IBM: Sporting A New Look

Project eLiza and Blue Velocity are buzzwords that are doing

rounds among the top echelons of IBM today. Big Blue advocates that the two can

transform the way organizations do business. Most organizations today have

"islands of Web applications" and are still at the first stage of

e-business. For instance, there are e-commerce sites that support online

shopping, customer self-service applications or e-procurement services. Each of

these areas is dedicated to a single application and is not a part of an

integrated business process.

While standalone implementations could mean lower network

costs, there are a number of benefits that can be achieved by tying all

applications together. This would lead to integration, which is the second stage

in e-business. Says Randy Walker, GM, business innovation services, "The

second phase in e-business is just beginning to take off. Businesses are

investing in innovative projects that can deliver near-term payoffs."

Lessons for Big Blue

As businesses start innovating to create better business

models, they would have to go for business process re-engineering, which needs

disciplined implementation. This would lead to the third stage in the evolution

of e-business, with new paradigms and business models. This stage of e-business

is based on business processes without technological and organizational

boundaries. This is unlike the past, where systems were largely created by just

automating manual processes, which still worked under the constraints of

existing organizational structures and physical boundaries.

As Internet and e-business technologies bring about more

flexibility in the working of businesses, it creates many new opportunities for

solution providers. IBM wants to cash in on these emerging opportunities in the

areas of integration and infrastructure for e-business, with Project eLiza and

Blue Velocity.

The company is going all out to keep up with changing times

and does not want to repeat the mistakes it has made in the past. When the rest

of the world was making pots of money on desktops and servers, IBM had made the

mistake of clinging on to its mainframes a little longer than desired. The

company has now learnt its lessons. So, now there is a fresh new approach to

branding, with focus on new projects in e-business.

So, what’s new?

Going a little deeper into what IBM is advocating, one finds

that Big Blue is offering old wine in a new bottle. This is not to say that

there is nothing new in Project eLiza and Blue Velocity. It is also true that

IBM has been doing a lot of research on various technologies and has been

constantly upgrading its products. Project eLiza, for instance, revolves around

the philosophy of self-managing, self-diagnosing and self-healing servers, that

will contribute towards e-business infrastructure.

However, the fact remains that iSeries is the new name for

the erstwhile AS 400 servers! Also, the major goal of project eLiza is to

"spread mainframe-like management qualities along with new advances

throughout the IBM eServer, storage and software families." Now, if this is

not old wine in new bottles, then what is?

Perhaps IBM finds it convenient to follow this roadmap at

this particular juncture. After the bursting of the dot-com bubble,

organizations have become skeptical about e-business. To overcome this

skepticism, IBM is offering Project eLiza as the panacea for all the information

needs of enterprises going in for the Internet as a business tool.

Time to step up

At a time when technology is growing ever more rapidly and,

at the same time, getting highly complex, IBM’s move is timely. The objective

of Project eLiza, to have self-diagnosing and self-healing systems, could very

well match the expectations of large corporations. Moreover, the credibility and

reputation of IBM in delivering high-complexity systems remains undisputed. But

the time has come for IBM’s research labs to go a step further. It has to now

deliver heterogeneous workload management systems to keep up with the times.

To make self-managing systems a reality, Big Blue is taking

help from a research project called Oceano, which looks at scalable cluster

management. Oceano is an integrated, parallel system that monitors everything

from compute and network resource use to application workload and database

performance, and automatically allocates compute resources to various workloads.

Self-management is the goal in other areas as well. In the area of distributed

server management, IBM wants to establish wireless management of anything from

anywhere.

Dynamic e-business

By now, IBM has become famous for its advocacy of open

standards in general and its huge investments in developing Linux, in

particular. Says CJ Martin, senior middleware manager, Asia-Pacific, IBM

Software Group, "Non-proprietary software standards create integrated

business processes that allow for dynamic e-business."

While the early stages of e-business depended on

browser-based access to relatively static information and person-to-system

interaction, currently IBM is working on intelligent Web transactions to create

integrated and dynamic systems.

Emphasizing the need for wireless technology at this stage,

Terry Hopkins, director, wireless e-business solutions, says only a scaleable,

flexible and secure wireless technology would put e-business infrastructure on a

sound footing. Wireless e-business is the next phase in the e-business continuum

where IBM wants to play a major role by trying to establish a common

infrastructure that supports access to data from any device, anywhere.

Adding velocity

Along with Project eLiza, IBM Net Generation Business group

has come up with Blue Velocity, another new initiative. Based on a four-pronged

approach–programs, partnerships, people and offering –it is also targeted at

Internet companies and service providers. Says Timothy Wong, director, IBM

NetGen Business, Asia Pacific, "There is added pressure on the Internet

companies to focus on their core competencies to translate their promises into

profitability. Blue Velocity is meant to turn infrastructure investments into

increased revenues and sustainable growth."

Under Blue Velocity, IBM’s ASP Prime initiative is being

enhanced to ASP Prime Online. Under this program, developers and independent

software vendors would be provided education, application evaluation, technical

support and consulting services on the Web. With the launch of this new

initiative, IBM has added Bangalore to its NetGen City model, while Delhi is

already a part of it. The NetGen city concept has been developed to allow faster

and easier access to IBM.

Project eLiza and Blue Velocity are meant to provide a new

momentum to IBM’s strategies on e-business. With a mix of old and new in

Project eLiza, IBM is sure to continue its market dominance in providing

e-business infrastructure to enterprises.

SYLVESTER LOBO in Kuala

Lumpur