Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

IBM CEO Palmisano: Transportation needs collaboration, better standards

By | May 5, 2010, 9:30am PDT

Summary: IBM CEO Sam Palmisano stumped for transportation systems that enable collaboration between major players and governments, standards and better network designs.

IBM CEO Sam Palmisano on Wednesday stumped for transportation systems that enable collaboration between major players and governments, standards and better network designs.

Speaking at the Intelligent Transportation Society of America annual meeting, Palmisano said the industry needed the following:

Traveler centric transportation networks to handle commuters and freight. These systems would allow users to control their routes, modes of transportation and utilize real-time data. These systems “would connect and collect the data of vehicles, government agencies, freight carriers, travel service providers, weather patterns and even individuals using social media,” said Palmisano. Analytics would ride on top of this data.

IBM is pushing into the transportation industry and running into a bevy of industry specific players. Technology companies see industries like transportation and utilities as a potential growth market.

Standards to connect transportation processes and data flow.

More collaboration to fix traffic problems and coordinate networks.

Palmisano’s point was that the technology exists to make better transportation networks, but there needs to be focus on the mission.

In addition, IBM announced two transportation deals. Among them:

  • Big Blue said it has formed a partnership with the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), a university-based research agency, to collaborate on “intelligent transportation projects.” These projects would research technology and innovations that could solve transportation problems in Texas and beyond.
  • The company said that it will work with the Finnish Transport Agency to analyze road and traffic data and improve road management.

Related: Talking high-speed railways with Invensys Rail’s Kevin Riddett

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Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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