IBM’s vision of the future of computing and how its evolving technologies, product lines, and services fit into that future are the subject of this broad look at the world’s largest computer company. Discussing IBM’s e-business strategy to leverage Internet technology, its new emphasis on IBM Global Services, and its fast-growing consulting business this overview. profiles IBM’s new eServer xSeries, pSeries, iSeries, and zSeries, showing how each fits into an e-business context. A companion web site accessible only to buyers of this book provides the latest news and additional resources related to IBM technology and product lines.
Annotation IBM Workplace represents an entire portfolio of IBM products, new and existing, that focuses on increasing people's productivity in a new way. In this book, IBM Software Live! Program Director Douglas Spencer and Senior Lotus Consultant Ron Sebastian start with an introduction to people productivity in the context of IBM's On Demand Business vision. Then the IBM Workplace strategy and products are described. You will see how the underlying componentized software infrastructure of IBM Workplace provides the flexibility businesses need in the emerging on demand world. You will see how many users without traditional desks such as an outbound sales force, factory floor staff, airline pilots, etc. can collaborate with others boosting the productivity of the entire organization, trading partners, and customers. The authors then provide an overview of the key product lines that implement the IBM Workplace vision including IBM Workplace, WebSphere Portal, Lotus Notes and Domino, and WebSphere Everyplace. You will learn how the new IBM Workplace client technology for these products combines the rich user experience of client/server with the cost characteristics of Web-based applications, giving users the best of both worlds. In the final chapter, the authors explore industry-specific people productivity solutions tailored for the needs of specific industries including aerospace, defense, automotive, banking, financial markets, consumer products, electronics, utilities, government, health care, insurance, life sciences, retail, and telecommunications, etc. The Foreword, by IBM Software Group General Manager of Workplace, Portal, and Collaboration Software, Michael D. Rhodin, provides an insider's perspective on the thinking behind IBM Workplace. To help you stay current, this book comes with your personal password for accessing the companion Web site which offers up-to-the-minute IBM Workplace news, More on the Web links, and additional resources.
Increasingly, the "window" through which customers, business partners, and employees view a business is a computer screen. Expectations as to what a business provides in terms of online access to services through this window or portal are increasing rapidly. And it's not enough to provide people with a consistent way of accessing the online tools they need to work, collaborate, or buy. Today's businesses stand to achieve many benefits by implementing an enterprise-class portal that provides consistent access to customized tools that improve productivity, fuel innovation, and improve customer satisfaction. This is the thinking behind the growing family of IBM accelerators for WebSphere Portal. This book provides business people and IT staff with an easy-to-read introduction to the IBM accelerators. It will start by introducing the concept of a portal, the WebSphere family, and WebSphere Portal Server. Each IBM accelerator will then be introduced and explored in terms of both the business value it provides and how it works. To illustrate how the IBM accelerators can be employed to solve business problems, three hypothetical businesses are described and then outfitted with the appropriate IBM accelerator solution. This book will help you: Understand how portals can help businesses be more successful. Learn about IBM WebSphere and WebSphere Portal Server. Get inside the IBM accelerator strategy. See the business value of IBM accelerators in various environments. Learn by watching as three businesses implement IBM accelerators. About the Author Jim Hoskins has been involved with computer technology design, implementation, and education for over 25 years. He is the author of many articles, books, and ebooks covering a wide range of technology and Internet business topics. Jim spent over a decade with IBM designing computer systems and directly helping businesses of all sizes design and implement real-world solutions. He is the author/editor of the popular "Exploring IBM" series of books, which has sold over 350,000 copies in 12 languages. Jim has a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Florida and resides in GulfBreeze, Florida with his wife and five children.
Systems of record (SORs) are engines that generates value for your business. Systems of engagement (SOE) are always evolving and generating new customer-centric experiences and new opportunities to capitalize on the value in the systems of record. The highest value is gained when systems of record and systems of engagement are brought together to deliver insight. Systems of insight (SOI) monitor and analyze what is going on with various behaviors in the systems of engagement and information being stored or transacted in the systems of record. SOIs seek new opportunities, risks, and operational behavior that needs to be reported or have action taken to optimize business outcomes. Systems of insight are at the core of the Digital Experience, which tries to derive insights from the enormous amount of data generated by automated processes and customer interactions. Systems of Insight can also provide the ability to apply analytics and rules to real-time data as it flows within, throughout, and beyond the enterprise (applications, databases, mobile, social, Internet of Things) to gain the wanted insight. Deriving this insight is a key step toward being able to make the best decisions and take the most appropriate actions. Examples of such actions are to improve the number of satisfied clients, identify clients at risk of leaving and incentivize them to stay loyal, identify patterns of risk or fraudulent behavior and take action to minimize it as early as possible, and detect patterns of behavior in operational systems and transportation that lead to failures, delays, and maintenance and take early action to minimize risks and costs. IBM® Operational Decision Manager is a decision management platform that provides capabilities that support both event-driven insight patterns, and business-rule-driven scenarios. It also can easily be used in combination with other IBM Analytics solutions, as the detailed examples will show. IBM Operational Decision Manager Advanced, along with complementary IBM software offerings that also provide capability for systems of insight, provides a way to deliver the greatest value to your customers and your business. IBM Operational Decision Manager Advanced brings together data from different sources to recognize meaningful trends and patterns. It empowers business users to define, manage, and automate repeatable operational decisions. As a result, organizations can create and shape customer-centric business moments. This IBM Redbooks® publication explains the key concepts of systems of insight and how to implement a system of insight solution with examples. It is intended for IT architects and professionals who are responsible for implementing a systems of insights solution requiring event-based context pattern detection and deterministic decision services to enhance other analytics solution components with IBM Operational Decision Manager Advanced.
IBM® Coach Framework is a key component of the IBM Business Process Manager (BPM) platform that enables custom user interfaces to be easily embedded within business process solutions. Developer tools enable process authors to rapidly create a compelling user experience (UI) that can be delivered to desktop and mobile devices. IBM Process Portal, used by business operations to access, execute, and manage tasks, is entirely coach-based and can easily be configured and styled. A corporate look and feel can be defined using a graphical theme editor and applied consistently across all process applications. The process federation capability enables business users to access and execute all their tasks using a single UI without being aware of the implementation or origin. Using Coach Framework, you can embed coach-based UI in other web applications, develop BPM UI using alternative UI technology, and create mobile applications for off-line working. This IBM Redbooks® publication explains how to fully benefit from the power of the Coach Framework. It focuses on the capabilities that Coach Framework delivers with IBM BPM version 8.5.7. The content of this document, though, is also pertinent to future versions of the application.
Corporate e-learning has become increasingly important in the contemporary universal-access business world, and can provide strategic and competitive advantages to corporations as a way to accelerate training and reduce the high costs of face-to-face learning programs. However, most of the books that are written about e-learning do not describe in detail how corporate e-learning is actually implemented within a specific company. Corporate E-Learning fills that gap by describing in depth how e-learning programs are developed and instituted, and how their effectiveness is measured, from the perspective of practicing e-learning professionals at IBM, an early and liberal user of e-learning technologies to train their global workforce. Drawing on a wealth of in-person interviews of numerous e-learning professionals at IBM, as well as recent e-learning literature, Tai discusses how IBM has significantly contributed to the evolution of corporate e-learning. In the course of doing so, he makes useful comparisons with other companies and industries, and draws conclusions that are applicable to any company considering utilizing e-learning. Companies should be careful, concludes Tai, to use e-learning only when it makes strategic and economic sense, not simply because the technology is available. In addition, e-learning should always be used along with other more traditional means of learning, and carefully monitored by feedback mechanisms to measure whether its objectives have been accomplished, and how e-learning programs might improve in the future. Corporate E-Learning is designed for classroom use in technology management courses, and will also appeal to corporate professionals who are involved in training, human resources development, and performance improvement.
IBM is in trouble in 2014. The iconic computer company has mismanaged itself into a rut it may be unable to get out of. Technology journalist Robert X. Cringely explains how Big Blue got to where it is today and what can still be done to save the company before it is too late.
Before the Computer fully explores the data processing industry in the United States from its nineteenth-century inception down to the period when the computer became its primary tool. As James Cortada describes what was once called the "office appliance industry," he challenges our view of the digital computer as a revolutionary technology. Cortada interprets reliance on computers as a development within an important segment of the American economy that was earlier represented largely by such instruments as typewriters, tabulating machines, adding machines, and calculators. He also describes how many of the practices of the office appliance industry evolved into those of the computer world. Drawing on previously unavailable industry archives, the author adds to our understanding of IBM's early history and offers short corporate histories of firms that include NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand. Focusing on the United States but also including comparative material on Europe and Asia, Before the Computer will be a unique source of knowledge about the companies that built office equipment and their enormous impact on economic life. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The Building Cognitive Applications with IBM Watson Services series is a seven-volume collection that introduces IBM® WatsonTM cognitive computing services. The series includes an overview of specific IBM Watson® services with their associated architectures and simple code examples. Each volume describes how you can use and implement these services in your applications through practical use cases. The series includes the following volumes: Volume 1 Getting Started, SG24-8387 Volume 2 Conversation, SG24-8394 Volume 3 Visual Recognition, SG24-8393 Volume 4 Natural Language Classifier, SG24-8391 Volume 5 Language Translator, SG24-8392 Volume 6 Speech to Text and Text to Speech, SG24-8388 Volume 7 Natural Language Understanding, SG24-8398 Whether you are a beginner or an experienced developer, this collection provides the information you need to start your research on Watson services. If your goal is to become more familiar with Watson in relation to your current environment, or if you are evaluating cognitive computing, this collection can serve as a powerful learning tool. This IBM Redbooks® publication, Volume 1, introduces cognitive computing, its motivating factors, history, and basic concepts. This volume describes the industry landscape for cognitive computing and introduces Watson, the cognitive computing offering from IBM. It also describes the nature of the question-answering (QA) challenge that is represented by the Jeopardy! quiz game and it provides a high-level overview of the QA system architecture (DeepQA), developed for Watson to play the game. This volume charts the evolution of the Watson Developer Cloud, from the initial DeepQA implementation. This book also introduces the concept of domain adaptation and the processes that must be followed to adapt the various Watson services to specific domains.
