Industry Solutions with Dave Bartlett & Gaston Sandoval

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While at Pulse 2009 last week I had the chance to talk with IBM’s Dave Bartlett and Gaston Sandoval about the Industry Solutions Tivoli have been talking about recently. Here, I you get the chance to hear what exactly these Industry Solutions are, go over some examples of them in use, and hear how IBM is creating them.

We start out talking about what the Industry Frameworks are exactly. After going over a broad overview, I ask a low-level question about what makes this possible: is it that “everything” is IP addressable now, on a network? The answer is a nuanced “yes.” We then discuss what these frameworks look like in other industries, such as energy, for example, on offshore oil platforms. I then ask what the stack looks like – the boxes and arrows, if you will.

This gets into a discussion of how the team has devised the frameworks, with a mandate to draw on existing technology rather than invent news ones exclusively. We then talk about how IBM gathered up this industry specific knowledge, and how they’ve been maintaining it. As with all IBM offerings, the topic of cross-brand cooperation comes up as well.

We then go over an example of what this looks like using one of IBM’s more popular examples, utility management down to the power-line level and “smart grids.” The vision here is to start delivering new services on-top of traditional electricity delivery. Here, the thinking gets into classic open platform theory: if you open up a previously closed platform – a black-box – there’s more possibility for innovation on-top of that platform without being threatened by the Innovator’s Dilemma.

You might also be interested in this previous interview with IBM’s Karen Parrish on the topic. As more background, also see this piece from Dave.

Disclosure: IBM is a client and sponsored this video.