forget.

The main event took place in a really big tent. There were 2,000 members of IBM Research in attendance. During the opening ceremonies Sam Palmisano asked the thirty members of the Watson family in attendance to stand; everyone appreciated the heritage of the company. The family must have been proud to hear about Watson, the advanced Q&A system that triumphed at Jeopardy, and will surely change the way medicine is practiced as it transforms anecdotal medicine to personalized, evidence-based medicine. The program included some excellent videos about the past, present, and future of IBM. Senior VP Jon Iwata interviewed three journalists, Kevin Maney, Steve Hamm and Jeffrey O’Brien about the research they had done to write their new book about IBM called Making the World Work Better: The Ideas That Shaped a Century and a Company. I have known Kevin for quite a few years. When he quoted someone in his columns at USA Today, you always knew that he would not use information out of context. Steve Hamm wrote the story about my home when he was at BusinessWeek. He now works for IBM. It was an alumni event with journalists too! Another panel with Senior VP John Kelly focused on IBM research efforts around the world, in particular about IBM’s advanced work on environmental and healthcare initiatives. Sam and senior vice president and group executive for sales, marketing and strategy Ginni Rometty painted a rosy picture of IBM’s future.  IBM also cares about the future of others. As part of its Celebration of Service, 300,000 IBMers around the world — nearly three quarters of its global workforce — volunteeried in more than 5,000 projects in 120 countries, helping millions in need. Since the beginning of the year, IBMers, retirees and their families have donated more than 2.5 million hours of service to communities worldwide. A lot of conofidence was exuded that another 100 years of innovation and growth are underway.

Tags: akers, Aviation, beitzel, evidence based medicine, gerstner, gomory, Healthcare, IBM, IBM Research, kevin maney, krowe, palmisano, personalized medicine, research, rometty, steve hamm, supercomputing, watson, yorktown

Breakfast with Nick

If you are interested in getting some great insight about technology and innovation, head up to the new Matrix Conference Center on Tuesday morning for a breakfast with Nick Donofrio. Nick is an IBM Fellow Emeritus and a terrific speaker. I am out of town through Tuesday or I would surely be there. The “Networking Breakfast’ has been organized by United Way’s Emerging Leaders Group and Nick’s talk is titled Leadership in the Marketplace. Details below.

April 19th l 7:30 am
The Matrix Conference Center
39 Old Ridgebury Road Danbury, CT
$25 per person
RSVP to: Stacy Schulman at (203) 792-5330 ext 247 or via email at sschulman@uwwesternct.org
Proceeds of the event support educational initiatives of United Way of Western Connecticut.

Tags: donofrio, IBM, innovation, matrix center

SIIA Conference – Buzz on the Panels

John Blossom took pictures and notes at the SIIA Conference last week. He did a really good job at it! If you want to get more insight to what some really smart panelists had to say, you can get it at John’s Buzz. He covered two panels.
Jim Kollegger’s panel
CEO Outlook: Winning the Platform Wars – Betting on the Next Digital Wave

John Patrick’s panel
Top Mobile Technology Trends – A Moving Target


Other patrickWeb conference related stories

Tags: adobe, bloomberg, broadband, elsevier, fcc, flash, Healthcare, html5, IBM, ipad, iPhone, jeopardy, Jim Kollegger, john patrick, Mobile, opera, siia, social media, supercomputer, time magazine, WiFi

Top Mobile Technology Trends – A Moving Target

The SIIA Conference marked its 10th year of bringing together an audience of senior executives to address important strategic issues and to network. The theme was”Moving from Wired to Wireless”. My role was to moderate a panel named Top Mobile Technology Trends – A Moving Target. The distinguished panelists were Bill Godfrey, Executive Vice President, Chief Information Officer and Head of Global Electronic Product Development at Elsevier, Oke Okaro, General Manager and Global Head of Mobile, Multimedia at Bloomberg L.P., John Paris, Sr. Director, Mobile Strategy at Time, Inc., and Bob Sutor, VP, Open Systems and Linux at IBM’s Software Group. See their bios on the speaker’s page. It was an honor to lead the discussion.

I set the stage with a few comments about the big picture. The mobile Internet is taking off because of a supporting takeoff in three areas. First, the smartphone is becomine a bigger share of mobile phones. It is still mostly dumb phones out there but the mix is changing and soon smartphones will be in the majority. Seondly, the Cloud is gaining a lot of momentum as an efficient way to store information. Dropbox is an interesting model to follow as it allows replication of your data from the cloud to all your devices. The third factor I cited is the explosion in social media. The comgination of these three areas is resulting in an Internet that is where you are, not where your PC is Lastly, the mobile environment is very personal. Power to the people! More on my big picture view from the Genesys Partners dinner that was held on Monday evening.

The panelists offered the audience a lot of insight. Although they were not able to provide specifics of time and price, it was clear that there is a strong commitment to get magazines on the iPad and other mobile tablets. There are magazines there now but not in a desirable way. The obvious change coming is the subscription model instead of paying $4.99 per copy. More profound is the commitment I heard to make tablet magazines compelling by merging the social media experience with the e-zine content. Imagine reading a Time Magazine story about electric cars and simultaneously see how many other people are currently reading the story, how many have read it and liked it or did not like it, and how many of them own an electric car. In the case of a Business Week story, imagine seeing live data about the industry or company you are reading about. When it comes to Elsevier professional and research journals, we can expect big changes with them also. Tablets are ideal for reading journals with the ability to take notes and add bookmarks. You can also imagine drilling down from a Google search to a Wikipedia article to a medical journal to a particular intervention to live data from a clinical trial that may be underway. All these things can be done in a browser on a PC or Mac but the experience is not as real or personal. The mobile Internet lets you have your content with you wherever you are and with whatever device you may want to use. You may read on the train with your iPad and then read with your iPhone or Droid phone while you are in line at the deli waiting for a sandwich.

Bill, John, and Oke were all bullish about the potential for the mobile Internet to extend the reach of their content and all are actively working on their delivery mechanisms and business models. Some say information wants to be free but good content developers and journalists and subject matter experts need to get paid. Advertising may continue to foot a significiant part of the bill, but the upcoming subscription model may be preferable to readers who prefer not to be tracked or blitzed with advertising. Bob was not as optimistic about an end to the format wars as the publishers were about their business models. It looks like HTML5, the new standard for web content, including video, that has the potential to subsume all the competing formats. Bob said the odds of Microsoft, Apple, Firefox, Adobe, and Google all agreeing on a single standards based approach are slim. The good news is that the technology for developing the content is getting sophisticated enough that the publishers will be able to create compelling content and then push the button to produce multiple versions of the content so that it can be consumed on all the various mobile platforms.

All in all, it was an enlightening conversation with four very knowledgeable experts. There was a consensus throughout the conference that 2011 will be the year that the mobile Internet reaches the tipping point.

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