I always think of the Chairman’s Address at Interconnect (http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/51881.wss) as the corporate equivalent to the WWDC Keynote. It provides a good view of the direction and focus of IBM and helps me to understand how my working life might change over the coming years.

If you have a couple of hours you can watch it here:

Alternatively, if you only have a couple of minutes, you can read my summary below…

Unsurprisingly (at the Cloud and Cognitive conference) Ginni Rometty opens strongly with her view on how Cloud is changing both business and society and how it is becoming *the* platform for the next era of business. I like to think that the focus on these more holistic values can be attributed (at least in part) to the influence of a BPM culture (via people like Phil Gilbert) within IBM.

In the interview with Bruce Ross they talk about the culture at the Royal Bank of Canada and he declares that if the line of sight between an activity and a tangible business outcome is lost then the need for the activity is immediately reviewed. At another point in the address Ginni talks about a segment of the IT market being $1.4 trillion but corresponding decision management market being over $2 trillion. The take away here is that IBM view Cloud and Cognitive as the bridge from IT (where IBM used to live) into the rest of organisations (where IBM want to go).

So what is Cloud and Cognitive? Everything needs to have a name but these are both vague and broadly interpretable words. Ginni described three tenants (“pillars of the Cloud"):

The remainder of the address comprised five interviews:

AT&T and IBM enjoy a mutually beneficial partnership and this interview showed how (at good companies) many of the fundamentals are becoming ubiquitous. I liked the description of the shift to a mindset where access to data is now noticed by it’s absence (like air). Randall talked about tremendous growth (in everything from data point generation by sensors to video downloads on mobile) and how the Cloud is the only way to keep up. Of the future, he said: "whoever uses the data best wins".

IBM and Salesforce have overlapping visions and values. The partnership should enable something that is greater than the sum of its parts. Salesforce have a world-class CRM platform (i.e. data) and are looking to augment their AI (called “Einstein") with the broader capabilities of Watson (including it’s strength in domain-specific knowledge and learning). I’m finding it hard to summarise this interview and yet it was probably my favourite one. Marc and Ginni are really thinking about the future of the world and the science fiction geek in me is captivated by the prospect of the changes that might unfold in my lifetime as a result of these endeavours.

This was a nice case study about an ambitious company that are using using Cognitive (Watson) in the way that IBM envisage it will be used, to augment man and machine. It’s a good story; people pay less tax because they get the worlds best AI to help give a level of attention and detail that you couldn’t get before.

This interview covered all the tenants but my takeway quote was: “lifestyles not products". Royal Bank of Canada have (with IBM) created an engineering culture with the following values: i. focus on business outcomes, ii. transformation is a way of life and iii. innovation (plan three years ahead). I guess, as a closing interview the message here is that, if you want to succeed moving forward (and lead in your market) you need to change how you work.

IBM are committed to a better, fairer world.

For more news from the conference you should look at: https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressreleases/recent.wss

The new developer tools for financial services looks interesting. As does the stuff on blockchain and the hyperledger.