Ginni Rometty On Leading An Organization | Fortune Most Powerful Women

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty was interviewed by Fortune Magazine and also on stage at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit on 7th October 2014.

How do you make a 430,000-person organization move fast? Big Blue’s CEO shares her tips.

Here are a few key points that Ginni does as the leader of IBM.

1. Reinforces IBM's move to higher value, 

2. Requests IBM leaders that they make decisions that only they can make as leaders that others cannot make, which should be strategic decisions, 

3. Aligns a large corporation with 1-3-9 values

The three IBMers value are:
1. Dedication to every client's success
2. Innovation that matters, for our company and for the world
3. Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships

Ginni also shares her 3 key management tips on running an organization:

1. Never protect the past, 

2. Never define yourself as a product or from competitions, 

3. Relentless reinvention

Check out this video recording of her sharing at the summit.

IBM Races Ahead With Infiniti Red Bull Racing

IBM Asean GM Kellar Neville urges all to race forward, just like how Infiniti RedBull Racing partners with IBM STG platform computing as Innovation Partner to win in Formula One races!

Check out my blog on Infiniti Red Bull: http://annephey.blogspot.sg/2014/10/technology-secret-to-winning-f1.html

Check out slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/annephey/blog-2014-1016-infiniti-red-bulls-secrets-to-winning-f1-races

Check out the video from IBM XCITE Business Leaders Day below

#smartercomputing #redbullracing #infrastructurematters #technology #storage #bigdata #analytics

Al Peasland of Infiniti Red Bull Racing on Innovation Partnership with IBM Platform Computing

Al Peasland (Head of Technical Partnership) from Infiniti Red Bull Racing talks about the continued Innovation Partnership with IBM STG's Platform Computing (Symphony, Elastic Storage & Software Defined Storage).

Check out my blog on the details: http://annephey.blogspot.sg/2014/10/technology-secret-to-winning-f1.html

Check out slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/annephey/blog-2014-1016-infiniti-red-bulls-secrets-to-winning-f1-races

#smartercomputing #redbullracing #infrastructurematters #technology #storage #bigdata #analytics

Technology - the secret to winning F1

Technology events have never gotten more exciting!  We had a total sensory experience at IBM ASEAN’s Xcite event with Infiniti Red Bull Racing Team.

Al Peasland (Head of Technical Partnerships, Red Bull Racing) was our speaker who gave us a TED-style sharing of the partnership between IBM and Red Bull Racing.  We experienced the Infiniti Red Bull spirit of fun and philosophy of “performance and reliability” with Al’s passionate delivery and interactive presentation.

 

Performance is great but if it doesn't happen when you need it, you cannot consistently win the race.  If it is just  about reliability, you may not become the best without pushing performance.  Both are important to keep staying ahead and winning.

Al shared, “Platform Computing is the back bone infrastructure for high performance computing, which helped Red Bull Racing with the design of the car, the analytics and the race strategy.”  It is used to plan into the future, to create all the what if scenarios and to predict what may happen in the two hour race.

When the single focus is to win races and championships, every element of the design and manufacture of Formula One racing cars is critical. With Formula One regulations becoming more stringent each year, Red Bull Racing is designing the entire car in a virtual world and parts are machined directly from 3D CAD models. Red Bull Racing also collects massive amounts of data from wind tunnel testing and from the car during races. These processes demand extensive use of simulation and data analytics, and a first class IT infrastructure.

Infiniti Red Bull Racing is ahead of the league that is embracing Platform Computing, a software from IBM Systems & Technology Group.  Also sometimes known Elastic Storage for Software Defined Environment. It helps to maximize the potential of computing power by pooling resources, managing them efficiently across multiple groups, so that one can run many iterations, simulations and analytics to get business results fast.  This is the winning formula to harness the benefits of unstructured data and data explosion.

We are glad to be the technology innovation partner that drives the winning Formula One car.  Technology - platform computing technology - is the secret to winning!

Catch Al's interview: https://plus.google.com/101708759635909645335/posts/MmgQDhqx3Yj
Read more: http://www.slideshare.net/annephey/blog-2014-1016-infiniti-red-bulls-secrets-to-winning-f1-races

Catch Serena William's Victory Jump at US Tennis Open!

US Tennis Open Fans All Over The World Caught Serena Williams' Victory Jump Real Time!

Wow Moment Made Possible By Cloud And Software Defined Storage

Just last week, International Data Corp. (IDC) [1] has ranked IBM as the top ranking supplier of Software Defined Storage Platforms (SDS-P) [2].  The ranking reflects widespread adoption of IBM’s SDS-P technologies by companies looking to gain faster, more reliable access to their growing data volumes.

Why are clients making the switch? New era cloud environments and applications such as analytics, mobile and social are driving huge growth in data volumes, making data the new natural resource. But cost-effectively optimizing your current storage environments while at the same time exploiting new opportunities is straining storage budgets. IBM software defined storage is the solution.

Take the example of the United States Tennis Association (USTA).  Each year, USTA teams with IBM to deliver a dynamic online and mobile experience to fans of the US Open tournament. The cloud-based infrastructure consistently generates increasing amounts of data, as well as a corresponding increase in demand for greater access and analysis. During the 2013 US Open, the USTA churned out 2.9 million hours of live-streaming video and served more than 400 million page views on its tournament web site over the course of just two weeks.

“The versatile and reliable IBM infrastructure that supports the US Open enables us to provide fans the tournament data and insights they need, no matter where they are located,” said Nicole Jeter West, Senior Director of Ticketing and Digital Strategy at USTA. “The dynamic IBM cloud helps us ensure that we are able to immediately serve the right content to tennis enthusiasts around the globe.”The reliable digital platform that provides US Open fans constant access to real-time scores, statistics, video, etc., is supported by IBM’s Elastic Storage, part of the Software Defined Portfolio.

IBM has revolutionized the marketplace with our Software Defined Storage solutions [3], helping clients optimize current storage environments so they can unlock the potential of their data by exploiting new opportunities provided by cloud, analytics, mobile and social. I’m so proud to be part of the winning team in Systems Technology Group.

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[1] International Data Corp. (IDC) has ranked IBM as the top ranking supplier of Software Defined Storage Platforms (SDS-P) in its latest Worldwide Storage Software QView for the second quarter 2014, based on software revenue.

[2] IDC describes SDS-P as, “platforms that deliver the full suite of storage services via a software stack that uses (but is not dependent on) commodity hardware built with off-the-shelf components.” 

[3] IBM has hardware agnostic software technologies code-named Elastic Storage that automatically manage data locally and globally.  It provides breakthrough speeds in data access, easy administration and the ability to scale technology infrastructure quickly and more cost-effectively. 

In addition to Elastic Storage, the portfolio includes IBM’s storage virtualization software, SAN Volume Controller, which enables clients to virtualize storage infrastructures for fast, reliable data movement across heterogeneous storage systems. SAN Volume Controller is also available as part of IBM's Virtual Storage Center which provides additional capabilities for storage management such as backup, restore, and visual administration.

How To Swing A Losing Deal To A Winning Deal

Coming off a winning streak in the board room pitch competition for our company’s sales training academy cross each ASEAN countries, I hopped onto my last stop in Thailand to facilitate two teams to develop a winning board room pitch.

One of the teams did not make it to the finals and the other team that did make it to the final four slipped shy of clinching the win. 

Here are my reflections of where the misses were and how the teams could have turned it from a losing deal to a winning deal.

1. Increase Revenue vs Reduce Cost: A proposition that helps increase revenue would almost always make the board members sit up over one that focuses only on reducing cost.  While cutting cost result in savings that can be re-deployed, it is important to consider how that re-deployment can increase revenue.

2. Manage Risk Appetite: With shorter management tenure, having a long return on investment period would jeopardize an ability to demonstrate results in critical early years. Break projects into smaller size phases to allow benefits to be realized faster.

3. Interpret The  Vision: With emerging technology and trends, a visionary proposal must be accompanied by clear road maps on what the solution entails.  Often sellers get caught up in corporate terminology and smart solution names that the customer does not recognize what is being proposed.  In painting the big picture with solutions, it does not mean that one should avoid naming the product.  We should balance both in the light of what the customers understand.

4. Assess The Expert’s Attitude: While subject matter experts are important, but if they do not walk the mile with you while constructing your proposal, do consider ditching them.  Experts who jump in and out of a deal can do more harm as they send the team off on a tangent when they do not invest time to understand the client.  Worse, they waste your time when their ego ask to be pandered to. Getting the right experts with the relevant skills and attitude will help you get to your goal faster.

To cross the finishing line to win, let’s learn from successes and also mistakes. Refine and become better each time. Do not give up.