Continuing my post-week coverage of the [Data Center 2010 conference], Wednesday evening we had six hospitality suites. These are fun informal get-togethers sponsored by various companies. I present them in the order that I attended them.

Intel - The Silver Lining

Intel called their suite "The Silver Lining". Magician Joel Bauer wowed the crowds with amazing tricks.

Intel handed out branded "Snuggies". I had to explain to this guy that he was wearing his backwards.

i/o - Wrestling with your Data Center?

New-comer "i/o" named their suite "Wrestling with your Data Center?" They invited attendees frustrated with their data centers to don inflated Sumo Wrestling suits.

APC by Schneider Electric - Margaritaville

This will be the last year for Margaritaville, a theme that APC has used now for several years at this conference.

Cisco - Fire and Ice

Cisco had "Fire and Ice" with half the room decorated in Red for fire, and White for ice.

This is Ivana, welcoming people to the "Ice" side.

This is Peter, on the "Fire" side. Cisco tried to have opposites on both sides, savory food on one side, sweets on the other.

CA Technologies - Can you Change the Game?

CA Technologies offered various "sports games", with a DJ named "Coach".

Compellent - Get "Refreshed" at the Fluid Data Hospitality Suite

Compellent chose a low-key format, "lights out" approach with a live guitarist. They had hourly raffles for prizes, but it was too dark to read the raffle ticket numbers.

Of the six, my favorite was Intel. The food was awesome, the Snuggies were hilarious, and the magician was incredibly good. I would like to think Intel for providing me super-secret inside access to their Cloud Computing training resources and for the Snuggie!

technorati tags: IBM, LSC29, Intel, Snuggie, APC, Schneider Electric, Margaritaville, CA+Technologies, Cisco, Compellent, Joel Bauer

Tags:  schneider+electric margaritaville intel apc ca+technologies snuggie joel+bauer compellent lsc29 cisco ibm

Continuing my post-week coverage of the [Data Center 2010 conference], Thursday morning had some interesting sessions for those that did not leave town last night.

Interactive Session Results

In addition to the [Profile of Data Center 2010] that identifies the demographics of this year's registrants, the morning started with highlights of the interactive polls during the week.

External or Heterogeneous Storage Virtualization

The analyst presented his views on the overall External/Heterogeneous Storage Virtualization marketplace. He started with the key selling points.

• Avoid vendor lock-in. Unlike the IBM SAN Volume Controller, many of the other storage virtualization products result in vendor lock-in.
• Leverage existing back-end capacity. Limited to what back-end storage devices are supported.
• Simplify and unify management of storage. Yes, mostly.
• Lower storage costs. Unlike the IBM SAN Volume Controller, many using other storage virtualization discover an increase in total storage costs.
• Migration tools. Yes, as advertised.
• Consolidation/Transition. Yes, over time.
• Better functionality. Potentially.

Shortly after several vendors started selling external/heterogeneous storage virtualization solutions, either as software or pre-installed appliances, major storage vendors that were caught with their pants down immediately started calling everything internally as also "storage virtualization" to buy some time and increase confusion.

While the analyst agreed that storage virtualization simplifies the view of storage from the host server side, it can complicate the management of storage on the storage end. This often comes up at the Tucson Briefing Center. I explain this as the difference between manual and automatic transmission cars. My father was a car mechanic, and since he is the sole driver and sole mechanic, he prefers manual transmission cars, easier to work on. However, rental car companies, such as Hertz or Avis, prefer automatic transmission cars. This might require more skills on behalf of their mechanics, but greatly simplifies the experience for those driving.

The analyst offered his views on specific use cases:

• Data Migration. The analyst feels that external virtualization serves as one of the best tools for data migration. But what about tech refresh of the storage virtualization devices themselves? Unlike IBM SAN Volume Controller, which allows non-disruptive upgrades of the nodes themselves, some of the other solutions might make such upgrades difficult.
• Consolidation/Transition. External virtualization can also be helpful, depending on how aggressive the schedule for consolidation/transition is performed.
• Improved Functionality/Usability. IBM SAN Volume Controller is a good example, an unexpected benefit. Features like thin provisioning, automated storage tiering, and so on, can be added to existing storage equipment.

The analyst mentioned that there were different types of solutions. The first category were those that support both internal storage and external storage virtualization, like the HDS USP-V or IBM Storwize V7000. He indicated that roughly 40 percent of HDS USP-V are licensed for virtualization. The second category were those that support external virtualization only, such as IBM SAN Volume Controller, HP Lefthand and SVSP, and so on. The third category were software-only Virtual Guest images that could provide storage virtualization capabilities.

The analyst mentioned EMC's failed product Invista, which sold less than 500 units over the past five years. The low penetration for external virtualization, estimated between 2-5 percent, could be explained from the bad taste that left in everyone considering their options. However, the analyst predicts that by 2015, external virtualization will reach double digit marketshare.

Having a feel for the demographics of the registrants, and specific interactive polling in each meeting, provides a great view on who is interested in what topic, and some insight into their fears and motivations.

technorati tags: IBM, ITIL, storage growth, unstructured data, external, storage virtualization, SVC, Storwize V7000, HDS, USP-V, EMC, Invista, HP, Lefthand, SVSP

Tags:  storwize+v7000 svc unstructured+data hp svsp usp-v ibm hds emc storage+virtualization storage+growth external lefthand invista itil

Wrapping up my post-week coverage of the [Data Center 2010 conference], I stuck through the end to get my money's worth at this conference. As the morning went on, it became obvious many people booked flights or started their weekends prior to the official 3:15pm ending of the last day.

Strategies for Data Life Cycle Management

I prefer the term "Information Lifecycle Management", but the two analysts presenting decided to use DLM instead. Let's start with the biggest challenge faced by the audience.

The problem is not meeting Service Level Agreements (SLA) but Service Level Expectations. When looking at the real business value of IT, you should link IT strategy to business outcomes and directives, align with your CIO's pet initiatives, and position storage as a technology supporting IT Directors goals. Here were the top five goals:

1. Backup/Recovery Re-architecture
2. Curtailing Storage Sprawl
3. Compliance and e-Discovery
4. Improving Service Levels for Data Availability and Protection
5. Moving to Cloud Computing

The analysts reviewed both a "Tops Down" and "Bottoms Up" approach. They recommend what they call an "Enterprise Infomration Archive" (what IBM calls Smart Archive, by the way) that provides a better understanding of all data. No greater lie has been told than "Storage is Cheap". Currently, only 10 percent of companies hvae a formal "deletion policy", but the analysts predict this will rise to 50 percent by 2013.

The "Bottoms Up" approach is focused on modernizing the data center at the storage technology level. There has been a resurgence in interest in ILM solutions, implementing storage tiers, and storage efficiency features like thin provisioning, data deduplication and real-time compression. Cloud Computing can help off-load this effort to someone else.

ILM provides real business value, such as reduce costs, improve quality of service, and mitigate risks. The analysts felt that if you are not partnering with a storage vendor that offers five essential technologies, you should probably change vendors. What are those five essential technologies? I am glad you asked. Watch this [YouTube video] to find out.

Getting the Most From Your Storage Vendor Relationships

The analyst mentioned there are two kinds of storage vendors. Suppliers that sell you solutions, and Partners that work with you to develop unique functionality. He offered some advice:

• Allow vendors to analyze and profile your workloads, such as IOPS, MB/sec bandwidth, average blocksize, and so on.
• Review your Service level agreements (SLAs), procedures and asset management strategies
• Identify upgrade risks, conversion costs, and unintended consequences
• Take advantage of vendor engineers and technical staff for skills transfer, best practices, industry trends, and competitive comparisons
• Explore different solutions and approaches
• Avoid big pitfalls by negotiating and locking in upgrade and maintenance costs, scheduling conversions, and getting any guarantees in writing.

Asking the audience how they currently interact with their storage vendors:

The analyst's "Do's and Don'ts" were good advice for nearly any kind of business negotiation:

Do's: Keep language simple and enforceable Limit diagnostic time Be reasonble with rolling time-lines Design remedies that keep you whole and are implementable in your environment

Dont's: Make remedies punitive Use qualitative measures Rely on vendor's metrics only Set terms that expire during life of system

Let the vendor provide best practices after installation, set reasonable expectations, schedule regular reviews, and insist on cross-vendor cooperation, have zero tolerance for finger-pointing between vendors. Depreciate storage equipment quickly.

Crisis Management: Managing Behavioral Consequences

This was the last session of the conference, a workshop to deal with irrational behavior during unexpected events that could disrupt or impact business operations. In the exercise, each table was a fictitious company, and the 7-8 people sitting at each table represented different department heads who had to make recommendations to upper management on how to deal with each disastrous situation presented to us. Decisions had to be made with limited and incomplete information. Each table had to come to a consensus on each action, and a single spokesperson from each table would present the recommendations. Winners of each round got prizes.

Final thoughts?

• Plenty of coffee, not enough juice. Power and Cooling were top of mind. The rooms were cold, designed for people wearing suits I imagine. I enjoyed plenty of hot coffee throughout the event. Everyone complained that their smartphones and iPads were running out of electricity. The conference had "recharge" stations with plugs for all kinds of different phones, but the Micro-USB plugs that I needed for my Samsung Vibrant, and the apple connections needed by everyone else's iPhones and iPads, were always taken. I remember when you could charge your cell phone once a week, because you hardly used it to make calls, and now that they can be used to follow Twitter feeds, surf websites, and other actions between sessions, power runs out quickly.
• Information Overload. I was one of those following tweets on the HootSuite app on my Android-based smart phone. I was able to meet some of the people I have exchanged blog comments and tweets. One told me that his tweets was his way of taking notes, so that his trip report would be done when he got back to the office. I used to write trip reports also, before blogging and tweeting.
• The mood was positive. Overall, all the rival competitors got along well. I had friendly chats with people from Oracle, HP, Cisco, EMC, VCE, and others. People are overall optimistic that the IT industry is set for economic growth in 2011.
• The only people who look forward to change are babies in soiled diapers. My impression is that people who were threatened by Cloud Computing now have a better understanding on what they need to do going forward. Yes, this means learning new skills, re-evaluating your backup/recovery procedures, reviewing your BC/DR contingency plans, and a variety of other changes. Those who don't like frequent change should consider getting out of the IT industry. Just sayin'

I suspect this will be my last post of 2010. I will be taking a much-needed break, celebrating the Winter Solstice. To all my readers, I wish you good times over the next few weeks, and a Happy New Year!

technorati tags: IBM, ILM, DLM, SLA, Crisis Management

Tags:  dlm ilm ibm crisis+management sla

Happy New Year, everyone!

Every year, I make [New Year's Resolutions]. Long time readers will recognize this has been a tradition on my blog. In 2007, I spread out my resolutions in a full week of posts: [Data Center Resolutions], [Staying on Budget], [Lighten Up!], [Hone your Tools and Skills]. In 2008, I was so busy blogging about IBM's acquisition of XIV that I did not get around to posting about my New Year's Resolutions until the [second week of January]. In 2009, I chose [more traditional resolutions], based in part on Albrecht Powell's [Top 10 Resolutions].

Last year, I took a different approach. I decided to NOT publicize my resolutions to see if that allowed me to stick to them better. Here is what I had resolved for 2010:

Adopt Austerity

The recession took quite a hit on my investments and retirement plans in 2009, so in 2010 I decided to increase my savings rate, and diversify my portfolio. I consider this one a success, with special thanks to the financial planners at Fidelity Investments for their assistance in this area. This was not a matter of sticking to a strict budget as much as not wasting money on so many expensive, frivolous things.

Publish "Inside System Storage: Volume II"

Yes, I finally got my latest book published last October, a follow-on to my 2007 hit "Inside System Storage: Volume I". I have already begun working on Volume III, so I consider this one a success.

Quit Exercising at the Gym

From 2003 to 2009, I had worked out consistently at my gym three times a week for an hour, under the supervision of a personal trainer, with 20 minutes of cardio work-out on a treadmill followed by 40 minutes of weight lifting with kettle-bells, free weights and resistance machines. During that time, I did not gain muscle mass nor lose body fat. Rather than admit their failure, my personal trainers indicated this is merely a "plateau". Armed with the Time article [Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin], I decided to save thousands of dollars in 2010 by discontinuing my gym membership and expire my contract with my personal trainer. End result? I was two pounds lighter after 12 months, so I consider this one a success.

Re-Decorate my Living Room

With all the money I saved, I resolved to re-decorate my living room. I hired a professional interior decorator, bought new furniture, and had the entire room re-painted to new colors. This also means keeping the room uncluttered, which I have managed to do so far. So, this one is also a success.

Learn Cloud Computing

This last one was work-related. Every year, IBM asks its employees to document their "Personal Business Commitments", or PBCs, which then forms the basis of your year-end appraisal. IBM is what the industry calls a "Results-Oriented Work Environment" [ROWE]. These PBCs are an opportunity to identify areas to stretch and grow, broaden your skills and strengthen your expertise. I was able to get access to IBM's cloud computing offerings to get hands-on experience, as well as research this topic on various fronts so that I could provide advice to clients and make presentations at various briefings and events. While there is still much more to learn, I consider this a success.

So, while I seem to have been more successful keeping my resolutions by not making them public up front, I think the more important pattern is that when I made many resolutions, I had only a 60 to 80 percent success rate, but when I had fewer, I was more likely to keep them all and be less stressed about it. This could also be psychological, in that feeling that you have completed 60 to 80 percent allows you to forgive yourself for not keeping some of the more difficult resolutions. Therefore, this year, I have decided to focus on a single resolution, to reduce my body fat percentage.

Rather than make you wait 12 months for my results, I plan to provide periodic updates in this blog on my progress. Over the vacation break, I bought and read Tim Ferriss' book [Four Hour Body]. Mo and I are in this together, and we have started Tim's [Slow-Carb diet] last Sunday. My doctor has advised me on which vitamins and supplements to take. Rather than go back to the gym, I will just focus on walking at least 20,000 steps per week, which works out roughly to 10 kilometers.

I'll keep you posted.

technorati tags: Tim Ferriss, Four Hour Body

Tags:  tim+ferriss four+hour+body

The latest update to the IBM Storage channel on YouTube is fellow IBMer Bob Dalton presenting IBM Scale-Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) at the NAB 2010 conference. Here is the quick [2-minute YouTube video].

For more videos, check out the [IBM Storage channel].

technorati tags: IBM, SONAS, Bob Dalton

Tags:  sonas ibm bob+dalton

Regardless of what you do, it is important to keep your finger on the pulse of what is going on around you. Let me recap the different jobs I have had within IBM:

Software Development

I started as a Software Engineer on DFHSM, which was later renamed to DFSMShsm, and worked my way up to lead architect for the entire DFSMS product. I attended user group conferences like SHARE and GUIDE to formally present the latest releases of the product, and to collect requirements for improvements and additions desired by the CIOs, IT directors and Storage Admins that attended. Each requirement was proposed to the group, who then voted on a scale from -3 to +3, with zero considered abstention. Six months later, I would come back to present which requirements were implemented, which ones were in consideration for future releases, and which ones were rejected because they were not strategic. Not everyone was happy with these decisions, and I took a lot of abuse on this. However, the process of gathering requirements was important, and the products are better for it.

Marketing

I switched over to Marketing, starting out as a Marketing Manager for various prodcts, and working my way up to lead Marketing Strategist for the IBM System Storage product line. I continued to attend conferences to understand the client requirements, but I also attended meetings with IBM sales reps and Business Partners. For those who lump "Marketing and Sales" into a single category, there is a difference. Marketing is the transfer of awareness and enthusiasm, whereas Sales is the transfer of ownership. When Marketing does their job well, prospects are lining up to buy your product. When they don't, the Sales team has to pick up the slack, and provide the awareness and enthusiasm that Marketing failed to deliver. I traveled all over the world to present our Marketing Strategy. Not everyone was happy with some of our decisions, and I took a lot of abuse on this. However, the process of "socializing" the marketing message and hearing feedback of those who faced clients every day was important, and the marketing strategy was better for it.

Consulting

Three years ago, I switched again, this time to be a Storage Consultant at the Tucson Executive Briefing Center. While I still travel to clients and conferences, in most cases the clients come to me, here in Tucson, Arizona. I get to present our strategy, solutions and products. Not everyone is happy with some of our decisions, and I take a lot of abuse on this. However, the process of helping customers make tough business and IT purchase decisions is important, and both IBM and our clients are better for it.

It was in this same concept that US Representative Gabrielle ("Gabby") Giffords launched a series of "Congress on your Corner" meetings. These were open air townhall meetings that allowed her to present her priorities and plans for the future, and to get feedback from her constituents. Last Saturday, at one such event here in Tucson, she was shot in the head. The shooter then proceeded to shoot another 20 rounds at others before being tackled to the ground by two volunteers. He had another 70 bullets left, so it could have been much worse.

Congresswoman Gifford survived, but six died, including a US Federal Judge, a Pastor at a local church, and a 9-year-old girl, who ironically was born on Setpember 11, 2001, the date of another US tragedy. The girl had just been elected to her student council, and came out to learn what government was all about. Another dozen people were wounded.

The last time I saw Gabby in person was last October 2010, at a charity auction to benefit the local Boys and Girls Club of America. She was shaking hands with everyone. I wished her good luck on her re-election campaign, which she won a few weeks later by a slim margin of some 4,000 votes.

(People have asked me if I knew her in high school. Gabby and I both attended University High in Tucson, rated one of the top 25 high schools in the USA. She would have started her freshman year months after I graduated, so I don't remember ever crossing paths.)

Having spent much of my childhood in Central and South America, I have witnessed my fair share of gun violence, military coups, and government take-overs. Of course, in a democratic government, there is a more peaceful way to resolve your differences. In my younger days, I was a lobbyist for local and state government here in Arizona for various causes and issues. I have met and dealt with many politicians. While many people are still in shock and awe over Saturday's tragedy, consider the following:

• Tucson is part of the Wild, Wild, West. We are not far from the infamous town of Tombstone where a famous shoot-out happened at the OK Corrall. A popular activity here is to shoot rounds at a shooting range, either rent a gun or bring your own. Gun ownership is high, and hunting is a popular sport. Tucson hosts "Gun Shows" that allow people to buy guns without the mandatory 5-day waiting period. Every year, Tucson celebrates "Dillinger Days" to comemorate the capture of gunslinger John Dilinger at the Hotel Congress in downtown Tucson.
• Tucson is close to Mexico. Authorities have reported as many as 30,000 people have been killed on the other side of the US-Mexico border in the past five years by rival drug cartels. An estimated 30 percent of the Tucson economy comes from human and drug trafficking. Those killed in Mexico include government officials, law enforcement and journalists. Last year, US President Barack Obama [ordered 1200 troops to protect the US-Mexico border], of which half were deployed here in Arizona. The district I live in that Congresswoman Giffords represents borders Mexico.
• Tucson has high schools, colleges and Universities. We have had our share of shootings by frustrated students.

While everyone immediately was quick to blame this tragedy on everyone from [Sarah Palin] to Mexican drug lords, it appears the shooter was merely a frustrated college student, acting alone, and is now in custody awaiting trial. He was attending Pima Community College and had his run-ins with the college police there as well. He had applied to join the US Army, but his application was rejected.

In the early 1990s, to help me prepare to become a public speaker, IBM loaned me out to teach at the local schools. I did four semesters of high school, and then taught a year of Computer Science 101 at Pima Community College. (Yes, I have all the teaching credentials to do this.) I found this experience to be great training for me to practice my speaking skills. However, I took a lot of abuse. I had disruptive students, angry students, frustrated students, and students that would threaten me if they did not pass the class. One by one, they would drop out of my class, leaving me with only nine students finishing my class with a passing grade.

Sadly, community colleges across the country carry a stigma that they are not as good as a full four-year University. The students I met at Pima Community College were here because they could not find decent employment with just a high school diploma, weren't smart enough or rich enough to attend the University of Arizona, and just didn't know what to do with their lives. Some who graduate manage to get jobs as technicians and medical assistants, while others use this as a stepping stone to transfer over to the University of Arizona or other specialized training program.

I am sure there is much more to learn about this incident. Politicians can expect to take some abuse for the decisions made, their actions or lack of action on various issues, but nobody deserves being shot. Congresswoman Giffords was just trying to put her finger on the pulse of her district, to understand the concerns of her constituents so that she could represent us properly in her third term in office. Instead, we have doctors at the University Medical Center keeping their finger on her pulse. So far, things are hopeful, she is able to respond to commands such as "wiggle your toes" or "hold up two fingers".

I wish her a quick recovery.

technorati tags: IBM, Pima Community College, Gabrielle Giffords, Tucson Arizona

Tags:  ibm gabrielle+giffords pima+community+college tucson+arizona

For most of us in the United States, it is cold out there, so you better "bundle up!"

Today, IBM announces the [IBM Storwize Rapid Application Storage] bundle, an integrated solution that improves storage efficiency and application availability. It comes in two offerings:

Basic

The "Basic" offering includes a single IBM Storwize V7000 controller enclosure, and three year warranty package that includes software licenses for IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager (FCM) and IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center for Disk - Midrange Edition (MRE). Planning, configuration and testing services for the software are included and can be performed by either IBM or an IBM Business Partner.

Standard

The "Standard" offering allows for multiple IBM Storwize V7000 enclosures, provides three year warranty package for the FCM and MRE software, and includes implementation services for both the hardware and the software components. These services can be performed by IBM or an IBM Business Partner.

Why bundle? Here are the key advantages for these offerings:

• Increased storage utilization! First introduced in 2003, IBM SAN Volume Controller is able to improve storage utilization by 30 percent through virtualization and thin provisioning. IBM Storwize V7000 carries on this tradition. Space-efficient FlashCopy is included in this bundle at no additional charge and can reduce the amount of storage normally required for snapshots by 75 percent or more. IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager can manage these FlashCopy targets easily.
• Improved storage administrator productivity! The new IBM Storwize V7000 Graphical User Interface can help improve administrator productivity up to 2 times compared to other midrange disk solutions. The IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center for Disk - Midrange Edition provides real-time performance monitoring for faster analysis time.
• Increased application performance! This bundle includes the "Easy Tier" feature at no additional charge. Easy Tier is IBM's implementation of sub-LUN automated tiering between Solid-State Drives (SSD) and spinning disk. Easy Tier can help improve application throughput up to 3 times, and improve response time up to 60 percent. Easy Tier can help meet or exceed application performance levels with its internal "hot spot" analytics.
• Increased application availability! IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager provides easy integration with existing applications like SAP, Microsoft Exchange, IBM DB2, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server. Reduce application downtime to just seconds with backups and restores using FlashCopy. The built-in online migration feature, included at no additional charge, allows you to seamlessly migrate data from your old disk to the new IBM Storwize V7000.
• Significantly reduced implementation time! This bundle will help you cut implementation time in half, with little or no impact to storage administrator staff. This will help you realize your return on investment (ROI) much sooner.

To learn more, check out the IBM [landing page].

technorati tags: IBM, bundle, Storwize V7000, Tivoli, FlashCopy Manager, Productivity Center, TPC, MRE, SSD, Easy Tier, SAP, Exchange, DB2, Oracle, Microsoft, SQL Server

Tags:  tpc microsoft storwize+v7000 oracle exchange flashcopy+manager tivoli sap bundle ibm productivity+center sql+server mre db2 ssd easy+tier

Every January, we look back into the past as well as look into the future for trends to watch for the upcoming year. Ray Lucchesi of Silverton Consulting has a great post looking back at the [Top 10 storage technologies over the last decade]. I am glad to see that IBM has been involved with and instrumental in all ten technologies.

Looking into the future, Mark Cox of eChannel has an article [Storage Trends to Watch in 2011], based on his interviews with two fellow IBM executives: Steve Wojtowecz, VP of storage software development, and Clod Barrera, distinguished engineer and CTO for storage. Let's review the four key trends:

Cloud Storage and Cloud Computing

No question: Cloud Computing will be the battleground of the IT industry this decade. I am amused by the latest spate of Microsoft commercials where problems are solved with someone saying "...to the cloud". Riding on the coat tails of this is "Cloud Storage", the ability to store data across an Internet Protocol (IP) network, such as 10GbE Ethernet, in support of Cloud Computing applications. Cloud Storage protocols in the running include NFS, CIFS, iSCSI and FCoE. Mark writes "..vendors who aren't investing in cloud storage solutions will fall behind the curve."

Economic Downturn forces Innovation

The old British adage applies: "Necessity is the mother of invention." The status quo won't do. In these difficult economic times, IT departments are running on constrained budgets and staff. This forces people to evaluate innovative technologies for storage efficiency like real-time compression and data deduplication to make better use of what they currently have. It also is forcing people to take a "good enough" attitude, instead of paying premium prices for best-of-breed they don't really need and can't really afford.

IT Service Management

Companies are getting away from managing individual pieces of IT kit, and are focusing instead on the delivery of information, from the magnetic surface of disk and tape media, to the eyes and ears of the end users. The deployment mix of private, hybrid and public clouds makes this even more important to measure and manage IT as a set of services that are delivered to the business. IT Service Management software can be the glue, helping companies implement ITIL v3 best practices and management disciplines.

Smarter Data Placement

A recent survey by "The Info Pro" analysts indicates that "managing storage growth" is considered more critical than "managing storage costs" or "managing storage complexity". This tells me that companies are willing to spend a bit extra to deploy a tiered information infrastructure if it will help them manage storage growth, which typically ranges around 40 to 60 percent per year. While I have discussed the concept of "Information Lifecycle Management" (ILM), for the past four years on this blog, I am glad to see it has gone mainstream, helped in part with automated storage tiering features like IBM System Storage Easy Tier feature on the IBM DS8000, SAN Volume Controller and Storwize V7000 disk systems. Not all data is created equal, so the smart placement of data, based on the business value of the information contained, makes a lot of sense.

These trends are influencing what solutions the various different vendors will offer, and will influence what companies purchase and deploy.

technorati tags: IBM, Steve Wojtowecz, Clod Barrera, Mark Cox, Cloud Computing, Cloud, Storage, NFS, CIFS, iSCSI, FCoE, real-time compression, deduplication, IT Service Management, Easy Tier, DS8000, SVC, Storwize V7000

Tags:  it+service+management mark+cox clod+barrera ibm ds8000 iscsi real-time+compression easy+tier deduplication cloud+computing cifs +storage nfs svc cloud fcoe steve+wojtowecz storwize+v7000

Actually, if the title confuses you, it is because it has a double meaning.

Meaning 1: IBM earned almost 100 Billion dollars (USD)

IBM's 2010 [earnings report is now available], for the full year 2010 and the fourth quarter. IBM had $99.9 Billion dollars (USD) in revenue, almost $100 Billion dollars that it had set out as a vision in the 1980s. IBM Storage contributed with 8 percent growth, not bad for a year Dave Barry considers [one of the worst years ever.].

IBM President and CEO Sam Palmisano granted me a chunk of IBM stock in appreciation of my efforts towards the 2010 success! Actually, he gave stock to a whole bunch of IBMers, not just me, and they all deserve it also.  Woo hoo!

Meaning 2: IBM is almost 100 years old

That's right, this upcoming June 16, 2011, IBM turns 100 years old. This Centennial date also happens to be my 25th year anniversary working in IBM Storage, which IBM calls joining the Quarter Century Club, or QCC for short. So, I am looking forward to plenty of cake and fireworks on that day!

I am looking forward to a year-long celebration on both counts!

technorati tags: IBM, Centenial, QCC, Revenues, Earnings, 4Q10, Dave Barry

Tags:  centenial qcc dave+barry ibm earnings 4q10 revenues

Since so many personal and corporate users are still on [Windows XP], Microsoft announced that it would provide [Extended Support until 2014]. A ComputerWorld article back in 2007 offered tips on [How to make Windows XP last for the next seven years]. From May 2009 to April 2014, all support is fee-based and non-security hotfixes are produced only for corporate customers.

If we have learned anything from last decade's Y2K crisis, is that we should not wait for the last minute to take action. Now is the time to start thinking about weaning ourselves off Windows XP. IBM has 400,000 employees, so this is not a trivial matter.

Already, IBM has taken some bold steps:

• Last July, IBM announced that it was switching from Internet Explorer (IE6) to [Mozilla Firefox as its standard browser]. IBM has been contributing to this open source project for years, including support for open standards, and to make it [more accessible to handicapped employees with visual and motor impairments]. I use Firefox already on Windows, Mac and Linux, so there was no learning curve for me. Before this announcement, if some web-based application did not work on Firefox, our Helpdesk told us to switch back to Internet Explorer. Those days are over. Now, if a web-based application doesn't work on Firefox, we either stop using it, or it gets fixed.
• IBM also announced the latest [IBM Lotus Symphony 3] software, which replaces Microsoft Office for Powerpoint, Excel and Word applications. Symphony also works across Mac, Windows and Linux. It is based on the OpenOffice open source project, and handles open-standard document formats (ODF). Support for Microsoft Office 2003 will also run out in the year 2014, so moving off proprietary formats to open standards makes sense.

I am not going to wait for IBM to decide how to proceed next, so I am starting my own migrations. In my case, I need to do it twice, on my IBM-provided laptop as well as my personal PC at home.

IBM-provided laptop

Last summer, IBM sent me a new laptop, we get a new one every 3-4 years. It was pre-installed with Windows XP, but powerful enough to run a 64-bit operating system in the future. Here are my series of blog posts on that:

• Time for a New Laptop
• New Laptop - First Afternoon
• File Transfer on Day 2
• Install Missing Programs - Day 3
• Reorganizing my Data files - Day 4
• Testing the System - Week 2

I decided to try out Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 with its KVM-based Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization to run Windows XP as a guest OS. I will try to run as much as I can on native Linux, but will have Windows XP guest as a next option, and if that still doesn't work, reboot the system in native Windows XP mode.

Here's is how I have configured my laptop:

Partition	Size	Format	Mount	Description
/dev/sda1	35GB	NTFS	C:	Windows XP SP3 operating system and programs
/dev/sda2	15GB	ext4	/(root)	Ubuntu Desktop 10.10, SystemRescueCD, Clonezilla, Parted Magic
/dev/sda3	55GB	ext4	/(root)	RHEL 6.1 with KVM to run Windows XP as guest OS
/dev/sda5	5GB	swap	swap	Linux swap
/dev/sda6	130GB	NTFS	D:	My Documents, Lotus Notes and other data
/dev/sda7	70GB	NTFS	E:	Extras and Archives

Basically, this is a multi-boot system. I use Ubuntu to hold all my Linux utilities, including [SystemRescueCD], [Clonezilla], and [Parted Magic]. The new [Grub2 loader] makes this easy.

Here is what my initial boot screen looks like:

So far, I am pleased that I can do nearly everything my job requires natively in Red Hat Linux, including accessing my Lotus Notes for email and databases, edit and present documents with Lotus Symphony, and so on. I have made RHEL 6.1 my default when I boot up. Setting up Windows XP under KVM was relatively simple, involving an 8-line shell script and 54-line XML file. Here is what I have encountered:

• We use a wonderful tool called "iSpring Pro" which merges Powerpoint slides with voice recordings for each page into a Shockwave Flash video. I have not yet found a Linux equivalent for this yet.
• To avoid having to duplicate files between systems, I use instead symbolic links. For example, my Lotus Notes local email repository sits on D: drive, but I can access it directly with a link from /home/tpearson/notes/data.
• While my native Ubuntu and RHEL Linux can access my C:, D: and E: drives in native NTFS file system format, the irony is that my Windows XP guest OS under KVM cannot. This means moving something from NTFS over to Ext4, just so that I can access it from the Windows XP guest application.
• For whatever reason, "Password Safe" did not run on the Windows XP guest. I launch it, but it takes forever to load and never brings up the GUI. Fortunately, there is a Linux version [MyPasswordSafe] that seems to work just fine to keep track of all my passwords.

Personal home PC

My Windows XP system at home gave up the ghost last month, so I bought a new system with Windows 7 Professional, quad-core Intel processor and 6GB of memory. There are [various editions of Windows 7], but I chose Windows 7 Professional to support running Windows XP as a guest image.

Here's is how I have configured my personal computer:

Partition	Size	Format	Mount	Description
/dev/sda1	104MB	NTFS	C:	Windows 7 Loader
/dev/sda2	10GB	ext4	/(root)	Ubuntu Desktop 10.10, SystemRescueCD, Clonezilla, Parted Magic
/dev/sda3	50GB	ext4	/(root)	RHEL 6.1
/dev/sda5	7GB	swap	swap	Linux swap
/dev/sda6	60GB	NTFS	C:	Windows 7 OS and programs
/dev/sda7	230GB	NTFS	D:	My Documents, Lotus Notes and other data
/dev/sda8	250GB	NTFS	E:	Extras and Archives

I actually found it more time-consuming to implement the "Virtual PC" feature of Windows 7 to get Windows XP mode working than KVM on Red Hat Linux. I am amazed how many of my Windows XP programs DO NOT RUN AT ALL natively on Windows 7. I now have native 64-bit versions of Lotus Notes and Symphony 3, which will do well enough for me for now.

I went ahead and put Red Hat Linux on my home system as well, but since I have Windows XP running as a guest under Windows 7, no need to duplicate KVM setup there. At least if I have problems with Windows 7, I can reboot in RHEL6  Linux at home and use that for Linux-native applications.

Hopefully, this will position me well in case IBM decides to either go with Windows 7 or Linux as the replacement OS for Windows XP.

technorati tags: IBM, Windows, Windows XP, Windows 7, Linux, Ubuntu, RedHat, RHEL, RHEL6, Lotus, Lotus Notes, Lotus Symphony

Tags:  lotus windows windows+7 redhat rhel6 ubuntu lotus+notes ibm lotus+symphony linux windows+xp rhel

 In keeping with the spirit to be a more kinder, gentler 2011, I decided last week to refrain from being the rain on someone else's parade that occurs immediately before, during or after a competitor's announcement or annual conference, and let EMC have their few moments in the spotlight last week. This of course allows me more time to learn about the announcements and reflect on marketplace reactions. Here's a quick look at the [EMC Press Release]:

A new VNXe disk system

Of the 41 new storage technologies and products EMC announced last week, the VNXe is EMC's "me-too" product to compete against other low-end disk systems like the IBM System Storage DS3524 and N3000 series. It looks truly new, developed organically from the ground up, with a new architecture, new OS. It comes in either the 2U-high VNXe3100 or the 3U-high VNXe3300. These employ 3.5-inch SAS drives to provide Ethernet-based NFS, CIFS and iSCSI host attachment. The $10K USD price tag appears to be for the hardware only. As is typical for EMC, they charge software features in bundles or "suites", so the actual TCO will be much higher. I have not seen any announcements whether Dell plans to resell either the VNXe nor the VNX models, now that they have acquired Compellent.

A new VNX disk system

Despite having a similar name as the VNXe, the VNX appears to be a re-hash of the Celerra/CLARiiON mess that EMC has been selling already, based on the old FLARE and DART operating systems of these older disk systems. This scales from 75 to 1000 SAS drives. While EMC calls the VNX "unified", it currently is only available in block-only and file-only models, with a future promise from EMC that they will offer a combined block-and-file version sometime in the future. EMC claims that the VNX will be faster than the predecessors, so hopefully that means EMC has joined the rest of the planet and will publish SPC-1 and SPC-2 benchmarks to back up that claim. They can compare against the SPC-1 benchmarks that our friends at NetApp ran against EMC CLARiiON.

New software for the VMAX

A long time ago, EMC announced they would provide non-disruptive automated tiering. Their first delivery "FAST V1" handled entire LUNs at a time. EMC now has finally "FAST VP" which we expected was going to be called "FAST V2", which provides sub-LUN automated tiering between Solid-state and spinning disk drives.. Meanwhile, IBM has been delivering "Easy Tier" on the IBM System Storage DS8000 series, SAN Volume Controller, and Storwize V7000 disk systems.

Data Domain Archiver

Competing against IBM, HP and Oracle in the tape arena, EMC's latest addition to the Data Domain family is designed for the long-term retention of backups? Archives of backups? Backups are short-lived, protecting against the unexpected loss from hardware failure or data corruption. Keeping backups as "archives" is generally a bad mistake, as it makes it hard to e-Discover the data you need when you need it, and may not have the appropriate hardware tor restore these old backups when you do find them.

I will have to dig deeper into all of these different technologies in separate posts in the future.

Tags:  e-disocvery tco sas data+domain emc archiver archive vnx ibm backup clariion vnxe celerra

The weather has warmed up here in Tucson so I started my Spring Cleaning early this year and unearthed from my garage a [Bankers Box] full of floppy diskettes.

IBM invented the floppy disk back in 1971, and continued to make improvements and enhancements through the 1980s and 1990s. It will be one of the many inventions celebrated as part of IBM's Centennial (100-year) anniversary. Here is an example [T-shirt]

IBM needed a way to send out small updates and patches for microcode of devices out in client locations. IBM had drives that could write information, and sent out "read-only" drives to the customer locations to receive these updates. These were flexible plastic circles with a magnetic coating, and placed inside a square paper sleeve. Imagine a floppy disk the size of a piece of standard paper. The 8-inch floppy fit conveniently in a manila envelope, sendable by standard mail, and could hold nearly 80KB of data.

I've been using floppies for the past thirty years. Here's some of my fondest memories:

• While still in high school, my friend Franz Kurath and I formed "Pearson Kurath Systems", a software development firm. We wrote computer programs to run on UNIX and Personal Computers for small businesses here in Tucson. Whenever we developed a clever piece of code, a subroutine or procedure, we would save it on a floppy disk and re-use it for our next project. We wrote in the BASIC language, and our databases were simple Comma-Separated-Variable (CSV) flat files.

  The 5.25-inch floppies we used could hold 360KB, and were flexible like the 8-inch models. Later versions of these 5.25-inch floppies would be able to hold as much as 1.2MB of data. We would convert single-sided floppies into double-sided ones by cutting out a notch in the outer sleeve. Covering up the notches would mark them as read-only.

  The 3.5-inch floppies were introduced with a hard plastic shell, with the selling point that you can slap on a mailing label and postage and send it "as is" without the need for a separate envelope. These new 3.5-inch floppies would carry "HD" for high density 720KB, and double-sided versions could hold 1.44MB of data. The term "diskette" was used to associate these new floppies with [hard-shelled tape cassettes]. Sliding a plastic tab would allow floppies to be marked "read-only". IBM has the patent on this clever invention.

• Continuing our computer programming business in college, Franz and I took out a bank loan to buy our first Personal Computer, for over $5000 dollars USD. Until then, we had to use equipment belonging to each client. The banks we went to didn't understand why we needed a computer, and suggested we just track our expenses on traditional green-and-white ledger paper. Back then, peronsal computers were for balancing your checkbook, playing games and organizing your collection of cooking recipies. But for us, it was a production machine. A computer with both 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch drives could copy files from one format to another as needed. The boost in productivity paid for itself within months.

• Apple launched its Macintosh computer in 1984, with a built-in 3.5-inch disk drive as standard equipment. Here is a YouTube video of an [astronaut ejecting a floppy disk] from an Apple computer in space.

• In my senior year at the University of Arizona, my roommate Dave had borrowed my backpack to hold his lunch for a bike ride. He thought he had taken everything out, but forgot to remove my 3.5-inch floppy diskette containing files for my senior project. By the time he got back, the diskette was covered in banana pulp. I was able to rescue my data by cracking open the plastic outer shell, cleaning the flexible magnetic media in soapy water, placing it back into the plastic shell of a second diskette, and then copied the data off to a third diskette.

• After graduating from college, Franz and I went our separate ways. I went to work for IBM, and Franz went to work for [Chiat/Day], the advertising agency famous for the 1984 Macintosh commercial. We still keep in touch through Facebook.

  At IBM, I was given a 3270 terminal to do my job, and would not be assigned a personal computer until years later. Once I had a personal computer at home and at work, the floppy diskette became my "briefcase". I could download a file or document at work, take it home, work on it til the wee hours of the morning, and then come back the next morning with the updated effort.

• To help prepare me for client visits and public speaking at conferences, IBM loaned me out to local schools to teach. This included teaching Computer Science 101 at Pima Community College. When asked by a student whether to use "disc" or "disk", I wrote a big letter "C" on the left side of the chalkboard, and a big letter "K" on the right side. If it is round, I told the students while pointing at the letter "C", like a CD-ROM or DVD, use "disc". If it has corners, pointing to corners of the letter "K", like a floppy diskette or hard disk drive, use "disk".

• On one of my business trips to visit a client, we discovered the client had experienced a problem that we had just recently fixed. Normally, this would have meant cutting a Program Trouble Fix (PTF) to a 3480 tape cartridge at an IBM facility, and send it to the client by mail. Unwilling to wait, I offered to download the PTF onto a floppy diskette on my laptop, upload it from a PC connected to their systems, and apply it there. This involved a bit of REXX programming to deal with the differences between ASCII and EBCDIC character sets, but it worked, and a few hours later they were able to confirm the fix worked.

• In 1998, Apple would signal the begining of the end of the floppy disk era, announcing their latest "iMac" would not come with an internal built-in floppy drive. David Adams has a great article on this titled [The iMac and the Floppy Drive: A Conspiracy Theory]. You can get external floppy drives that connect via USB, so not having an internal drive is no longer a big deal.

• While teaching a Top Gun class to a mix of software and hardware sales reps, one of the students asked what a "U" was. He had noticed "2U" and "3U" next to various products and wondered what that was referring to. The "U" represents the [standard unit of measure for height of IT equipment in standard racks]. To help them visualize, I explained that a 5.25-inch floppy disk was "3U" in size, and a 3.5-inch floppy diskette was "2U". Thus, a "U" is 1.75 inches, the thinnest dimension on a two-by-four piece of lumber. Servers that were only 1U tall would be referred to as "pizza boxes" for having similar dimensions.

• Every year, right around November or so, my friends and family bring me their old computers for me to wipe clean. Either I would re-load them with the latest Ubuntu Linux so that their kids could use it for homework, or I would donate it to charity. Last November, I got a computer that could not boot from a CD-ROM, forcing me to build a bootable floppy. This gave me a chance to check out the various 1-disk and 2-disk versions of Linux and other rescue disks. I also have a 3-disk set of floppies for booting OS/2 in command line mode.

So while this unexpected box of nostalgia derailed my efforts to clean out my garage this weekend, it did inspire me to try to get some of the old files off them and onto my PC hard drive. I have already retrieved some low-res photographs, some emails I sent out, and trip reports I wrote. While floppy diskettes were notorious for being unreliable, and this box of floppies has been in the heat and cold for many Arizonan summers and winters, I am amazed that I was able to read the data off most of them so far, all the way back to data written in 1989. While the data is readable, in most cases I can't render it into useful information. This brings up a few valuable lessons:

Backups are not Archives

Some of the files are in proprietary formats, such as my backups for TurboTax software. I would need a PC running a correct level of Windows operating system, and that particular software, just to restore the data. TurboTax shipped new software every year, and I don't know how forward or backward-compatible each new release was.

Another set of floppies are labeled as being in "FDBACK" format. I have no idea what these are. Each floppy has just two files, "backup.001" and "control.001", for example.

Backups are intended solely to protect against unexpected loss from broken hardware or corrupted data. If you plan to keep data as archives for long-term retention, use archive formats that will last a long time, so that you can make sense of them later.

Operating System Compatibility

Windows 7 and all of my favorite flavors of Linux are able to recognize the standard "FAT" file system that nearly all of my floppies are written in. Sadly, I have some files that were compressed under OS/2 operating system using software called "Stacker". I may have to stand up an OS/2 machine just to check out what is actually on those floppies.

You can't judge a book by its cover

Floppies were a convenient form of data interchange. Sometimes, I reused commercially-labeled floppies to hold personal files. So, just because a floppy says "America On-Line (AOL) version 2.5 Installation", I can't just toss it away. It might actually contain something else entirely. This means I need to mount each floppy to check on its actual contents.

So what will I do with the floppies I can't read, can't write, and can't format? I think I will convert them into a [retro set of coasters], to protect my new living room furniture from hot and cold beverages.

technorati tags: IBM, Centennial, Patent, Floppy, Disk, Diskette, Apple, Chiat/Day, Pima Community College, Macintosh, iMac, Franz Kurath, Pearson Kurath Systems

Tags:  chiat+day ibm disk macintosh patent centennial perason+kurath+systems floppy franz+kurath imac diskette apple pima+community+college

Continuing my week's theme on the Floppy Disk, IBM has published its latest [article about the floppy disk] on IBM's [Icons of Progress] as part of the Centennial celebration.

technorati tags: IBM, floppy disk, diskette, centennial, icons, progress

Tags:  diskette progress floppy+disk ibm centennial icons

As time progresses, things change, sometimes for the better in the right direction, sometimes a step backwards, and sometimes just different enough to be annoying. I wrote my blog post about [A Box Full of Floppies] a week ago, and posted in Monday. Let's take a look at how time and change impacted that one post.

The weather has warmed up here in Tucson so I started my Spring Cleaning early this year...

If there is ever a good time to brag about how beautiful the weather here in Tucson, it would be when everyone else in the country is digging themselves out of piles of snow. When my friends on Twitter were complaining how cold it was in Scottland, Ireland, Canada, or the East Coast of the United States, I would remind them that I am wearing a tee-shirt and shorts.  I played golf for a week last December!

Sadly, a few days after my post, Tucson had the coldest days of February, breaking records set back in the year 1899. Water pipes were frozen, outdoor plants have suffered, and over 14,000 homes and businesses were shut off from natural gas. The 1,400-plus employees at the IBM Tucson facility have been asked to telecommute until restroom facilities can be restored to working order.

While we should all pay more attention to [climate change], this latest chill is probably just a seasonal flucation thanks to [La Niña] that happens every 10-15 years.

Here is a YouTube video of an astronaut ejecting a floppy disk...

Back in 2009, YouTube decided to [stop supporting Internet Explorer 6 (IE6)] to view its videos. However, that is what most IBMers were on, and this posted a problem when I embedded a video on my blog. To get around that, my friends at Microsoft provided special "conditional HTML tags" that allows me to suppress YouTube videos when viewed from Internet Explorer. The video shows up for those using Chrome, Opera, Firefox or other browsers, but is suppressed for IE users, and that allowed IBM employees to at least read the text.

Fortunately, last July, IBM decided to switch from IE6 over to Mozilla Firefox as the standard browser, so I thought this would no longer be an issue.

Unfortunately, my friends at YouTube have done it again. They changed the generated embed code from using "object" tags to "iframe" which messes up blogs written in various blogging systems, including Lotus Connections that I have here on DeveloperWorks, as well as WordPress. The new method is intended to either promote the new HTML5 standard, or to piss off [iPhone users]. In any case, several readers found they could not read my entire post about floppies because the "iframe" prevented the rest of the post to be shown. I have since reverted back to the old "object" tags and re-posted for everyone's benefit.

I may have to stand up an OS/2 machine just to check out what is actually on those floppies...

For any data that you keep for long term retention, it is important that you be able to access the data in a meaningful way when you need it. IBM has identified five ways that this can be done:

• Museum approach -- keep old servers, storage and applications around. In my case, I have computers that can handle 3.5-inch floppy diskettes, but no hardware to read my Zip cartridges or 5.25-inch floppies.
• Emulation approach -- emulating old systems with new systems. I remember the first CD players had "tape cassette" attachements so they can be used in car stereos.
• Migration approach -- migrating data and applications to new technology. This is what most businesses do. For example, if you keep archives through IBM Tivoli Storage Manager or DFSMShsm, the software will migrate data from old tapes to new tapes as part of its tape reclamation process.
• Descriptive approach -- including sufficiently descriptive metadata, such as with HTML or XML tags, that would enable future rendering.
• Ecapsulation approach -- encapsulate the data, metadata and related application logic for future processing. While the "descriptive" approach might help display the contents of proprietary formats, the encapsulation approach would include application logic, perhaps written in Java, that could be used to actually operate built-in macros, pivot tables, or other active features of a document or database.

IBM Research is working closely with industry standards groups, like the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards [OASIS], to help promote the use of open standards for long-term retention.

For my readers who follow American Football, enjoy the [SuperBowl]!

technorati tags: IBM, La+Nina, floppy, diskette, astronaut, YouTube, archive, OASIS, climate change, global warming, inconvenient truth

Tags:  oasis astronaut global+warming floppy ibm climate+change inconvenient+truth diskette archive youtube la+nina

Tonight PBS plans to air Season 38, Episode 6 of NOVA, titled [Smartest Machine On Earth]. Here is an excerpt from the station listing:

"What's so special about human intelligence and will scientists ever build a computer that rivals the flexibility and power of a human brain? In "Artificial Intelligence," NOVA takes viewers inside an IBM lab where a crack team has been working for nearly three years to perfect a machine that can answer any question. The scientists hope their machine will be able to beat expert contestants in one of the USA's most challenging TV quiz shows -- Jeopardy, which has entertained viewers for over four decades. "Artificial Intelligence" presents the exclusive inside story of how the IBM team developed the world's smartest computer from scratch. Now they're racing to finish it for a special Jeopardy airdate in February 2011. They've built an exact replica of the studio at its research lab near New York and invited past champions to compete against the machine, a big black box code -- named Watson after IBM's founder, Thomas J. Watson. But will Watson be able to beat out its human competition?"

Craig Rhinehart offers [10 Things You Need to Know About the Technology Behind Watson].

An artist has come up with this clever [unofficial poster].

Dr. Jon Lenchner from IBM Research has a series of posts on [How Watson "sees", "hears", and "speaks"] and [Selected Nuances].

Like most supercomputers, Watson runs the Linux operating system. The system runs 2,880 cores (90 IBM Power 750 servers, four sockets each, eight cores per socket) to achieve 80 [TeraFlops]. TeraFlops is the unit of measure for supercomputers, representing a trillion floating point operations. By comparison, Hans Morvec, principal research scientist at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) estimates that the [human brain is about 100 TeraFlops]. So, in the three seconds that Watson gets to calculate its response, it would have processed 240 trillion operations.

Several readers of my blog have asked for details on the storage aspects of Watson. Basically, it is a modified version of IBM Scale-Out NAS [SONAS] that IBM offers commercially, but running Linux on POWER instead of Linux-x86. System p expansion drawers of SAS 15K RPM 450GB drives, 12 drives each, are dual-connected to two storage nodes, for a total of 21.6TB of raw disk capacity. The storage nodes use IBM's General Parallel File System (GPFS) to provide clustered NFS access to the rest of the system. Each Power 750 has minimal internal storage mostly to hold the Linux operating system and programs.

When Watson is booted up, the 15TB of total RAM are loaded up, and thereafter the DeepQA processing is all done from memory. According to IBM Research, "The actual size of the data (analyzed and indexed text, knowledge bases, etc.) used for candidate answer generation and evidence evaluation is under 1TB." For performance reasons, various subsets of the data are replicated in RAM on different functional groups of cluster nodes. The entire system is self-contained, Watson is NOT going to the internet searching for answers.

On ZDnet, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols welcomes our new [Linux Penguin Jeopardy overlords]. I have to say I share his enthusiasm!

technorati tags: IBM, Nova, Watson, #ibmwatson, Jeopardy, POWER7, p750, supercomputer, TeraFlops, disk, SONAS, GPFS, SAS, Craig Rhinehart, Jon Lenchner, Hans Morvec, Carnegie Mellon University, CMU

Tags:  craig+rhinehart jon+lenchner nova #ibmwatson supercomputer disk sas power7 cmu ibm jeopardy p750 hans+morvec carnegie+mellon+universit... gpfs sonas watson teraflops

With all the excitement of the [IBM Challenge], where the [IBM Watson computer] will compete against humans on [Jeopardy!], I thought it would be good to provide the following homework exercise to help you appreciate how challenging the game is and the strategies required.

Overview of the game of Jeopardy!

If you are familiar with the show, you can safely skip this section.

Known as "America's Favorite Quiz Show", the Jeopardy pits three contestants against each other. The board is divided into six columns and five rows of answers. Each column indicates the category for that column of answers. The rows are ranked from easiest to most difficult, with more difficult answers being worth more money to wager.

The contestants take turns.  The returning champion gets to select a spot on the board, by indicating the category (column) and wager (row), such as "I will take Animals for 800 dollars!"  Contestants must then press a button to "buzz in", be recognized by the host, and respond correctly.  If the contestant responds incorrectly, the other two contestants have the opportunity to respond.  The contestant with the correct response gets to chose the next answer.

For each turn, the host, Alex Trebek, shows the answer on the board, and spends three seconds reading it aloud to give everyone a chance to come up with a corresponding question. This is perhaps what Jeopardy is most famous for. In a traditional "Quiz Show", the host asks questions, and the contestants answer that question. On Jeopardy, however, the host poses "answers", and the contestants provide their response in the form of a "questions" that best fit the category and answer clues. For example, if the categories were "Large Corporations" and the answer was "Sam Palmisano", the contestant would answer "Who is the CEO of IBM Corporation?" Both the categories, and the answers are filled with puns, slang and humor to make it more challenging. Often, the answer itself is not sufficient clue, you have to factor in the category as well to have a complete set of information.

The game is played in three rounds: In the first round, there are six categories, and the rows are worth $200, $400, $600, $800 and $1000 dollars. If you respond correctly on all five answers in a category column, you would win $3000. If you respond to all thirty answers correctly, you would earn $18,000. In the second round, there are six different categories, and the rows are worth twice as much. The final round has a single category and a single question. Each player can decide to wager up to the full amount of their score in this game. This wager is done after they see the category, but before they see the answer.

After the host finishes reading the answer aloud, the buzzers are lighted so that the contestants can buzz in. If a contestant gets the question correctly, he earns the corresponding money for the row it was in. If the contestant guesses incorrectly, the money is subtracted from his score. If the first contestant fails, the buzzers are re-lit so the other two contestants can then buzz in with their answers, learning from previous failed attempts.

To provide added challenge, some of the answers are surprise "Daily Double". Instead of the dollar amount for the row, the contestant can wager any amount, up to their total score they have won so far in that game, or the largest dollar amount for that round, whichever is higher, based on his confidence in that category. There is one "Daily Double" surprise in the first round, and two in the second round.

In the final round, each contestant wagers an amount up to their total score, based on their confidence on the final category. A common strategy for the leading contestant with the highest score is to wager a low amount, so that if he fails to guess the response correctly, he will still have a large dollar amount. For example, if the leader has $2000 and the second place is $900, the leader can wager only $100 dollars, and the second place might wager his full $900. If the leader loses the round, he still has $1900, beating the second place regardless of how well he does.

Whomever has the most money at the end of all three rounds wins that amount of cash, and gets to return to the show for another game the next day to continue his winning streak. The other two contestants are given consolation prizes and a nominal appearance fee for being on the show, and are never seen from again.

The show is only 30 minutes long, so the folks at Sony Pictures who produce the show can film a full weeks' worth of television shows in just two days of real-life, Tuesday and Wednesday, allowing the host Alex Trebek and his "Clue Crew" time to research new categories and answers.

Homework Assignment

So, here is your homework assignment. Record a full episode of Jeopardy on your VCR or Digital Video Recorder (DVR) and have your thumb ready to press the pause button. For each round, listen to each category, pause, and try to guess what all the answers in that column will have in common. For each category, write down a statement like "All the responses in this category are ...".

The answers could be people, places or things. Suppose the category "Chicks Dig Me". In English, "chicks" can be slang for women, or refer to young chickens.  The term "dig" can be slang for admires or adores, so this could be "Male Celebrities" that women find attractive, it could be objects of desire that women fancy (diamonds, puppies, etc.), or it could be places that women like to go to. As it turns out, the "dig" referred to archaeology, and the responses were all famous female archaeologists.

Once you have those all your statements written down, press play button again.

Next, as each answer is shown, you have three seconds to hit the pause again, so that you have the question on the screen, but before any contestants have responded. Go on your favorite search engine like Google or Bing and try to determine the correct response based on the category and answer. Consider these [tips for being an Internet Search ninja]. Once you think you have figured out your response, write it down, and the dollar amount you wager, or decide you will not respond for that answer, if you are not sure about your findings.

Even if you think you already know the correct response, you may decide to gain more confidence of your response by finding confirming or supporting evidence on the Internet.

Press play. Either one of the contestants will get it right, or the host will provide the question that was expected as the correct response. How well did you do? Were you able to find on the the correct response online, or at least confirm that what you knew was correct. If you got it correct, add in your dollar amount to your score. If you got it wrong, subtract the amount.

At the end of each round, look back at your statements for each category. Did you guess correctly the common theme for each category column of answers? Did you misinterpret the slang, pun or humor intended?

At the end of the game, you might have done better than the contestant that won the game. However, check how much added time you took to do those Internet searches. The average winner only questions half of the answers and only gets 80 percent of them correctly.

If you are really brave, take the [Jeopardy Online Test]. If you do this homework assignment, feel free to post your insights in the comments below.

technorati tags: IBM, Jeopardy, Challenge, Watson, Alex Trebek, quiz show, Google

Tags:  challenge ibm google watson jeopardy quiz+show alex+trebek

Homework Assignment: My Results

We are only days away from the big IBM Challenge of Watson computer against two human contestants on the show Jeopardy!

I watched two episodes of Jeopardy! on my Tivo, pausing it to follow the [homework assignment] I suggested in my last post. Here are my own results and observations.

Game 1

Episode [6082] involved a web programmer, a customer service representative, and a bank teller.

Round 1

Of the first six categories in Round 1, I guessed four of the six themes for each category. For the category "Diamonds are Forever", I wrote down "All answers are some kind of gem or mineral", but the reality was that all the answers were some physical characteristic of diamonds specifically. For the category "...Fame is not", I wrote down "All answers are TV or Movie celebrities". I was close, but actually it was famous celebrities, rock bands and pop culture of the 1980s. (The movie "Fame" came out in 1980).

In the round, there were 27 of the 30 answers given before they ran out of time. Of these, I was able to get 24 of 27 correct by searching the Internet. That is 88 percent correct. Here were the ones that eluded me:

• Answer related to a "multi-chambered mollusk". I could not find anything on the Internet definitively on this, so abstained from wager. The correct question was "What is Nautilus?".
• Answer was the Irish variant of "Kathryne". I found Kathleen as a variant, but did not investigate if it had Irish origins. The correct question was "What is Caitlin?"
• Answer was this Norse name for "ruler" whether you had red hair or not. I found "Roy" and "Rory" so guessed "What is Rory?" The correct question was "What is Eric?"

Round 2

The second round, I guesed three of the six themese for the categories. For category "Musical Titles Letter Drop" I wrote down "All the answers are titles of musical songs" but it was actually "Musicals" as in the Broadway shows. For category "Place called Carson", I wrote down "All the answers are places" and was way off on that one, with answers that were people, places and names of corporations. And for "State University Alums", I wrote down "All the answers are college graduates", but instead they were all "State Universities" such as the University of Arizona.

In this second round, only 26 answers were posed. I got 80 percent correct with Internet searching. I missed three on the "Musical Titles", one in "Pope-pourri" and one State University (sorry SMU). The "Musical Titles Letter Drop category" was especially difficult, as for each title of a Musical, you had to remove a single letter out of it to form the correct response.

• For the answer "Good luck when you ask the singers "What I Did For Love"; they never tell the truth", you would need to take "Chorus Line" the musical, where the song "What I did for Love" appears, and ask "What is Chorus Lie?" Note that "line" changed to "lie" and the letter "n" was dropped out.
• For the answer "Embrace the atoms as Simba and company lose and gain electrons en masse in this production", you would need to recognize that Simba was the main character of "The Lion King" and change it to "What is The Ion King".

I think these play-on-words are the questions that would stump the IBM Watson computer.

Round 3

In the final round, the category was "Ancient Quotes". I thought the answer would be a famous adage or quotation, but it was instead famous people who uttered those phrases. The answer was "He said, to leave this stream uncrossed will breed manifold distress for me; to cross it, for all mankind".  I was able to determine the correct response readily from searching the Internet:  The river was the Rubicon, the border of the Gaul region governed by an ambitious general.  The correct response "Who was Julius Caesar?"

Total time for the entire exercise: 87 minutes.

Game 2

The following night, episode [6083] brought back Paul Wampler, the returning champion web programmer, against two new contestants: an actor, and high school principal.

Round 1

Of the first six categories in Round 1, I guessed five of the six themes for each category. For the category "Nonce Words", I wrote all the answers would be nonsense words. I was close, the clues had words invented for a particular occasion, but the correct responses did not.

I was able to get 29 of 30 correct by searching the Internet. That is 96 percent correct. The one I missed was in the category "Nonce Words" and the answer was "In an arithmocracy, this portion of the population rules, not trigonometry teachers.." My response was "What is Math?" but the correct answer was "What are the majority?" It did not occur for me to even look up [Arithmocracy] as a legitimate word, but it is real.

Round 2

The second round, I guesed five of the six themese for the categories. For category "Hawk" eyes, the "Hawk" was in quotation marks, so I wrote "All answers would start with the word Hawk or end with the word "eyes". I was close, the correct theme was that the word "hawk" would appear in the front, middle or end of the correct response.

In this second round, I got 28 of 30 correct. I got 93 percent correct with Internet searching. Ironically, it was the category "German Foods" that caught me off guard.

• For, the answer was "Pichelsteiner Fleisch, a favorite of Otto von Bismarck, is this one-pot concoction, made with beef & pork". I know that "fleisch" is a German word for meat, so I guessed "What is sausage?" but the correct response was "What is stew?" I should have paid more attention to the "one-pot concoction" part of the answer.
• For the answer was "Mimi Sheraton says German stuffed hard-boiled eggs are always made with a great deal of this creamy product". I didn't realize that "stuffed eggs" was German for "deviled eggs". Instead, I found Mimi Sheraton's "The German Cookbook" on Google Books, and jumped to the page for "Stuffed Eggs" The ingredients I read included whippedc cream, cognac, and worcestershire sauce. Taking the "creamiest" ingredient of these, I wrote down "What is whipped cream?" However, it turned out I was actually reading the ingredients for "Crabmeat Cocktail" that was coninuing from the previous page. I thought it was gross to put whipped cream with eggs, and should have known better. The correct response was "What is mayonnaise?"

Round 3

In the final round, the category was "Political Parties". This could either be political organizations like Republicans and Democrats, or festivities like the Whitehouse Correspondents Dinner. The answer was "Only one U.S. president represented this party, and he said, I dread...a division of the republic into two great parties." So, we can figure out the answer refers to political organizations, but both Democrat and Republican are ruled out because each has had multiple presidents. So, looking at a [List of Political Parties of each US President], I found that there were four presidents in the Whig party, four in the Democrat-Republic party, but only one president in the Federalist party (John Adams), and one in the War Union party (Andrew Johnson). Looking at [famous quotes from John Adams] first, I found the quote, it matched, and so I wrote down "What is the Federalist party?". I got it right, as did two of the three contestants. Ironically, the one contestant who got it wrong, the returning champion web programmer, wagered a small amount, so he still had more money after the round and won the game overall.

Total time for the entire exercise: 75 minutes. I was able to do this faster as I skipped searching the internet for the responses I was confident on.

To find out when Jeopardy is playing in your town, consult the [Interactive Map].

technorati tags: IBM, Challenge, Watson, Jeopardy, homework

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In my post [What is the Smartest Machine on Earth?], I described the storage inside [IBM Watson], the computer that will compete against two humans on the quiz show Jeopardy!

"When Watson is booted up, the 15TB of total RAM are loaded up, and thereafter the DeepQA processing is all done from memory. According to IBM Research, the actual size of the data (analyzed and indexed text, knowledge bases, etc.) used for candidate answer generation and evidence evaluation is under 1 Terabyte (TB). For performance reasons, various subsets of the data are replicated in RAM on different functional groups of cluster nodes. The entire system is self-contained, Watson is NOT going to the internet searching for answers."

I had several readers ask me to explain the significance of the "Terabyte". I'll work my way up.

Bit

A bit is simply a zero (0) or one (1). This could answer a Yes/No or True/False question.

Byte

Most computers have standardized a byte as a collection of 8 bits. There are 256 unique combinations of ones and zeros possible, so a byte could be used to storage a 2-digit integer, or a single upper or lower case character in the English alphabet. In pratical terms, a byte could store your age in years, or your middle initial.

Kilobyte (KB)

The Kilobyte is a thousand bytes, enough to hold a few paragraphs of text. A typical written page could be held in 4 KB, for example.

The IBM Challenge to play on Jeopardy! is being compared to the historic 1969 moon landing. To land on the moon, Apollo 11 had the "Apollo Guidance Computer" (AGC) which had 74KB of fixed read-only memory, and 2KB of re-writeable memory. Over [3500 IBM employees were involved] to get the astronauts to the moon and safely back to earth again.

The importance of this computer was highlighted in a [lecture by astronaut David Scott] who said: "If you have a basketball and a baseball 14 feet apart, where the baseball represents the moon and the basketball represents the Earth, and you take a piece of paper sideways, the thinness of the paper would be the corridor you have to hit when you come back."

Megabyte (MB)

The Megabyte is a thousand KB, or a million bytes. The 3.5-inch floppy diskette, mentioned in my post [A Boxfull of Floppies] could hold 1.44MB, or about 360 pages of text.

The first commercial disk system, the [350 Disk Storage Unit, introduced in 1956 for the IBM RAMAC computer], could hold only 5 MB and was the size of two refrigerators. While 5MB might not seem like much today, it is enough to hold the [Complete works of Shakespeare]. That's right, all 42 plays, poems and sonnets.

In the article [Wikipedia as a printed book], the printing of a select 400 articles resulted in a book 29 inches thick. Those 5,000 pages would consume about 20 MB of space.

One of my favorite resources I use to search is the Internet Movie Data Base [IMDB]. Leaving out the photos and videos, the [text-only portion of the IMDB database is just over 600 MB], representing nearly all of the actors, awards, nominations, television shows and movies. A standard CD-ROM can hold 700MB, so the text portion of the IMDB could easily fit on a single CD.

Gigabyte (GB)

The Gigabyte is a thousand MB, or a billion bytes. My Thinkpad T410 laptop has 4GB of RAM and 320GB of hard disk space. My laptop comes with a DVD burner, and each DVD can hold up to 4.7GB of information.

The popular Wikipedia now has some 17 million articles, of which 3.5 million are in English language. It would only take [14GB of space to hold the entire English portion] of Wikipedia. That is small enough to fit on twenty CDs, three DVDs, an Apple iPad or my cellphone (a Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant).

Perhaps you are thinking, "Someone should offer Wikipedia pre-installed on a small handheld!" Too late. The [The Humane Reader] is able to offer 5,000 books and Wikipedia in a small device that connects to your television. This would be great for people who do not have access to the internet, or for parents who want their kids to do their homework, but not be online while they are doing it.

In the latest 2009 report of [How Much Information?] from the University of California, San Diego, the average American consumes 34 GB of information. This includes all the information from radio, television, newspapers, magazines, books and the internet that a person might look at or listen to throughout the day. This project is sponsored by IBM and others to help people understand the nature of our information-consuption habits.

Back in 1992, I visited a client in Germany. Their 90 GB of disk storage attached to their mainframe was the size of three refrigerators, and took five full-time storage administrators to manage.

Terabyte (TB)

The Terabyte is a thousand GB, or a trillion bytes. It is now possible to buy external USB drive for your laptop or personal computer that holds 1TB or more. However, at 40MB/sec speeds that USB 2.0 is capable of, it would take seven hours to do a bulk transfer in or out of the device.

IBM offers 1TB and 2TB disk drives in many of our disk systems. In 2008, IBM was preparing to announce the first 1TB tape drive. However, Sun Microsystems announced their own 1TB drive the day before our big announcement, so IBM had to rephrase the TS1130 announcement to [The World's Fastest 1TB tape drive!]

In his book [The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology], Ray Kurzweil estimates the human brain's memory can hold about 1.25 TB of information. This would make IBM Watson about 80 percent human.

A typical academic research library will hold about 2TB of information. For the [US Library of Congress] print collection is considered to be about 10TB, and their web capture team has collected 160TB of digital data. If you are ever in the Washington DC, I strongly recommend a visit to the Library of Congress. It is truly stunning!

Full-length computer animated movies, like [Happy Feet], consume about 100TB of disk storage during production. IBM offers disk systems that can hold this much data. For example, the IBM XIV can hold up to 151 TB of usable disk space in the size of one refrigerator.

A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for some larger companies is the number of TB that can be managed by a full-time employee, referred to as TB/FTE. Discussions about TB/FTE are available from IT analysts including [Forrester Research] and [The Info Pro].

The website [Ancestry.com] claims to have over 540 million names in its genealogical database, with a storage of 600TB, with the inclusion of [US census data from 1790 to 1930]. The US government took nine years to process the 1880 census, so for the 1890 census, it rented equipment from Herman Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company. This company would later merge with two others in 1911 to form what is now called IBM.

Petabyte (PB)

A Petabyte is thousand TB, or a quadrillion bytes. It is estimated that all printed materials on Earth would represent approximately 200 PB of information.

IBM's largest disk system, the Scale-Out Network Attach Storage (SONAS) comprised of up to 7,200 disk drives, which can hold over 11 PB of information. A smaller 10-frame model, the same size as IBM Watson, with six interface nodes and 19 storage pods, could hold over 7 PB of information.

IBM's automated [TS3500 tape library with high-density frames] can hold up to 60 PB of compressed tape data. A smaller 10-frame model, the size of IBM Watson, could hold up to 36 PB of data.

For those of us in the IT industry, 1TB is small potatoes. I for one, was expecting it to be much bigger. But for everyone else, the equivalent of 200 million pages of text that IBM Watson has loaded inside is an incredibly large repository of information. I suspect IBM Watson probably contains the complete works of Shakespeare as well as other fiction writers, the IMDB database, all 3.5 million articles of Wikipedia, religious texts like the Bible and the Quran, famous documents like the Magna Carta and the US Constitution, and reference books like a Dictionary, a Thesaurus, and "Gray's Anatomy". And, of course, lots and lots of lists.

For those on Twitter, follow [@ibmwatson] these next three days during the challenge.

technorati tags: IBM, Watson, Challenge, Jeopardy, @ibmwatson, #ibmwatson

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IBM Challenge: Tucson Watch Event for Jeopardy!

The Tucson Executive Briefing Center hosted 20 dignitaries from local companies and academia. This is a historic competition, an exhibition match pitting a computer against the top two celebrated Jeopardy champions:

• Brad Rutter, won $3.2 million USD on Jeopardy!, winning 5 days on the show, and then three later tournamets.
• Ken Jennings, winning $2.5 million in a 74-day winning streak on Jeopardy!

One of the members of the audience had never seen an episode of Jeopardy! in his life.

(Note: there are NO SPOILERS in this blog post. If you have not yet watched the show, you are safe to continue reading the rest of this post. I will not disclose the correct responses to any of the clues nor how well each contestant scored.)

Opening Remarks

Calline Sanchez, IBM Director, Systems Storage Development for Data Protection and Retention, kicked off today's ceremonies.

The IBM Watson computer, named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, has been developed over the past 4 years by a team of IBM scientists who set out to accomplish a grand challenge - build a computing system that rivals a human's ability to answer questions posed in natural language with speed, accuracy and confidence. IBM Research labs in the United States, Japan, China and Israel [collaborated with Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts at eight universities], including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Texas (UT) at Austin, University of Southern California (USC), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), University at Albany (UAlbany), University of Trento (Italy), University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Carnegie Mellon University.

(Disclaimer: I attended the University of Texas at Austin. My father attended Carnegie Mellon University.)

Last week, NOVA on PBS had a special episode on the making of IBM Watson, you can [watch it online] on their website. Delaney Turner, IBM Social Media Communications Manager for Business Analytics Software, has posted [his observations of Nova].

Since IBM Watson is the size of 10 refrigerators and weighs over 14,000 pounds, it was easier to design the Jeopardy! set at the TJ Watson Research lab in Yorktown Heights, NY, than to ship it over to California where the show is normally recorded. Two of the visual designers that worked on this set, as well as on the visual appearance of Watson, live in Tucson and were part of our audience today.

The IBM Challenge consists of a two-game tournament, where the scores of both games will be added to determine winner rankings. The producers of Jeopardy! will give $1 million dollars USD to first place, $300,000 to second place, and $200,000 to third place. Regardless of outcome, [IBM will donate all of its winings to charity]. The two human contestants plan to donate half of their earnings to their favorite charities as well.

Jeopardy! The IBM Challenge

Alex Trebek introduces IBM Watson, explaining that it can neither hear nor see. It will receive all information electronically. Categories and clues will be sent as text files via TCP/IP over Ethernet at the same time the two human contestants see them so that all have the same time to think about the right answer.

Watson has two rows of five racks, back to back. This was done so that cold air could rise up from holes in the tile floors around the unit, and all the hot air would be forced into the center and up to the ceiling return. This technique is known as "hot aisle/cold aisle" design. Alex Trebek opens one of the rack doors to show a series of 4U-high IBM Power 750 servers.

The avatar is a representation of Watson, as the machine itself is too big to fit behind the podium. The avatar is IBM's "Smarter Planet" logo with orbiting streaks and circles. It shows "Green" when it has high confidence, and orange when it gets an answer wrong. When busy thinking, the streaks and circles speed up, the closest we will see to "watching a computer sweat."

During the show, an "Answer panel" shows Watson's top three candidate responses, with confidence level compared to its current "buzz threshold". Watson knows what it knows, and knows what it doesn't know. Here is an [Interactive Watson Game] on New York Times website to give you an idea of how the answer panel works. I was impressed with how close all three candidate answers were. In a question about Olympic swimmers, all three candidates are Olympic swimmers. In a question about the novel "Les Miserables", all three candidates were characters of that novel.

Closing Remarks

Well, IBM Watson did well, but missed answered some questions incorrectly. This [parody Slate video] pokes fun at this. Here were some discussions we had after the show ended:

• IBM did not do well in categories that required [abductive reasoning]. For example, to identify two or three things that happened in different years, and then postulate that what they all have in common is a specific decade (such as the 1950s) is difficult.
• Watson does not hear the wrong answers from the two human contestants. For one question, Ken buzzes in first, guesses wrong, then Watson buzzes in with the same exact response. Alex Trebek rebukes Watson with "No, Ken just said that!" Brad would learn from their mistakes and guess correctly for the score.
• Watson is provided the correct answer after a contestant guesses it correctly, or if nobody does, when Alex provides the correct response. This is sent as a text message to Watson immediately, so that it can use this information to adjust its algorithms and machine-learning for future clues in that same category. This was evident in the "Answer panel" on the fourth and fifth attempts on the category of "Decades".

With this demonstration, IBM Research has advanced science by leaps and bounds for the Articial Intelligence community. IBM is a leader in Business Analytics, and this technology will find uses in a variety of industries.  The average knowledge worker spends 30 percent of her time looking for information on corporate data repositories. By demonstrating a computer that can provide answers quickly, employees will be more productive, make stronger business decisions, and have greater insight.

Day 1 was only able to cover the first round of Game 1. This allowed more time to talk about the history and technology of IBM Watson. Tomorrow, the contestants will finish Game 1 and head into Game 2.

technorati tags: IBM, Challenge, Watson, Jeopardy, Calline Sanchez, Delaney Turner

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