Information technology giant IBM has opened a new global delivery center in Cebu as it expands its application services (AS) operations in the Philippines.

The new hub will complement IBM’s delivery center for AS in Manila, which was launched in 2003.

“Global integration is about tapping into the best skills and capabilities from across the globe and delivering them where needed. Cebu was chosen because it offers a conducive infrastructure and a wealth of talent,” IBM Philippines general manager James Velasquez said in a statement.

“As an integral part of IBM’s strategic network of delivery centers, the team in the Philippines provides a full range of end-to-end consulting, systems integration, and application development and maintenance solutions to many valued customers around the world,” added Lula Mohanty, director for Philippines Global Delivery of IBM Global Business Services.

For her part, Cebu governor Gwendolyn Garcia said, “The launch of this new IBM global delivery center site in Cebu signals the strong confidence global businesses have in Cebu and its people.”

In the last 5 years, IBM said it has grown its workforce in the Philippines to over 7,000, providing services to both the domestic and export markets.

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FirstCall/ — IBM ( IBM) today announced that it has signed an eight-year agreement with Essex County Council to help the Council deliver enhanced services and savings to achieve its declared vision of providing the best quality of life in Britain for its residents.

As strategic partner, IBM will provide a range of transformation services that may include the design, management and delivery of front-end customer services, back-office and corporate systems; together with business consulting and technology.

As part of the agreement, IBM and Essex also today announced the signing of the first two projects, which are the initial stages of the transformation program and will involve the modernization of the Council’s back-office function and streamlining of procurement.

Brendon Riley, Chief Executive of IBM UK and Ireland said, “Essex County Council is recognized as one of the most innovative councils in the UK. Drawing on IBM expertise, we will work closely with the Council as it moves towards a more efficient, customer-focused organization that delivers first class front-line services.”

Leader of Essex County Council, Lord Hanningfield said, “IBM has demonstrated its ability to help us deliver our vision of providing the very best quality of service for our residents. Working together we will also be able to keep council tax low and deliver real value for money for Essex residents. This is the most ambitious project that the Council has undertaken, and finding the right partner to help us deliver it is a vitally important step.”
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A group of companies is starting up an Enterprise Cloud Buyers Council in hopes of removing barriers to enterprise use of hosted cloud computing.

Initial members include companies that offer hosted cloud computing as well as enterprises that use such services, including Microsoft, IBM, HP, Cisco, AT&T, BT, EMC, Deutsche Bank, Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs, CA, Nokia Siemens Networks, Telecom Italia and Telstra. Two industry organizations, Distributed Management Task Force and the IT Service Management Forum, are also involved. The TM Forum, an industry association that helps information and communications companies create profitable services, came up with the idea of the council.

One important issue that the council will try to address is the current fear among enterprises of vendor lock-in, said Gary Bruce, a principal researcher at BT. The council may decide to work on standards-based solutions around various layers of cloud computing, including the virtualization, management and control layers, so that enterprises can more easily port their projects from one cloud computing vendor to another, he said.

In addition, enterprises are often concerned about security and reliability, he said.

“It might be that a full technical solution is needed, or it might be that education is needed,” he said. The council will study the issues and decide how best to address them, he said.

The council may also develop programs for dealing with cloud performance and latency issues

Noticeably absent from the initial list of members is Amazon, a leader in cloud computing services. A spokeswoman for Amazon did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Separately, however, Amazon is also trying to remove barriers to using hosted cloud computing. On Tuesday, it released a cost comparison calculator. The spreadsheet lets companies input information about their data needs, and then it compares the cost of using Amazon EC2, hosting the project internally or using a co-location facility. Amazon also released a white paper that outlines the direct and indirect costs of running a data center.

IBM and Microsoft did not reply to requests for comment about their involvement in the council. BT is currently developing a cloud computing service called BT Koala.

The TM Forum is hosting a Web conference on Dec. 16 to offer more details about the council.
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IBM continued its push into the business analytics market Tuesday with the opening of a research center dedicated to developing tools designed to give federal agencies and other government organizations the means to more efficiently use data in public policy decision making.

The IBM Analytics Solution Center, in Washington, D.C., will employ more than 400 consultants with expertise in social services, education, transportation, border management and other areas of concern to policy makers. It will also house a research staff that focuses on advanced software architectures and related technical specialties.

The goal is to help government decision makers improve delivery of public services, IBM officials said.

“Just as analytics is being widely adopted in corporate America to help companies achieve their business goals, there are almost limitless opportunities for the public sector to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and overall performance through analytics,” said Anne Altman, general manager for IBM’s Global Public Sector group, in a statement.

“This center will enable greater collaboration on projects that leverage data in real time to aid in decision making and enhance citizens’ lives,” said Altman.

Business analytics combines database mining with statistical analysis and other techniques to help organizations detect important patterns and trends from raw information such as sales, inventory levels, loss frequency, and returns. 83% of CIOs surveyed in a recent IBM study said business analytics was their top priority in terms of enhancing their employers’ competitiveness.

Among the business analytics-driven projects IBM has undertaken with the federal government is an effort under which the company teamed with the Social Security Administration and MedVirginia to develop an electronic records exchange system.

The system uses predictive modeling to identify the disability claims that can be processed most quickly. IBM said the setup could reduce the time applicants must wait for a decision on disability payments from months to weeks.

The D.C. center joins other IBM facilities focused on applying business analytics to various industries. The company last week announced the opening of a research center dedicated to developing tools that will allow healthcare professionals to more efficiently use data in medical decision making.

IBM’s Health Analytics Solution Center, based in Dallas, will employ more than 100 experts in healthcare analytics, technical architectures, and other, related specialties. IBM earlier this week announced the opening of a business analytics center in Bangalore, India.

IBM operates, or plans to operate, other such centers in Berlin, Beijing, New York, Tokyo, and London.

We’ve already established that your favorite tech company, from Apple to HP to Nintendo, and everyone in between, is being pressured to go green. While some of the tactics may be a bit silly, I think it’s safe to say that you’d rather see these companies green than not green, right? It makes us feel good about ourselves, that even though we’re buying hunks of plastic and metal—Lord knows what chemicals are in these things—the company in question is trying to make everything as environmentally friendly as possible. In the spotlight today is IBM, which continues to develop technology that could, one day, lead to zero-emission data centers.

The key to such data centers lies in a new cooling technology that IBM is currently toying around with.

Says Bruno Michel, an IBM research manager:

High-performance liquid cooling allows data centers to operate with coolant temperatures above the free cooling limit in all climates, eliminating the need for chillers and allowing the thermal energy to be reused in cold climates. [In so doing, Michel] demonstrated the removal of 85 percent of the heat load from high-performance compute nodes at a temperature of 60 degrees Celsius and compared their energy and emission balance with a classical air-cooled data center, a data center with free cooling in a cold climate zone and a data center with chiller-mediated energy reuse.

In other words, thanks to this fancy new cooling technology, IBM has to use less energy than it otherwise would have it.

The whole system reuses about 75 percent of the energy initially put into it. It’s that loss of only around 25 percent that makes the whole thing so efficient.

In other news, I have a massive headache. Is there an App for that?