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Cloud Storage
Data Storage Management
Storage Strategy
IBM Edge conference moves into day 2 in Las Vegas, and the morning session was led by innovators.
Hosted by Stefanie Chiras, IBM VP for Power Systems Offering Management, System of Engagement Infrastructures, the conference heard from Hortonworks, as well as many industry innovators including Florida Blue, Everledger and Welch’s.
Kicking off the session, we hear from Jason Pontin, Editor in Chief for MIT Technology Review, introducing 3 innovators under the age of 35. Tying in with the theme of cognitive computing from yesterday, the conference was introduced to a researcher and inventors in medical devices, as well as communications between robots.
Throughout the morning session it was emphasised by Stephanie, that IBM’s aim has been “enabling leaders to disrupt industry without disrupting the datacentre.” She adds, “It’s about delivering actionable insight from data sources.”
IBM was keen to showcase successful case studies of their clients and partners, today introducing the conference to Florida Blue, Everledger and Welch’s. Medical insurance Florida Blue showed off their story on speeding up processes to provide better services for their customers; London startup Everledger is holding transactions accountable for luxury goods with hyperledger blockchain technology; grape farmer owned Welch’s is automating systems to streamline their operations.
Also at hand was Scott Gnau, CTO of Hortonworks, who talked about Hadoop 2.0. Hortonworks focuses a significant part of their development and support for Apache Hadoop with Connected Data Platform. Scott talks about the differences of Hadoop 2.0 ad how Hortonworks is bringing agility and collaboration for the big data environment.
“Connected Data Platform is not really a converged platform. The data has gravity and it’s really hard to drive real-time actionable data if you need to move it 3-4 times just to get to the analytics. We bring the analytics to the data. It’s really an integrated application that works on real-time as well as batch. This is enabled with an open ecosystem with our partner programs”
Stephanie echoed the sentiment on open source stating “Open source is redefining IT and how you contribute. [Technology is] now more agile, collaborative and innovative.”
Scott showed a use case where an unnamed trucking company uses Hadoop 2 to track movements of trucks and prevent safety violation. Using real-time data as well as historical data, data scientists in the company have been able to build a predictive model.
IBM Fellow, IBM Research Donna Dillenberger spoke about everything Blockchain. An avid speaker for open source, she said “We are all users and contributors. Even if we do not contribute code, everything we click on dictates how open source changes.”
Donna tells the conference that IBM has more than 4000 suppliers and partners, which could lead to 25,000 disputes daily without the proper tracking of each transaction. IBM contributed to the hyperledger project, creating a technology similar to block chain, but with encryption and sign capabilities, as well as access control policy; compared to the public access that is offered in blockchain.
Also showcased was IBM’s hybrid cloud platform. According to figures quoted, 70% of clients will always blend traditional IT with cloud. With that figure, IBM is looking at solutions geared towards ease in data management and migration within hybrid clouds.
Bringing it all together, Stephanie emphasises, “It’s the partners that makes us powerful to innovate.”
Stephanie concluded the session by explaining their initiatives with education and showcasing the winners of the IBM master the mainframe world champions. Master the mainframe is an educational initiative by IBM to teach school students about coding and mainframe.