Blockchain: Securing the Financial Systems of the Future
Eighty years ago, IBM helped the United States government create the Social Security system, which, at the time, was the most complex financial system ever developed. Today, as financial transactions become increasingly digital and networked, government and industry must once again combine forces to make the financial systems of the future more efficient, effective and […]
Harnessing Technology to Level the Educational Playing Field
As I write and email this from my laptop, my smartphone rests next to it. I could choose to use a tablet. I am on an airplane and all are working. These are technological advances unimaginable not so very long ago. The wow factor surrounding these devices reasserts itself with each new product that is […]
Tapping Technology to Take on Veterans’ Brain Injuries
I’m sensitive to the sacrifices made by wounded warriors because members of my family have served in practically every war the United States has fought going back to colonial times. My father was a P-38 fighter-bomber pilot over Europe in 1944 and suffered a serious brain trauma when one of the bombs from his plane […]
IBM Health Corps: New Ideas for Solving the World’s Health Problems
Zithulele Hospital is a medical marvel. It provides quality acute and primary care for a community of 130,000 people scattered across part of the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa with just 146 beds and 13 fulltime doctors. Zithulele’s situation illustrates one of the major public health challenges in the world today: there aren’t enough […]
Empowering Developers with Self-Service AI
We are witness to the most important and exciting technology shift in more than a generation – the dawn of the cognitive computing era. Cognitive systems, which are most fully realized in IBM’s Watson, can ingest and learn from a wide variety of data, reason over it, and then interact with people in ways that […]
It’s Time to Catch Up and Deliver Customers the Shopping Experience They Want
The trend of “uberization” or industry disruption, a dominant concern of the C-suite this year, has extended beyond the corner office into what customers’ expect of their brick and click shopping experience. A new IBM study finds retailers’ strategies to innovate and meet those expectations are not keeping pace. The IBM 2016 Customer Experience Index […]
A New Direction for High Performance Computing
I first learned about IBM’s TrueNorth technology starting back in 2014, but it wasn’t until colleagues and I participated in a TrueNorth application development bootcamp last year that I understood its true potential. I am optimistic that this new neurosynaptic computing architecture, which is modeled on the way the brain works, could play an important […]
Innovating Fast in the Cloud
When my co-founder, David Le Breton, and I started our solar energy business six years ago, we had plenty of engineering experience but little knowledge of software. (I was a marine engineer and he was a manufacturing engineer.) Our idea was to combine solar energy collection and solar charging in single physical structures. We contracted […]
How Businesses and Governments Can Capitalize on Blockchain
The emergent technology blockchain has been roiling the technology and financial services industries for months, and, now, people in other industries and government agencies are asking questions about it. I’m convinced that it has the potential to transform not only the way commerce is done but the interplay between governments, businesses and citizens. That’s why […]
A Data Revolution for Healthcare is Here
For many people today, health is something you think about when you go in for check-ups or treatments. Your doctor has your clinical history and runs tests, but her understanding of your health is basically limited to what happens and what you discuss while you are there. And somewhere you know that researchers are making […]
A Critical Role for Hardware in the Era of Cognitive Business
In the last few months, I’ve witnessed the beginning of a sea change in the way people at the forefront of computer science think about the future of our field. Faculty members at universities are showing a keen interest in cognitive systems. And I’m not talking just about algorithms and software. They want to discuss […]
How Predictive Analytics Helps Santos in Australia’s Outback
Santos is one of the largest natural gas and oil producers in the Asia-Pacific. It’s East Australian Business Unit operates more than 1000 wells and associated infrastructure scattered over thousands of square miles in Australia’s Cooper Basin, in Southern Australia. Faced with summer temperatures that can exceed 45 degrees Celsius, seasonal flooding events and long […]