ORLANDO: As one of the technology industry's biggest spenders on research and development, it was no surprise to find IBM showing off a range of projects that staff in its Center for Social Business are busy working on behind the scenes.

The project that most caught V3's eye was its Gamification Engine for the Enterprise product that looks to offer organisations a way to provide staff with a more engaging way to share knowledge or learn new skills.

The interface is heavily reminiscent of geo-location service Foursquare, with users able to acquire badges if they complete certain tasks or goals, as well as comparing their ranking with other users in a certain group or division on a public leaderboard.

The tool lets users earn badges, rewards and compete with co-workers.

Yaniv Corem, a software engineer at IBM, explained to V3 that, thanks to services like Foursquare, staff in organisations are "no strangers to gamification" and that the tool could have several uses within the business community.

"With this tool you can build databases of knowledge on key topics by allowing staff to share information in a competitive and playful way," he said.

Corem added that the firm is considering adding the tool to its Connections platform at some point in the future, but that nothing was guaranteed as yet.

Another tool the firm is working on is its "time-based storytelling" offering Historio, which it has already used itself to gather together information on its 100th anniversary celebrations that took place in 2011 (see image below).

Each blue dot represents a key moment in IBM's history, which links to more information on that topic, including text, images and video.

Jamie Rasmussen, another IBM software engineer, explained the tool could have uses for businesses to document their company’s history to the public, as IBM has done, or for staff to share knowledge of a product's history internally.
 
Another interesting tool the firm was showcasing was a Twitter analysis platform that attempts to gather 'human data' on users of the site to analyse the likelihood of them responding to a question or their interest in a given topic.

"This will help a brand know if it is worth trying to engage with a user, the best questions to ask and whether they should offer an incentive to encourage feedback," IBM research staff member Jeffrey Nichols told V3.

Such projects show that, after 100 years of being one of the biggest technology firms in the world, IBM has no intention of resting on its laurels and is keen to place itself at the heart of the social business revolution taking place in the market.

ORLANDO: With IBM beating the drum on the use of social tools and collaborative software, its chief information officer Jeanette Horan, outlined the firm's own work in these areas, to show it practices what it preaches.

With almost half a million full-time employees (currently around 450,000) IBM has a huge workforce using a vast array of tools, both internally and externally and the figures she revealed are truly astounding:

•    On average 360,000 staff use the firm’s instant messaging platform every day.
•    This generates a staggering 50 million instant messages per day.
•    There are 198,000 members of staff on Facebook.
•    A much smaller 20,000 are on Twitter.
•    LinkedIn Is the most popular platform, though, with 281,000 users.
•    20,000 members of staff run their own internal blog on the firm’s Connections tool.

She also revealed its willingness to shake things up by explaining it runs a reverse-mentoring system in the company where some of the youngest new staff members teach its most senior executives how to use the latest social tools.

However, one area the firm admitted it is still addressing is the growing issue of what should happen to employees' Twitter accounts after they leave the company.
 
Carol Sormilic, vice president global workforce and web processes, explained to V3 that it is an area the firm is currently debating internally, but has yet to reach an answer.

One area where the firm is up and running, though, is letting staff bring their own devices to work after the end of a two-year pilot that involved feedback from 20,000 members of staff, which actually equates to just five per cent of its workforce.

This led to the creation of a set of policies that include an enforced eight-digit password for each device to access the corporate network and Horan revealed that she herself uses her own personal BlackBerry phone as her work device.

On the issue of cloud computing, Horan explained that IBM operates six datacentres to help it run a private cloud computing network as the size of the firm makes this a viable return on investment.

“We have the scale to be able to see the benefits of managing the cloud behind the firewall,” she added.

As well as a fascinating insight into the day-to-day IT demands of a firm the size of IBM, its willingness to embrace new trends and give staff the power to take advantage of new tools may give IT leaders in other, smaller, firms the courage to go forward with their own plans in these areas.

Most business intelligence (BI) firms talk up their mobile strategy in some shape or form, but one company is keeping notably quiet about its agenda, and that's Microsoft.

The small pure-play BI firms, such as QlikTech and Microstrategy, were the first to lead BI into the mobile sphere a couple of years ago.

Since then, many of the stack vendors have followed suit, most notably SAP with Business Objects Mobile in 2010, which is probably the most robust and pervasive mobile offering from all of the stack vendors, and supports the most mobile devices.

IBM follows closely with Cognos Mobile for the BlackBerry and the recent support it added for the iPhone at the end of 2010, while Oracle released Business Intelligence Mobile for devices running iOS earlier this year.

As each firm makes a mobile update, they are heralded as the only way forward for BI.

So what is Microsoft doing? Not much it seems.

Redmond's BI offering is available as part of the Office and SharePoint Server suites, and is built on the SQL Server platform, with Excel providing one of the main BI interfaces for users, as well as the dashboards from SharePoint Server.

When it comes to mobile, though, Microsoft BI runs only on the Windows platform, so that means compatibility with just Windows 7 devices.

Donald Farmer, the former face of Microsoft BI, who has now left to work for QlikView, said that when he left Microsoft in January this year the BI team was not thinking in mobile terms at all.

When asked what Microsoft's BI strategy involves, he replied: "Great question. I wish I knew!"

"Microsoft's mobile strategy is tied up with Windows 7. There was no mobile strategy that filtered down to individual teams while I was there. It's only such a large company that can release a product with no knowledge of its future strategy. You won't find Steve Ballmer losing sleep over BI," he told V3.

One customer, frustrated by Microsoft's lack of mobile strategy, has posted a comment on the company's BI Facebook page.

"What is Microsoft's mobile BI strategy? Please think beyond Windows 7 phones - it must work on all platforms," said Tricia Wilcox Almas.

"This trend is not going away and I need tools now. My clients will abandon their Microsoft bias if there is no offering and others are willing to fill in the gap!"

Microsoft told her that its strategy is to allow partners to build "a host of mobile apps to meet a variety of scenarios".

"You can expect more from us in the phone and slate form factors. More to come," the firm added.

Microsoft could not comment on its mobile BI strategy at the time this story was published, but it wouldn't be surprising to see the firm make an acquisition in the area to build out its capabilities.

The rise of tablet computers such as the iPad marks the beginning of the end for the PC era, IBM has argued on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the first PC.

Mark Dean, IBM's chief technology officer for the Middle East and Africa, said in a blog post that, while the PC has changed the world since its creation, the technology will eventually become obsolete.

"It's amazing to me to think that 12 August marks the 30th anniversary of the IBM Personal Computer. The announcement helped launch a phenomenon that changed the way we work, play and communicate," he said.

"But, while PCs will continue to be much-used devices, they're no longer at the leading edge of computing. They're going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs."

Dean added that, despite IBM's role in the creation of the PC age, the company is adamant that it made the right decision to sell its own PC division to Lenovo.

"It may be odd for me to say this, but I'm also proud IBM decided to leave the personal computer business in 2005," he said.

"While many in the tech industry questioned IBM's decision at the time, it's now clear that our company was in the vanguard of the post-PC era."

Dean's comments make for interesting reading and, in many respects, the era of the PC as the single most important device used by a consumer or business professional is certainly drawing to a close.

However, to suggest that the PC will become a relic of our age, like the typewriter or vinyl record, seems a step too far. This article was written on a PC, it will be read by most people on a PC and PCs are the best tools for mass content creation.

As such V3 contacted Dean to ask if he wrote the blog on a tablet or PC but he confirmed he had indeed written it on a tablet, although suggested he used a traditional keyboard as well.

"I wrote and edited the blog on my tablet. When needed, a bluetooth keyboard can be used to enter larger amounts of information into the tablet," he said.

V3 has several interesting articles relating to this historic anniversary, including the republication of a review of the IBM PC at its launch in 1981.

IBM is to release a predictive analytics application in time for Wimbledon that could give users an idea of which players will win the tournament.

PointStream will be officially revealed next week, and will be available for all court matches shown on Wimbledon.com.

IBM Global Process Services president Andrew Spencer gave a preview of the application at a press event on Wednesday held to mark IBM's centenary.

Spencer said that, based on PointStream's analytics, Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal is a safer bet than Switzerland's Roger Federer to win the men's final.

The application uses real-time data to assess matches in progress and then serves up scores and statistics on the players in a dashboard.

Prior to each match, the application displays 'keys to the match' that provide analysis of both players with head-to-head statistics based on historic data. The analysis will also cover 'keys to winning' points for each player.

IBM produced PointStream by meshing five years' worth of Grand Slam Tournament data, and using IBM SPSS analytics software to mine the data and display the three key elements of each player's game.