Five Reasons Businesses Use the Cloud

Move faster in a hybrid cloud enabled by IBM SmartCloud Orchestrator.

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IBM SmartCloud Executive Lunch Briefing - December 11th - Jacksonville, Florida

LOOKING for a better way to...

• Deliver applications faster and with higher quality?
• Deploy clouds to optimize the benefits of virtualization?
• Orchestrate and automate services across your business with integrated performance monitoring, accounting, and charge-back?

ATTEND IBM's SmartCloud Executive Lunch Briefing!

Janine Sneed | Director, Strategy and Market Management

IBM Cloud and Smarter Infrastructure

LEARN how IBM SmartCloud can help your organization...

• Achieve faster time to market through smarter standardization.
• Accelerate innovation with integrated business process modeling.
• Leverage a turn-key cloud solution for rapid time-to-value.
• Manage image sprawl, compliance, and visibility with less risk.
• Achieve common cloud governance across any platform.

HEAR how a large U.S. telco is leveraging IBM SmartCloud to converge multiple clouds and gain efficiency through standardization!

IBM SmartCloud Executive Lunch Briefing

 @ The Capital Grille

St. John's Town Center | 5197 Big Island Drive | Jacksonville, FL  32246 | (904) 997-9233

Wednesday, December 11th

11:45am - 1:45pm

REGISTER TODAY!

Seats are limited.

To register, contact me @ ibm.com/myrep/jagaeta

With IBM SmartCloud Analytics - Log Analysis, Barclays Bank is analyzing log files to help in channel optimization and overall customer insights and intelligence.

FREE TRIAL! The next gen of cloud app monitoring.

IBM SmartCloud® Monitoring - Application Insight is the next generation of application monitoring, purpose-built for public and hybrid clouds, provides visibility into what matters the most – the end user experience.

Try IBM SmartCloud® Monitoring - Application Insight at no cost and start monitoring your apps in the cloud.

Click here to learn more and to download the free trial now!

Application Performance Mgmt for Public & Hybrid Clouds

Save money by using less... with #IBMSmartCloud Monitoring

IBM SmartCloud Monitoring monitors the health and performance of a private cloud infrastructure, including environments containing both physical and virtualized components. This software provides the tools needed to assess current health and capacity and model expansion, as needed. Key Benefits: Visibility into the cloud infrastructure including environments containing both physical and virtualized components Capacity Analytics - Assess VMware environment and make recommendations to save money by using less hardware, software, and power What-if capacity analysis designed to model changes, reduce risk, improve availability and lower energy and server costs Policy-driven analytics for intelligent workload placement Check out the launchpad demo on IBM SmartCloud Monitoring. Whitepaper: Monitoring IT Environments for a Dynamic Cloud Infrastructure Solution brief: SmartCloud Monitoring Case study: Ceska Pojistovna For additional information, check out IBM SmartCloud Monitoring Please contact me at ibm.com/myrep/jagaeta for limited time offers on Tivoli SmartCloud products.

@IBM and @ATT #Cloud Within the Network

IBM and AT&T join forces to deliver a revolutionary cloud-within-the-network for business that marries the needs of infrastructure and security.  It uses IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+ and AT&T Cloud Network Enablement technology.

For more information about IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+, visit

http://www.ibm.com/services/us/en/managed-cloud-hosting/.

Follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ibmcloud and on our blog at http://www.thoughtsoncloud.com.

Register now for the @IBM #SmartCloud briefings in #Boston, #Austin or #WashingtonDC

Register now for the IBM SmartCloud briefings in Boston, Austin or Washington D.C. Attend this IBM event and, in just one morning, you’ll discover a bright new day for your application infrastructure. That’s right — IBM recently announced IBM SmartCloud Application Performance Management (SmartCloud APM), a comprehensive solution for managing performance, availability and capacity for complex application infrastructures across development and operation such as yours. This briefing is designed for you to get the most information for improving your infrastructure in the least time, with techniques and solutions that help you better connect across existing IT and operations silos. Highlights we will cover: •The modular design that helps users start quickly •Analytics that improve capacity utilization and optimize performance •IBM solutions that help identify application performance bottlenecks •A common reporting tool, based on IBM Cognos, for simple reporting •A demo showcasing the new user interface – drill downs screens, and widgets •Listen to a panel of experts from IBM discussing how to achieve finely tuned applications Agenda: 8:30 a.m. Registration and breakfast 9:00 - 9:50 a.m. Welcome and overview 10:00 - 10:50 a.m. Demo 11:00 - 11:50 a.m. Panel discussion Locations: Boston, MA Tuesday, August 28 Austin, TX Thursday, September 6 Washington, D.C. Wednesday, September 19 Be sure to register now for Boston, Austin or Washington D.C. and be on your way to finding out how IBM SmartCloud APM can energize your infrastructure.

Asking the Naive Question: Is #Cloud - based #Analytics Right for my Organization?

Originally posted 8/2/2012 on IBM's Business Analytics Blog by Kathy Konkel, Product Marketing and GTM Strategy - IBM Business Analytics.

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At one of the recent IBM Performance events, Paul DePodesta, vice president of player development with the New York Mets, talked about his experiences working with the Oakland A’s Billy Beane to create winning teams and completely change the business of professional baseball.

One of the techniques they used to test the way they were approaching the business was to relentlessly ask “the naive question.”  This is a concept he credited to Peter Drucker and, in everything they did, they would ask, “If we weren't already doing it this way, is it the way we would start?”

This is not always easy to do and this question is not always met with open minds, but it can be very effective when a new kind of thinking is needed in order to survive.

I thought about this in terms of some of the challenges our customers face when it comes to deploying business analytics within their organization – from operational process to infrastructure to culture.

Most organizations today are still not at the point where they are able to take advantage of analytics.  (Those interested can measure your organization’s analytics maturity by taking the Analytics Quotient (AQ) assessment.)

Part of this reason is that IT organizations are spending 70 percent of their resources just keeping the lights on. That’s a lot of overhead and doesn’t leave much room for innovation.

So let’s ask the naive question, “If you were starting over with your IT infrastructure – would you build it the same way?”  Maybe the answers are in the cloud.

When Chet Karwatowski was building the infrastructure for Supplier Connection, a web-based portal that makes it easier for small businesses to become recognized as potential suppliers to large companies, he knew business analytics was going to play an important role in his application, but he knew he didn’t have the skills or resources to set up the infrastructure he needed.  He turned to IBM cloud computing solutions to help him deliver his solution with fewer resources and on a very aggressive schedule.

Organizations like Chet’s are using the power of cloud to build enduring customer relationships, deliver IT without boundaries, improve speed and dexterity and transform the economics of innovation.

Putting the two together, cloud-based analytics could be a way to help organizations advance in their analytics sophistication – and quickly.

At its recent Cloud Innovation Forum, IBM discussed the benefits of Business Analytics in the Cloud and some of the considerations that must be taken into account when considering a cloud-based analytic solution.  

Part of this forum included a panel discussion with customers who had implemented analytics solutions using a cloud-based infrastructure.

The main message from all of the panel participants was the benefit of lower costs and allowing them to focus on adding value to the business instead of managing a complex IT infrastructure gave them a competitive advantage.

In addition to Chet, Kevin Hurd from Assimil8, an IBM Business Partner, talked about the efficiencies they were able to achieve when they implemented a solution for Energy Saving Trust (EST) in the UK. Read the recent press release.

EST launched a new “Home Analytics” service based on IBM Cognos and IBM SmartCloud Enterprise that is the primary tool in its efforts to help energy suppliers, green deal providers and local government reduce domestic CO2 emissions across the UK.

They were able to deliver a solution in just a few weeks that would have taken months if they would have had to build up the infrastructure themselves, while still satisfying its own stringent criteria for energy efficient solutions.

Like Paul DePodesta, the Supplier Network and EST, staying on top of the game means always asking the naive question – even when it’s not obvious that a change is needed.

Have you considered a cloud based infrastructure for your next set of business analytics solutions?

For more information:  Read the whitepaper, Business Analytics in the Cloud, to see if the cloud computing model makes sense for your organization.