IBM sees growth of powerful database management systems
"Moving forward, the world we live and compete in will continue to be powered by massive computing capacity," said Tom Kendra, vice president for software of IBM Asia Pacific.
IBM's strategy is to create, leverage and run these technologies to help its clients worldwide become e-businesses.
"We are glad to be part of this exciting event where we will explore and demostrate how the latest technologies can transform and enhance the way we work together," said Kendra.
About 25 percent of IBM's total revenue worldwide comes from e-business. In the second quarter of this year, IBM's revenue from e-commerce amounted to $3 billion which grew by 10 times from 1998.
Just like other vendors, IBM is also selling its products and services on the Web. Its e-care services for clients involves supporting IBM clients via the Web with posted savings of $600 million.
The time to respond to customer inquiries ranges from about 20 minutes to real-time.
Kendra said that IBM's own transaction,using e-procurement solution to the Web, amounted to $3 billion in the first half of the year and would hit $9 billion for the whole of 1999.E-procurement has also facilitated alliances with IBM trading partners and streamlined the procurement process through Internet technology. Its e-care solution for IBM employees has generated savings of up to $80 million in the first semester of 1999.
IBM has also saved some $5 million in paper, while purchase order time was drastically cut to one day from the usual 30 days.
Companies that are transforming into e-businesses are expected to deploy e-business solutions such as customer relations management, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management with focus on their customers.IBM has partnered with companies like SAP, Siebel Systems, Motorola, and Nokia to deliver the complete e-business solution.
It has also unveiled recently its IBM Enterprise Information Portal, the information foundation on which customers and partners can build and deploy portal solutions which focus on information access and integration.
IBM's strategy is to provide an end-to-end e-business solutions with industry partners and promote open standards for "pervasive computing", IBM's moniker for its database management systems. IBM, instead of focusing on just developing the infrastructure, is now engaging with its clients to build pilot solutions in key areas that aims to deliver the promises of pervasive computing.
Dr. George W. Wang, director for IBM China Research and Development revealed several key IBM mobile e-Business projects with its partners.
These are realtime Interactive Travel Service, Grocery Shopping, Mobile Media Distribution Service, Automated and Real Time Stock Trading, Internet Banking with Mobile Phones, Pervasive Computing for SAP, Pervasive Computing Platform for China and Enterprise Application for PDAs (personal digital assistant).