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A Smarter Planet

Smarter Computing

The IT infrastructure that enables a Smarter Planet

Smarter computing: the IT infrastructure that enables a Smarter Planet

A Holistic System. Smarter computing is realized through an IT infrastructure that is designed for data, tuned to the task and managed with cloud technologies.

Three years ago, we began describing the Smarter Planet that we saw emerging. It was a world in which the primary industries—transportation, healthcare, energy—were becoming more instrumented and interconnected, and intelligent, producing data that could be used to improve the quality of our lives and our work across a variety of industries.

Over this time, we also recognised that there was a pattern to the way that most successful companies were approaching their IT infrastructure. They were thinking about computing in new ways—and using it to create formidable opportunities for growth and innovation…despite facing such challenges as tremendous demands for service, inflexible infrastructures, flat budgets and incomplete, unreliable data.

Through a new approach we call Smarter Computing, enterprises can tackle these constraints. They can leverage all of the data in their enterprise, optimise systems for workloads and manage their IT infrastructure in a much more cloud-like fashion, for dramatically improved economics and performance.

Smarter computing has three characteristics:

Designed for data

Companies are challenged to harness all available information. In fact, 89% of CEOs say they want better insight through business intelligence and analytics. An infrastructure that is designed for data means extending beyond traditional sources of data to generate insight by leveraging new forms of information.


Tuned to the task

This means matching workloads to systems that are optimised for the workloads’ characteristics. With optimised systems, the total cost per workload can be reduced by up to 55%, delivering greater performance and improved IT economics.



Managed with cloud technologies

Cloud computing is an opportunity to reinvent IT. It can help evolve data centre capabilities to reduce costs while improving service delivery. 60% of CIOs plan to use cloud technologies and 55% of business executives believe cloud enables business transformation.



If an enterprise can think holistically about its IT infrastructure, it can implement a Smarter Computing model and gain the benefits we’ve seen with our own clients—double capacity for IT services, flat IT costs and the ability to implement new breakthrough services.

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Smarter computing video

Check out the following presentations from the Smarter Computing Executive Summit on October 4-6, 2011

Smarter computing on YouTube

Meet the experts

Anjul Bhambhri

IBM Distinguished Engineer, Technology

About Anjul

Anjul Bhambhri has 23 years of experience in the database industry with engineering and management positions at IBM, Informix and Sybase. She is currently IBM’s Vice President of Big Data Products, overseeing product strategy and business partnerships. Previously at IBM, Anjul focused on application and data lifecycle management tools and spearheaded the development of XML capabilities in DB2 database server. In 2009, she received the YWCA of Silicon Valley’s “Tribute to Women in Technology” Award.


Tony Pearson

Senior IT Storage Consultant

About Tony

Tony has two degrees, B.S in Computer Engineering, and M.S. in Electrical Engineering. He is a Master Inventor with 19 patents, and works as a Senior Managing Consultant at the Tucson Executive Briefing Centre.


Mike Williams

IBM Distinguished Engineer, Systems and Technology

About Mike

Mike Williams is a Distinguished Engineer and a member of the IBM Academy of Technology. Throughout his 22 year with IBM, Mike has held a number client facing and development positions in the area of systems and software. He currently is the Chief Architect for Platform Management within IBM’s Systems and Technology organisation with a specific focus on how virtualisation can be leveraged to better manage the increasingly complex IT infrastructures within the data centre.


Gururaj Rao

IBM Fellow, Systems Chief Engineer

About Gururaj

30+ years experience in Enterprise Computing Systems, Architecture, Development, Technology and External Communications (Customers, Analysts, ...)


Tim Hahn

IBM Distinguished Engineer, Master Inventor

About Tim

Tim Hahn is a Distinguished Engineer at IBM and has been with IBM for 21 years. He is the Chief Architect for Enterprise Modernisation Tools within the IBM Software Group Rational organisation. He is responsible for strategy, architecture, and design for Rational's Enterprise Modernisation products which bring innovative and vibrant technology to meet the needs of a diverse user community focused on Enterprise Modernisation, multi-platform application development, and getting the greatest value possible from the tools they use.

Tim has published numerous articles discussing the usage of Rational and Tivoli Security products in end-to-end deployment environments and is a co-author of two books: "e-Directories: Enterprise Software, Solutions, and Services" and "Mainframe Basics for Security Professionals."

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Smarter computing journal

Our bi-monthly newsletter (US) provides the most current articles and information related to IBM smarter computing