IBM’s System z solution promises a smarter İstanbul

One can extend this list as long as the imagination allows, but these dreams are no longer just imagination thanks to the IBM’s “Smarter Planet” initiative, which renders it possible to achieve maximum efficiency for extremely complex situations thanks to the capacities offered by highly developed computing technologies.

Ray Jones, the vice president of IBM Software Group’s worldwide System z software sales division, believes the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality should seriously consider cooperation with IBM to establish and launch a Smarter Planet application to make the city more habitable. Taking traffic congestion as a simple example, he said the problem could be permanently solved using IBM technology.

In an interview with Let’s Talk Business, Jones recalled several similar uses of the Smarter Planet initiative. He visited Johannesburg last month to talk business with the local administration and offer them a viable solution for that city’s chronic traffic problems. “In their particular case, they decided that the initial Smarter Planet initiative was more appropriate for lowering the crime rate. They have a traffic problem, but they see the crime rate as a bigger problem, especially in the streets,” Jones said.

The initiative was first introduced to the public in November 2008 by IBM Chairman, CEO and President Sam J. Palmisano at a special meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations. The idea has developed significantly since then and today finds much use. For instance, it is employed in finance; constructing huge residential and office complexes; providing better transportation, water management and power grid systems for cities; developing better education technology; finding methods to produce safer, cheaper and better food; and many other fields. The Smarter Planet initiative even has something to offer companies that wish to bring in more revenue from marketing their products.

Jones mentions two examples to clarify what the Smarter Planet initiative really promises. In the Stockholm case, IBM installed a system to ease traffic problems. Each license plate in Stockholm has a radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip embedded in it so that the system can find out what car goes where and how often. “As part of this, we capture analytical data so we can continue to analyze traffic patterns as they evolve to make continual improvements in the system,” Jones explained.

IBM is involved in a similar endeavor with the city of New York, which, like Johannesburg, is working on lowering its crime rate.

System z: a key to hybrid structures

Heavy workloads require the existence of unprecedented technology to collect, weave and analyze the colossal amounts of zeroes and ones. Jones said System z is a crucial element that brings what is stored in the deep imagination into reality by allowing these two separate systems to run together.

The IBM manager says System z is at its highest level. “What System z does very well is provide a set quality of service. It is extremely available, very secure and very capable.”

System z does not do all the work, but it does play an integral role. In Stockholm, it does the billing for the tolls, and in New York City, it stores sensitive information on the mainframe. Since only certain eyes are authorized to see information about crime, it pumps the data into the system and does the analytics to -- among other things -- anticipate a possible event and enable the police to prepare before the event happens. Reminded of the similarity of this process to what was criticized in the feature film “Minority Report,” he drew attention to a basic difference, saying, “This is very real.”

The z10 is the current version of System z, and IBM’s engineers are working hard these days to launch the most up-to-date version. IBM has 12 customers in Turkey for its System z environment from various sectors, including finance, government, telecommunications, petroleum, transportation and energy.

The company spent $1.4 billion to develop the latest implementation of the mainframes, very large computers -- also called the “Big Iron” -- mainly used by large organizations for critical applications. “We typically have a new generation of mainframes every two-and-a-half years, so it is a very large investment that we repeat on a regular basis,” Jones noted. From the software perspective, however, the company has over 7,000 developers whose only mission is to develop software for the System z.

He went into some technical details to bring about a clearer image of what System z is and what it does. It is a conscious initiative that starts with the design of the microprocessor, which provides very large amounts of caching and which is very important for input and output to manage large amounts of data. And equally important, it has a function embedded right into the microprocessor to ensure security. A piece of the microprocessor is solely employed for recovery such that the machine can anticipate a failing component and isolate it before it takes the system down.

Jones says the company has dedicated substantial amounts of the operating system to quality of service. There are extensive programming algorithms in the operating system to ensure a very high level of security, he noted, underlining that “System z has never been hacked” despite endless assaults by ingenious hackers from all around the world.

He likens the system to a maze: “If you want to get a piece of information, you have to run through the maze to get to it. The hardware, the operating system and the middleware are constantly sensing who might be trying to run the maze to get to the data and how far into the maze they got. And then based on a set of policies in the system’s management section, the system can make the decision itself kick out the intruder. And then it reconfigures the way the maze is built so that they have to start from the beginning and try to figure out all over again how to get a piece of cheese.”

New version around the corner

The company is now making the final touches to the newest version of System z. This version has yet to be named. Jones revealed some technical details about the latest release, saying it would be a direct derivative of IBM’s power microprocessor. It will have a very high clock speed and a much larger cache. It will have more real estate on the microprocessor to function and, additionally, the core machine itself will continue to deliver a substantial increase in price performance over the prior generation. The new system will also be properly designed in accordance with the needs of hybrid structures to support more and different kinds of workloads.

“We are eager to work with more customers because the more we work with them, the more we learn, the smarter we get and the better the system we build,” he said.