Fujitsu Siemens announced their zero Watt PC today at CeBit. Just to clarify, the PC is zero Watt in standby mode, not while operational! I asked Fujitsu Siemens’ Greet IT Coordinator and Spokesman, Dr. Bernd Kosch to come on the show to talk about the announcement.

What makes the best schwag? How about crap schwag? While at SXSW last year, Coté, Josh Dilworth, and Lauren Sell go booth-to-booth to not just check out the schwag, but analyze and comment on it. Does it work? Where’d it come from? Would you want to get it?

After touring through the booths, we get outside and see the kind of schwag the press gets.

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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.

Jonathan Gay is founder and CTO of Greenbox. I was interested to have him on the show to discuss their home energy management software.

While I was at IBM Pulse this year, I had the chance to sit down with Lauren States who's title describes what she does quiet well: Vice President Cloud Computing for IBM's Software Group.

In this brief discussion, we cover several topics:

• Pulse 2009 cloud related product and consulting announcements
• Does Conway's Law apply to cloud setups?
• Mixing public and private clouds – one us it for spilling over peak workload to public clouds – use often begins with testing and QA and spreads closer to production deployments.
• The decision process Lauren has seen companies go through around public vs. private clouds.
• What types of applications – or "work-loads," even – has Lauren seen running on clouds? This gets us into some interesting talk of how verticals might driving cloud use with more tailored, SaaS-delivered applications.
• Cloud computing might drive simplification, standardization, and maybe just "good enough."
• Tailoring the operations vs. the user interfaces for cloud computing – a little more complex for ops people, but much simpler for users.
• The cost savings angle – internal IBM folks used cloud technology to bring costs down 83%.

Disclosure: IBM is a client and sponsored this video.

Rich Lechner is IBM’s VP, Energy & Environment. I met with him at IBM’s Pulse 09 event and he very kindly agreed to be interviewed on IBM’s Energy, Sustainability and Smart Planet initiatives.

Right after getting James' take on the first day of IBM Tivoli Pulse, I got John Willis'. While he touches on the broader vision plays, he talks mostly about his take on the cloud computing discussion of the day.

Disclosure: IBM is a client and paid T&E to Pulse 2009.

Mid-day during the first day of IBM's Tivoli user conference, Pulse 2009, I talked with our very own James Governor about his quick impressions on the morning's keynote.

He starts out talking about Tivoli's Industry Frameworks, which, as he says, is about IBM Software Group selling applications but not calling them "applications." Indeed, as a Q&A session on that topic later in the day evoked, it's a sort of semantic issues best discussed "over drinks," as one exec put it.

We then get into a short discussion of Tivoli's Dynamic Infrastructure story which, according to James, is all about bringing SOA together with IT Service Management ("ITSM" as he says). I ask how he thinks this fits in with older IBM ideas like Autonomic computing.

Finally, we wrap-up discussing the Tivoli cloud computing story we've been seeing evolve here at Pulse. James is (still) not too happy with the IBM cloud story. That said, he suggests pulling in the OnDemand phrase and discussion from the past, the content of which he liked. I add in that the cloud computing discussion seems to be around what cloud means for operations people, not end-users, where you'd expect to hear more from the Lotus folks (as we did back at Lotusphere this year).

Disclosure: IBM is a client and paid T&E to Pulse 2009.

While at the IBM Telelogic User Group in Austin, I talked with IBM's Danny Sabbah. I take the chance to ask Danny about the integration and intermingling road-map between the Telelogic portfolio and the existing Rational product lines. We discuss how Jazz is being used as a platform throughout the Rational portfolio and also get into a discussion about requirements management.

Disclosure: IBM is a client and sponsored this video.

While at the Telelogic User Group conference down here in Austin I had the chance to talk with RocketGang's Harry Koehnemann. We talk about the evolution, and complexification of the systems market and how the tools for that marketing are chasing after simplifying things. This conversation ranges from how tools can help you avoid bad parts of complexity to a discussion of how workflow processes can address, or make worse, the complexity in systems development.

Disclosure: IBM is a client and sponsored this video.

In this short demo, Sun's Frank Kieviet walks through two scenarios to demonstrate GlassFish ESB and OpenESB in action. First, he builds up a simple zipcode driven scenario to demonstrate using the NetBeans tools to compose a workflow. He then demonstrates integrating in a web-service. Finally, he finishes up by going over the OpenESB ESB community and how to get involved.

Disclosure: Sun is a client and sponsored this video.