Posts Tagged 'businessweek'

Embracing Social Computing at IBM

BusinessWeek has put social media at the heart of its June 2nd issue, titled ‘Beyond Blogs – What Business Needs to Know‘. You can read most of the magazine online, along with videos and photo galleries of Top 100 IT Companies, Top 10 IT Companies in North America and Top 10 IT Companies in Asia.

Big Blue Embraces Social Media is one of the articles features in the magazine, and it provides an overview of how IBM got into social computing and how our customers can benefit from our experience.

Over the past two years, IBM has been busily launching in-house versions of Web 2.0 hits. “We’re trying to see how things that are hot elsewhere can be fit for business.” Irene Greif, IBM Fellow.

Why it’s important for IBM, and business at large, to adopt enterprise social computing solutions? Excellent question! There are many answers, but I’ll mentions the ones BW did:
First, in a global company people are too far away to communicate face-to-face.

These social tools, will provide a substitute for personal connections that flew away with globalization—and help to build and strengthen far-flung teams.

Second, it’s important for recruiting.

Hotshots coming out of universities are accustomed to working across these new networks—and are likely to look at a company that still relies on the standard ’90s fare of e-mail and the phone as slow and backward.

How do IBM employees communicate with one another? I use various methods, with email being one of the last. My first option is instant messaging (Lotus Sametime), followed by twitter (internal), post on beehive, e-mail with link to a file on my web space.

So far, IBM has Dogear, a community-tagging system based on Del.icio.us, Blue Twit, and a rendition of the microblogging sensation, Twitter. It also has a Web page called Many Eyes that permits anyone (including outsiders, at many-eyes.com) to upload any kind of data, visualize it, and then launch discussions about it on blogs and social networks. The biggest success is the nine-month-old social network, Beehive, which is based on the premise of Facebook. It has already attracted 30,000 users, including top executives.

Link: Big Blue Embraces Social Media – BusinessWeek

[pictured: my social network at IBM, as of 3 weeks ago]

Social Networking with the Elite

BusinessWeek.com published last month a special report, titled Social Networking with the Elite. With the growing popularity of social sites such as Facebook, Linked-In, not to mention the whopping millions of MySpace, the alternatives have started to appear. Private-by-invitation-only-closed communities, that consciously discriminate members are here. Some are private by firewall, other by pure discrimination. BusinessWeek lists, among others, A-Space, aSmallWorld, INMobile.org, Diamond Lounge, Behance Network and my personal favorite ModelsHotel.com (guess why it’s a closed network…;-).

The first private site in the slide show really surprised me – A-Space. This CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) internal site, launching these days, is for members of the CIA and other US intelligence agencies. Yes, only spooks like Mulder and Scally, and maybe some guys from Heroes are allowed to enter. Now, seriously, the purpose of A-Space is to use collaborative “social software”—not all that different from features found on Facebook, Wikipedia, and social bookmarking site del.icio.us—to share intelligence reports more rapidly across agencies.

Reuters Spaces is another example of how social software can do wonders for your business. Reuters, much like IBM, are considered early adapters – they’ve deployed reporters in Second Life, and now opened up Spaces, a private network for Hedge Funds Executives.

Wow !!
As an advocate of social software in general and social software for the business in particular – great news. Now we have more example and best practices of why social networking is important to the business. If the CIA has realized the potential of sharing information and expertise internally, I guess they see some added value in it, wouldn’t you agree?

IBM a Top Innovator, again…

I don’t usually comment about IBM, as this is my personal blog, but some issues require my attention, and comment.
BusinessWeek-Boston Consulting Group published its 2007 World’s Most Innovative Companies report, and IBM is in the top 10, again. IBM is not in the top 5, but we did jump one place to 9th.
Still, a respectable achievement, if we consider the competition. Competing with Apple and Google (1st & 2nd, respectively) isn’t easy, especially if you consider IBM is in an entirely different line of business. We work with corporations, governments and companies, whereas Apple & Co. and working with consumers.. it’s easier to show innovation in the consumer based market.
100 million iPods do make a difference..

IBM’s Innovation agenda has been in the front line of our strategy for some time now. Sam Palmisano, IBM’s CEO, mentioned in PartnerWorld 2007 why innovation is crucial to survive in the industry, and how IBM is positioned to support our business partners, customers and even ourselves to become better innovators. According to IBM, innovation is not only in products or services, but also in business processes and business transformation.
You can learn more about IBM’s Innovation at ibm.com/innovation/guide.




Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.