IBM Guru Sees Clouds On The Horizon

Integrating IBM first is job one

What does Clementi mean by “integrating IBM”?

“Let’s take an example – say data analytics,” Clementi said. “Let’s say you allow all your employees to go through 100 data marts autonomously by self-serving. They go and ask a question, and they get an answer – they get some form of data back. In the background, to implement this model, you have to virtualise the system, you have to standardise the queries, you have to automate the whole management – otherwise you don’t reach the cost point that makes this possible.”

By integrating, Clementi said, you need to have the usual-suspect ingredients – software, hardware capability, process understanding – and deliver this in an outcome.

“Compare that to what many of our competitors offer,” Clementi said. “If they say, ‘This is all about virtualisation,’ it’s not true. It is not just about virtualisation. If I have only virtualisation software, I’m going to say it’s all about virtualisation, because it draws attention to me.

“If I give you all your physical complexity, and today I virtualise that complexity, I just have a virtualised mess. You need virtualisation, but then you need standardisation, you need automation – and you need to engineer the whole thing.”

Clementi offered a metaphor that most people can easily unerstand.

“Take the ATMs,” Clementi said. “We just take our card and go to the ATM. Do you ever know what happens behind that ATM? You know nothing. You just know that there’s money coming out.

“Compare that to how it was before. Originally, you had a bank teller. You went to the bank teller and asked for money. Now that bank teller, in reality, didn’t just give you money. He was the built-in security system because he knew you. He was the record-keeper because he kept the books. He was the cash handler, so he did the whole supply chain.

“So when you took that bank teller away and put that machine in, it forced you to standardise all these process steps of security, identification, cash replenishment, and record-keeping. So the whole supply chain was standardised. Then, when you took your Chase card to Wells Fargo, it forced the two banks to standardise messaging between them, because otherwise they couldn’t give you the money.”

So now banks have a standardised transaction platform that is used millions of times each day.

“How is this different from say, the way Henry Ford moved the production process from islands to the conveyor belt?” Clementi asked, rhetorically. “It is engineering applied to IT-supported processes. So this is very profound. This kind of standardisation and automation is what gives you the new economics.”

Cloud computing has the promise of better economics, “and that is the very reason why, using the cloud, you can do computing in a smarter planet, where the volumes you have to face are orders of magnitude bigger,” Clementi said.

If you tried to do all the things the cloud now offers, you couldn’t do it for cost reasons, Clementi said. “That’s why we are pretty excited about this,” he said.