By Manny Amador
Computerworld Philippines
March 7, 2011

CEBU - To launch IBM’s year-long celebration of its 100th anniversary, IBM Philippines conducted a series of briefing sessions in Cebu City dubbed “IBM Comes to Cebu.” The event was held at the uptown Marriott Hotel last march 3, 2011. The Philippine office is joining with other IBM offices around the world in a series of activities engaging those it identifies as local “thought leaders,” centered around the theme of “changing the way the world works.”

As part of the initiative, IBM executives met with around 100 of its business partners in the region, sponsored a lunch with some 25 representatives from all the cities in Cebu, and held a briefing with local media.

James Velasquez, President and Country General Manager of IBM Philippines, began with a presentation of IBM’s long history of innovation and its latest achievements in the last year. These included the inauguration of its new facilities in Buildings E, F and J in UP Ayala Technohub, Smarter Cities Summit last December 2010 at the Shangri-La Hotel in Makati, and the opening of its Global Business Services GDC located at the I2 building in Asiatown IT Park, Cebu City.

“To mark our history and to show our commitment to the future expansion of our business, we will celebrate IBM’s Centennial across the nation with a number of activities including a day of service for the community in June when our employees will have the opportunity to apply their business skills and work experiences to address local critical community challenges and societal needs,” Velasquez announced.

IBM was founded on June 16, 1911 as the Computing, Tabulating, and Recording Company. In 1924 it was renamed International Business Machines, reflecting a global outlook for the future tnat was ahead of its time, Velasquez said. He also noted that IBM Philippines will turn 75 in 2012. The local office was established on July 20, 1937.

Lope Doromal, Chief Technologist for the IBM Innovation Network in the Philippines, then introduced IBM’s SmarterCities initiative, revealing that the company is currently engaging in talks with Cebu LGUs. He noted that as urbanization increases, the most efficient way to bring the benefits of technology to more people is to improve services and support systems where people are increasingtly gathered: in cities. Although the LGUs in Cebu’s urban areas in particular may not be at the stage where they can implement full-blown technology-driven service delivery projects, Doromal said that they can already take initial steps to prepare groundwork for such capabilities. As an example, Doromal cited the implementation of data gathering capabilities to collect the information that will be required for future SmartCities projects.

SmartCities is part of IBM’s Smarter Planet global strategy. The effort in Cebu is also in line with the Philippines office’s Geo Expansion, a move to bring its business outside of the traditional Metro Manila market and to other Philippine urban centers.

John Mullins, Business Unit Executive with Lotus Software, on the other hand, talked about Social Business: a strategy for allowing enterprises to make use of the popular social networking trend for business. IBM’s background materials for the presentation noted that an 2010 IBM CHRO Study also showed that standout organizations are 57% more likely to use social and collaborative tools, while a similar study from McKinsey & Company reported more than two-thirds of customers attaining measurable business results from social media.

Mullins explained that companies using popular consumer tools face three major issues: security, giving up ownership of information since they do not own the social networking sites and networks, and facilitating communications with a mobile workforce. To address these issues, Mullins presentated Lotus Connections 3, a social networking application for the enteprise that makes use of the familiar interfaces components of consumer social networking applications but secures them so that enterprises can ensure the privacy of communications and ownership of data. Connections 3 also features expanded support for mobile devices such as the popular Blackberry and Android platforms, and is integrated with Lotus Notes, bringing its capabilities to IBM’s current Lotus customer base.

For smaller companies, Mullins said that the Lotus social business applications can also be made available in the Cloud, meaning it can be set up to be accessed through the Internet and hosted off the company’s premises. Clients in this setup pay for only for actual usage and do not have to maintain the application onsite.

IBM’s Centennial focuses on three major themes: Reinventing the Modern Corporation, Pioneering the Science of Information and Making the World Work Better.

More information on IBM’s Centennial is available online at http://www.ibm100.com.

First photo shows Jihn Mullins and Lope Doromal. Second shows James Velasquez.

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