IBM Canada Ltd. (NYSE: IBM) is encouraging its channel partners to be more innovative as a part of its global Smarter Planet and Smarter Cities initiatives.
Smarter Planet is IBM’s vision to help deliver hardware, software and services that provide solutions for customers so they can be more efficient, no matter what they’re doing and no matter where they live.
Bruce Maule, worldwide director of business partner programs at IBM, said in a previous Webcast that Smarter Planet is designed to help integrate the physical and digital worlds together.
“Smarter Planet is a dialogue that we want our partners to have with the marketplace,” Maule said. “It’s where IT technology has a fundamental and transformational change on the world.”
As part of Smarter Planet, there are several subcategories which include areas such as Smarter Cities, Smarter Public Safety, Smarter Education, Smarter Government, and more.
Paul McCullough, business unit executive for Public Safety at IBM Canada, said the company’s view of Smarter Cities is that together, with the help of its channel partners, cities and the systems that are within cities can be better optimized.
“In a city, there are a compact level of systems which include things like sewage, hydro, social services, etc.,” McCullough said. “All these systems interact but they’re not necessarily instrumented to work in an interconnected and intelligent way.”
In the public safety and government sectors, McCullough said partners play a significant role to these organizations, whether it’s from an infrastructure, hardware, software, or application standpoint.
“What IBM brings to the table is the integration capabilities and the hardware, and middleware for facilitating software,” McCullough said. “We depend on our partners for the delivery of things such as specialized application codes and software for things such as situational awareness.”
Police departments, such as the Edmonton Police Service, with help from IBM and MB Services Inc., a local Cognos business intelligence partner, are using analytics technology so they can view relevant information, even before a crime may be committed. Using this technology, the police are able to see data close to real-time to prevent any malevolent behaviour.
One of the main challenges in government departments is that data sits in fragmented environments and are often dispersed.
“Data is not interconnected and it’s not being collated into a fashion that can be examined in an intelligent way,” McCullough said. “Partners can help by creating better connections between these data inputs so employees can analyze them in a timely and efficient manner.”
As we move into the New Year, McCullough said IBM continues to encourage its partner community to be innovative with their solutions to help deliver on the Smarter Planet and Smarter Cities initiatives.