Welcome to the blog where IBMers exchange viewpoints, share their perspectives to provide more insight around service oriented architecture solutions, and delve into a range of SOA-related subjects. We want you to speak out on SOA through comments in the blog -- from where your organization stands on SOA adoption, to your challenges and experiences -- to share with the larger community the impact of SOA on your marketplace. Sandy Carter is IBM's Vice President, SOA & WebSphere Marketing, Strategy and Channels. Discover the entry points to SOA and how companies worldwide are making SOA pay right away.

BlogHer - My Top 10 Ah Ha's & Views as a first timer

I had the great pleasure to attend BlogHer for the first time this year. How did I get to attend? A perfect storm really. 3 things happened that allowed me to attend: first, a customer had asked me to support them in their session and to talk about how my book on social media helped them with their strategy, second, I spoke with Charlene Li at the WITI conference and she knew the founders and secured me a ticket and then finally, I was asked to speak on how to leverage social media as the only real IBM presence at the conference.

So what is BlogHer?
I pulled this from the BlogHer site. It was founded in February 2005 by Elisa Camahort Page, Jory Des Jardins and Lisa Stone. BlogHer’s mission is to create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community and economic empowerment. BlogHer is the leading participatory news, entertainment and information network for women online and creates opportunities for its members via a community hub (http://blogher.com), annual conferences and a publishing network of more than 2,500 qualified, contextually targeted blog affiliates. BlogHer provides the highest quality content on a range of topics, with all blogs continually edited to meet strict editorial standards, including content quality, category relevance and blog frequency

The Top 10 Ah Ha's
1. The Business BlogHer had a lot of great case studies. While not sold out on the business side, I found the case studies innovative and best practices. I have blogged on the specific case studies that I heard ... Allstate, Tropicana, Pepsi, Sprint, Coach and many others (THE Social Media Blog!.

2. Lots of Geek Labs - Hands on! I love the hands on labs. You could set up a new blog here with step by step instructions to learning HTML and PHP.

3. Networking The conference was setup to network. They did speeddating in a new and innovative way, and arranged the sessions and breaks to stimulate discussion.

4. Community keynote I attend a lot of corporate events and shows. Usually the keynoter is the CEO or GM in charge of the work. While powerful, I have not experienced a more moving and powerful keynote that BlogHer did on Friday night. It was a community keynote where bloggers were selected to read their blog entries. It was amazing. I am glad someone who had been here before told me to make sure I didn't miss it!

5. Swag. Again, going to CeBit or GiTex is an experience and everyone gives away their toys. But I have never seen the swag that was at BlogHer. From products, to free services on site, to designer scarfs, and vendors printers, servers, and phones. If you come, be prepared. This shows me that the vendors view this show as an important way to reach the tippers. One of our competitors was here for Small Business and I saw the bump in blogs on their products in the GB space go up 3x over the last 3 days.

6. Panels. Most of the sessions here were in a set of tracks on Geek Labs, Business, Leadership, Room of your own, Identity and Passions. But most of the sessions were panels. If you don't learn this way, it may not be the way for you!

7. Q&A's are LONG! Another culture here at BlogHer is to learn from a Q&A session. The sessions here are meant for learning not gaining exposure. I would say that in the sessions over 1/2 the time was spent answering questions from the audience.

8. Amazing Women in New Media. The BlogHer team brought out the stars. From Lisa Stone to GM of CBS, to Donna Bryne, etc. This is the place for the new adventurers in the social media world!

9. Purpose I was truly impressed by the purpose that I felt from all these women and men. These guys, while looking to monetize, are truly dedicated to their mission. I heard about blogs on the homeless, soberity, raising disabled kids, traveling, shyness, and the list goes on. Everyone I met loved what they blogged on. A great lesson in you do more of what you love -- for employers getting people into the right roles.

10. Fun I loved it. It was energeric, and fun. It energized me and showed me that one with a purpose can accomplish more than you can imagine! There were over 1999 parties. That's right.. suites to teach photography, small busines skills, word of mouth marketing, silk screening, etc.

Next Year:
Next year the conference will be in NYC in August. Will I go? Absolutely.

The Future - Generation C
This is the future. Everything is going online. 53% of women WW are online. Generation C -- which I have defined as the next generation who wants to co create, collaboration, and use their creavitiy. They are going to be around for a while. Join the exploration and see what works for you!

Promotion for IBM Business Partners!!! Discount on Technical Sales Mastery Test!!!

Great news.

We have just launched a promotion to help your Business Partners save money on their Technical Sales Mastery tests. All they need to do is go to an Authorized Prometric Center use the code 20free4me and they will save 20% on any Technical Sales Mastery test they take. This offers expires on September 30, so make sure they get started soon.

For more details, please checkout following website:

Check here for the details!

Smarter Planet references -- for IBM Business Partners!

I have now talked to about 130+ partners! (Thanks for your time and honesty!)

A big request was how partners participate in Smarter Planet references! So IBM has now announced The IBM Smarter Planet Midmarket Business Partner reference selling guide.

This interactive PDF is a great resource for Business Partner references by industry, delivering real-life examples to help you communicate value and accelerate sales. This new guide is easy to use and will be updated quarterly with the most recent Business Partner references to help you talk to your clients and share information about Smarter Planet successes.

Here's the link ( You must have your PartnerWorld Id)

Smarter Planet materials for our Partners! YEA!

Gang,
The PartnerWorld Smarter Planet home page now has been packed full of great deliverables for you on smarter planet!
Smarter Planet for our Partners!

In particular an overview deck of the announcement for BPs plus a "why IBM?" brochure which highlights the role of business partners. There are also assets on Campaign Designer plus some of this content is available for content syndication.

Check it out and tell me what else you need!!!

Our Payments Framework Redbook is ready!

Big news! First the backdrop, our IBM Payments Framework provides industry specifics with accelerators and best practices, for deploying payments solutions offered by IBM and our business partners.

A new redpaper is now available on ibm.com that describes a business pattern for deploying a Corporate Payments solution using the Payments framework. The paper focuses on corporate treasury operations and how organizations can use SOA to construct solutions for corporate customers. It discusses the issues from both the bank’s and corporate client’s point of view.

It is very good! Check it out!

The REDBOOK! Get it here!

IBM is the New York City of technology companies: Interesting article about IBM (e-week)

IBM, also known as Big Blue, is as big and distributed as any company in the IT industry. In fact, you could say IBM is the New York City of technology companies. Huge. Diverse. Proud to call itself No. 1, though not everyone may agree. And just as the Big Apple often sets trends for the rest of the country, Big Blue has a history of calling plays for the tech market. These days, IBM is heavily promoting its Smarter Planet initiative to add a layer of intelligence to the basic processes that run today’s world, including roads, water and power. It’s just the latest milestone for the 98-year-old company. Here is a list of things you just might not know about IBM.

A nice list of IBM's achievements: Check to read full article from eweek here!

Yipee! IBM's channel initiatives made CRN's top 10 stories of the year!

IBM's channel initiatives made CRN's top 10 stories of the year (so far). What's really impactful to me is that we are the only vendor who is called out as making strides in helping channel partners in tough economic times with new programs, education and training opportunities.

The full list can be viewed at
Click Here!

Credomatic - An Innovative Bank in Central America

While in Costa Rica, I had the pleasure of meeting with an innovative team for IT at Credomatic. Their leader & CTO, Alfonso Salvo, approaches the business with a focus on value.

Who is Credomatic?
The company is a leader in Central America. Credomatic began its operations in Nicaragua in 1971. Subsequently, it expanded throughout Central America as the pioneer in the bankcard industry, forming Grupo Credomatic, a network of service providers of integrated credit card issuing and merchant acquiring services. The development of financial products and services combined with quality, state-of-the-art technology and experience has given Grupo Credomatic a leadership position in the Central American financial market. As one of the signature brands within the BAC Financial Network, Grupo Credomatic has been able to successfully adapt to changes in the competitive environment, thereby consolidating its leadership position in the payment systems industry in Central America. Grupo Credomatic has an extensive network of financial institutions across Central America, the Caribbean and Miami.

A wow team!
What impressed me most about the team is their focus on the business. Their projects include Business Process Management. And a new exploration of Social Media. Watch this company for some best practices and leading IT practices!

Meet the team!

Costa Rica & IT-- Blog 1 of 3!

I am here in Costa Rica meeting with our Partner GBM and customers and had the honor of being able to meet the President of Costa Rica -- Oscar Arias Sanchez. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his efforts to end civil wars in Central American countries. He is an amazing man well versed in IT.

Along with Gabriela Llobet, they gave us an overview of IT in Costa Rica. There are over 700 software companies here with over 10.6% of the country's GDP coming from ICT. Given they do not fund an army they invest in training and technology. They are the #1 high technology exporter in Latin American and the 4th largest in the world. They receive about $1.9B foreign investment in IT -- more than China, Brazil or Mexico.

They are super creative and technology focused. I was very impressed with the customers and partner I met here. In addition, I sat with Dr Roberto Sasso. He has helped Costa Rica with a digital strategy.Check it out!http://www.clubdeinvestigacion.com/

And their Minister of Foreign Trade is on twitter! That's right! Social Media insight abounds! Follow Marco Vinicio Ruiz at twitter.com/maviru.

I will blog and post pictures for my next post on Costa Rica...not at midnight!

Did you know!!!! Governments leveraging IBM to drive their effectiveness and efficiency!

Here is a whole set of things around Governments becoming more effective that I just learned and wanted to share!!!

IBM has helped the DVLA to become the largest provider of electronic services in the UK public sector and one of Britain's top 10 online retailers. More than 40% of UK motorists now buy their car tax discs online or over the telephone.

IBM leads the International Technology Alliance (ITA) a collaboration with the UK’s MoD and the US Department of Defense/US Army Research Laboratory that is tackling some of the most difficult fundamental science and technology challenges facing our armed forces. ITA in the UK is led by the IBM Emerging Technologies Laboratory in Hursley.

From the middle of 2009, the UK weather forecasts from the Met Office that you hear on the radio and see on your television will be brought to you from an IBM supercomputer. The supercomputer is supported by a new IBM data archive system which holds several petabytes of data and is one of the largest data repositories in the world - that's several million, million megabytes (or if you prefer several million, million, million bytes).

This is the first time in meteorological history that both of Europe's foremost weather forecasting centres - the Met Office and the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) - have selected the same supplier . Once operational, they will be the two most powerful systems in the UK and are expected to bring a socioeconomic benefit of hundreds of millions of pounds over the next few years from better forecasting and climate research.

Southwest One, the first shared services joint venture in the country that includes both Police and local authorities, is on target to save the tax payers of Somerset County Council and Taunton Deane Borough Council, £200 million over 10 years and help the Avon and Somerset Police Authority protect and improve front-line policing.

At the UK Border Agency, IBM’s Semaphore system has tracked over 78 million passenger journeys through UK airports since 2005, and has issued over 33,500 alerts to the law enforcement authorities leading to more than 2,700 arrests.

IBM helps to keep the RAF fleet of over 500 aircraft in the air by tracking and controlling over 700,000 repairable assets and confirming that aircraft are serviceable for flight. Since 2004, IBM has helped the RAF protect UK Air Space through a real-time command and control system that at any moment in the day tracks the thousands of commercial and military aircraft in the skies above us, and enables the RAF to intercept any aircraft identified as potentially hostile or posing a terrorist threat.

Every month almost 100,000 MoD civil servants are paid through a system designed, built and supported by IBM. Every year, the Aeronautical Rescue Co-ordination Centre (ARCC) based at RAF Kinloss responds to more than 1,800 Search and Rescue incidents , saving lives through efficient co-ordination of information and assets through IBM Rescue Co-ordination System.

By the middle of 2009, four of the five worldwide top 100 supercomputers operating in the UK will be from IBM. They are at: the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF), the Met Office, a public sector organisation and Bristol University . The only worldwide top 100 supercomputer in the UK not from IBM, and in third position, is at Edinburgh University.

The Institute of Life Science (ILS) at Swansea University’s School of Medicine is using its IBM supercomputer, Blue C, to unlock unexpected insights from unstructured data - 20 new high quality research papers have been published in just over a year.

Cheshire County Council has achieved a 20% reduction in the time and cost required to perform in-home senior visits , and improved its ability to proactively manage the course of health and social care for senior citizens using a system designed and hosted by IBM.

Practices of Flourishing Families --

http://socialmediasandy.wordpress.com/

YEA! We just received 5 Hermes Awards for Social Media Marketing!

Great news! The organization has received 5 Hermes Awards! This is me celebrating in our crazy hat day!

Platinum Awards:
Impact 2008 (Event Marketing category)
Smart SOA Widget (Electronic Media/Other category)
IBM Smart SOA Newsletter (E-Newsletter category)

Gold Awards:
Smart SOA World Tour (Integrated Marketing/Other)
World Tour "Get Smart" Videos (Viral Marketing category)

Hermes Creative Awards is administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals. The international organization consists of several thousand marketing, communication, advertising, public relations, media production, web and free-lance professionals. The Association oversees awards and recognition programs, provides judges and sets standards for excellence.

The home page for Hermes Creative Awards links to the winners' list.
Awards are here!

IBM Receives the 2009 ACORD Innovation Implementation Award & ACORD Infrastructure Platform/Middleware Award

YEA! IBM Receives the 2009 ACORD Innovation Implementation Award & ACORD Infrastructure Platform/Middleware Award

The yearly ACORD award recognizes organizations that are implementing XML standards in unique and exceptional ways and organizations that enhance the utilization of ACORD Standards. The IBM team continued the 2008 award winning tradition with a Proof of Technology and Redbook that demonstrate implementation best practices for Insurance companies. With these best practices, IBM customers can deploy end to end SOA Solutions based on Industry Standards in ACORD and the IBM Insurance Process Acceleration Framework.

Smart Work is about transforming companies to make informed decisions, build deeper relationships and work with more agile business processes. The Strategy & Technology team has established SOA as the state of the art for Smart Insurance at ACORD. With our customers, we continue to raise the bar on ACORD implementations and Smart Work.

What should you do?

First, Download this redbook !

Second, see the great
Showcase!!!

Finally, I'd like to thank Donald Buddenbaum, Brian Bokor, Qiang Wang, Bruce Wallman Ph.D., Stephanie Fetzer
and Rufus Credle who made this valueable work possible!

IMPACT comes to India!

IMPACT is coming to India on May 21st! Please join us! And you can contribute your thoughts on
SOA here!

And sign up here! India IMPACT!

IMPACT 2009 Day 4! Primeur

It was a pleasure to meet Peter Segdwick at IMPACT from Primeur! Primeur is a Silver Sponsor at IMPACT 2009!

I took a few minutes to chat about how Primeur tools compliment the WS software offerings.

Sandy: Do you offer tools for WMQ file transfer--that work with the new version of WebSphere MQ?
Peter: Yes we do.   We have had the ability, in our Spazio product, to transfer files over WMQ for a number of years.  Now that IBM has introduced WMQ File Transfer Edition, we fully support WMQ FTE as the product of choice for file transfer for  WMQ users.  We are very excited by WMQ FTE as we see this as a tremendous opportunity for IBM customers to further improve their RoI in their ESB/SOA infrastructure by implementing File Transfer  alongside their message based services and applications.  Overall, WMQ v7 really has opened up new benefits with its extended Pub/Sub and Managed File Transfer.

Sandy: How are users responding to the offer of your Security toolkit download? In the current economy, do you find that security is still something people are investing in as a primary need for their business?
Peter:We have been very encouraged by the increasing interest in Security, both for our toolkit download and for our full function offerings.  For a long time, companies have considered that link level security (SSL) is adequate, particularly for internal networks.  We are now beginning to see interest in securing data at rest for both messages and files as companies now realise the threat of highly confidential data being compromised even when stored temporarily in queues.  Securing data at rest is just one of the functions of End-to-End solutions, along with authentication and digital signatures.

Sandy: Can you tell us a little about the File extensions you've developed for WebSphere? How do your utilities enhance the value of the IBM software?
Peter:We at Primeur have developed three extensions for WMQ File Transfer Edition.  Our Spazio File Services Governance (Spazio FSG) provides monitoring, audit and reporting not only for FTE but also for all the commonly found Internet (e.g. FTP) and proprietary (e.g. Connect:Direct) file transfer protocols.  This means that users can get a single and complete view of all their file transfer flows regardless of the protocols they are using.  In capturing the information needed to do this, Spazio FSG also enables users to make productivity improvements of at least 18::1 in converting and modernising from, say, Connect:Direct to FTE.  Our Spazio File Services Security Suite provides end-to-end security for messages and files in a WMQ infrastructure, and Spazio MFTS can seamlessly interface an internal FTE network to the outside world using Internet or Proprietary protocols.

We will be explaining and demonstrating all of the above at our stand, S1, and also in Session 2287A on Wednesday afternoon where we are jointly presenting with Ben Mann, IBM’s WMQ and WMQ FTE Product Manager.