IBM Joins with Harley-Davidson for LiveWire

I should have written this piece 40 years ago as a young man fresh out of grad school. Then I was dying for a 1200cc Harley Davidson motorcycle. My mother was dead set against it—she wouldn’t even allow me to play tackle football and has since been vindicated (You win on that, mom.). My father, too, was opposed and wouldn’t help pay for it. I had to settle for a puny little motor scooter that offered zero excitement.

In the decades since I graduated, Harley’s fortunes have plummeted as the HOG (Harley Owners Group) community aged out and few youngsters have picked up the slack. The 1200cc bike I once lusted after probably is now too heavy for me to handle. So, what is Harley to do? Redefine its classic American brand with an electric model, LiveWire.

Courtesy: Harley Davidson, IBM

With LiveWire, Harley expects to remake the motorcycle as a cloud-connected machine and promises to deliver new products for fresh motorcycle segments, broaden engagement with the brand, and strengthen the H-D dealer network. It also boldly proclaimed that Harley-Davidson will lead the electrification of motorcycling.

According to the company, Harley’s LiveWire will leverage H-D Connect, a service (available in select markets), built on thIBM AI, analytics, and IoTe IBM Cloud. This will enable it to deliver new mobility and concierge services today and leverage an expanding use of IBM AI, analytics, and IoT to enhance and evolve the rider’s experience. In order to capture this next generation of bikers, Harley is working with IBM to transform the everyday experience of riding through the latest technologies and features IBM can deliver via the cloud.

Would DancingDinosaur, an aging Harley enthusiast, plunk down the thousands it would take to buy one of these? Since I rarely use my smartphone to do anything more than check email and news, I am probably not a likely prospect for LiveWire.

Will LiveWire save Harley? Maybe; it depends on what the promised services will actually deliver. Already, I can access a wide variety of services through my car but, other than Waze, I rarely use any of those.

According to the joint IBM-Harley announcement, a fully cellular-connected electric motorcycle needed a partner that could deliver mobility solutions that would meet riders’ changing expectations, as well as enhance security. With IBM, Harley hopes to strike a balance between using data to create both intelligent and personal experiences while maintaining privacy and security, said Marc McAllister, Harley-Davidson VP Product Planning and Portfolio in the announcement.

So, based on this description, are you ready to jump to LiveWire? You probably need more details. So far, IBM and Harley have identified only three:

1. Powering The Ride: LiveWire riders will be able to check bike vitals at any time and from any location. Information available includes features such as range, battery health, and charge level. Motorcycle status features will also support the needs of the electric bike, such as the location of charging stations. Also riders can see their motorcycle’s current map location.  Identifying charging stations could be useful.
2. Powering Security: An alert will be sent to the owner’s phone if the motorcycle has been bumped, tampered, or moved. GPS-enabled stolen-vehicle assistance will provide peace of mind that the motorcycle’s location can be tracked. (Requires law enforcement assistance. Available in select markets).
3. Powering Convenience: Reminders about upcoming motorcycle service requirements and other care notifications will be provided. In addition, riders will receive automated service reminders as well as safety or recall notifications.

“The next generation of Harley-Davidson riders will demand a more engaged and personalized customer experience,” said Venkatesh Iyer, Vice President, North America IoT and Connected Solutions, Global Business Services, IBM. Introducing enhanced capabilities, he continues, via the IBM Cloud will not only enable new services immediately, but will also provide a roadmap for the journey ahead. (Huh?)

As much as DancingDinosaur aches for Harley to come roaring back with a story that will win the hearts of the HOG users who haven’t already drifted away Harley will need more than the usual buzzwords, trivial apps, and cloud hype.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at technologywriter.com.

12 Ingredients for App Modernization

It is no surprise that IBM has become so enamored with the hybrid cloud. The worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 21.4 percent in 2018 to total $186.4 billion, up from $153.5 billion in 2017, according to Gartner.

The fastest-growing segment of the market is cloud system infrastructure services (IaaS), which is forecast to grow 35.9 percent in 2018 to reach $40.8 billion. Gartner expects the top 10 providers, often referred to as hyperscalers, to account for nearly 70 percent of the IaaS market by 2021, up from 50 percent in 2016.

Cloud computing is poised to become a “turbocharged engine powering digital transformation around the world,” states a recent Forrester report, Predictions 2019: Cloud Computing. Overall, the global cloud computing market, including cloud platforms, business services, and SaaS, will exceed $200 billion this year, expanding at more than 20%, the research firm predicts

Venkats’ recipe for app modernization; courtesy of IBM

Hybrid clouds, which include two or more cloud providers or platforms, are emerging as the preferred approach for enterprises.  Notes IBM: The digital economy is forcing organizations to a multi-cloud environment. Three of every four enterprises have already implemented more than one cloud. The growth of cloud portfolios in enterprises demands an agnostic cloud management platform — one that not only provides automation, provisioning and orchestration, but also monitors trends and usage to prevent outages. No surprise here; IBM just happens to offer hybrid cloud management.

By the start of 2019, the top seven cloud providers are AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, VMWare Cloud on AWS, Oracle Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud. These top players have been shifting positions around in 2018 and expect more shifting to continue this year and probably for years to come.

Clients, notes Venkat, are discovering that the real value of Cloud comes in a hybrid, multi-cloud world. In this model, legacy applications are modernized with a real microservices architecture and with AI embedded in the application. He does not fully explain where the AI comes from and how it is embedded. Maybe I missed something.

Driving this interest for the next couple of years, at least, is interest in application modernization. Companies are discovering that the real value comes through a hybrid multicloud. Here legacy applications are modernized through a real microservices architecture enhanced with AI embedded in the application, says Meenagi Venkat, Vice President of Technical Sales & Solutioning, at IBM Cloud. Venkat wrote what he calls a 12-ingredient recipe for application modernization here. Dancing Dinosaur will highlight a couple of the ingredients below. Click the proceeding link to see them all.

To begin, when you modernize a large portfolio of several thousand applications in a large enterprise, you need some common approaches. At the same time, the effort must allow teams to evolve to a microservices-based organization where each microservice is designed and delivered with great independence.

Start by fostering a startup culture. Fostering a startup culture that allows for fast failure is one of the most critical ingredients when approaching a large modernization program. The modernization will involve sunsetting some applications, breaking some down, and using partner services in others. A startup culture based on methods such as IBM Garage Method and Design Thinking will help bring the how-to of the culture shift.

Then, innovate via product design Venkat continues. A team heavy with developers and no product folks is likely to focus on the technical coolness rather than product innovation. Hence, these teams should be led by the product specialists who deliver the business case for new services or client experience

And don’t neglect security. Secure DevOps will require embedding security skills in the scrum teams with a product owner leading the team. The focus on the product and on designing security (and compliance) to various regimes at the start will allow the scaling of microservices and engender trust in the data and AI layers. Venkat put this after design and the startup culture. In truth, this should be a key part of the startup culture.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at technologywriter.com.

IBM Introduces Cloud Private to Hybrid Clouds

When you have enough technologies lying around your basement, sometimes you can cobble a few pieces together, mix it with some sexy new stuff and, bingo, you have something that meets a serious need of a number of disparate customers. That’s essentially what IBM did with Cloud Private, which it announced Nov. 1.

IBM staff test Cloud Private automation software

IBM intended Cloud Private to enable companies to create on-premises cloud capabilities similar to public clouds to accelerate app dev. Don’t think it as just old stuff; the new platform is built on the open source Kubernetes-based container architecture and supports both Docker containers and Cloud Foundry. This facilitates integration and portability of workloads, enabling them to evolve to almost any cloud environment, including—especially—the public IBM Cloud.

Also IBM announced container-optimized versions of core enterprise software, including IBM WebSphere Liberty, DB2 and MQ – widely used to run and manage the world’s most business-critical applications and data. This makes it easier to share data and evolve applications as needed across the IBM Cloud, private, public clouds, and other cloud environments with a consistent developer, administrator, and user experience.

Cloud Private amounts to a new software platform, which relies on open source container technology to unlock billions of dollars in core data and applications incorporating legacy software like WebSphere and Db2. The purpose is to extend cloud-native tools across public and private clouds. For z data centers that have tons of valuable, reliable working systems years away from being retired, if ever, Cloud Private may be just what they need.

Almost all enterprise systems vendors are trying to do the same hybrid cloud computing enablement. HPE, Microsoft, Cisco, which is partnering with Google on this, and more. This is a clear indication that the cloud and especially the hybrid cloud is crossing the proverbial chasm. In years past IT managers and C-level executives didn’t want anything to do with the cloud; the IT folks saw it as a threat to their on premises data center and the C-suite was scared witless about security.

Those issues haven’t gone away although the advent of hybrid clouds have mitigated some of the fears among both groups. Similarly, the natural evolution of the cloud and advances in hybrid cloud computing make this more practical.

The private cloud too is growing. According to IBM, while public cloud adoption continues to grow at a rapid pace, organizations, especially in regulated industries of finance and health care, are continuing to leverage private clouds as part of their journey to public cloud environments to quickly launch and update applications. This also is what is driving hybrid clouds. IBM estimates companies will spend more than $50 billion globally starting in 2017 to create and evolve private clouds with growth rates of 15 to 20 percent a year through 2020, according to IBM market projections.

The problem facing IBM and the other enterprise systems vendors scrambling for hybrid clouds is how to transition legacy systems into cloud native systems. The hybrid cloud in effect acts as facilitating middleware. “Innovation and adoption of public cloud services has been constrained by the challenge of transitioning complex enterprise systems and applications into a true cloud-native environment,” said Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President for IBM Hybrid Cloud and Director of IBM Research. IBM’s response is Cloud Private, which brings rapid application development and modernization to existing IT infrastructure while combining it with the service of a public cloud platform.

Hertz adopted this approach. “Private cloud is a must for many enterprises such as ours working to reduce or eliminate their dependence on internal data centers,” said Tyler Best, Hertz Chief Information Officer.  A strategy consisting of public, private and hybrid cloud is essential for large enterprises to effectively make the transition from legacy systems to cloud.

IBM is serious about cloud as a strategic initiative. Although not as large as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Service (AWS) in the public cloud, a recent report by Synergy Research found that IBM is a major provider of private cloud services, making the company the third-largest overall cloud provider.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Please follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog. See more of his IT writing at technologywriter.com and here.

IBM and Northern Trust Collaborate on Blockchain for Private Equity Markets

At a briefing for IT analysts, IBM laid out how it sees blockchain working in practice. Surprisingly, the platform for the Hyperledger effort was not x86 but LinuxONE due to its inherent security.  As the initiative grows the z-based LinuxONE can also deliver the performance, scalability, and reliability the effort eventually will need too.

IBM describes its collaboration with Northern Trust and other key stakeholders as the first commercial deployment of blockchain technology for the private equity market. Although as the private equity market stands now the infrastructure supporting private equity has seen little innovation in recent years even as investors seek greater transparency, security, and efficiency. Enter the open LinuxONE platform, the Hyperledger fabric, and Unigestion, a Geneva, Switzerland-based asset manager with $20 billion in assets under management.

IBM Chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty discusses  blockchain at Sibos

The new initiative, as IBM explains it, promises a new and comprehensive way to access and visualize data.  Blockchain captures and stores information about every transaction and investment as meta data. It also captures details about relevant documents and commitments. Hyperledger itself is a logging tool that creates an immutable record.

The Northern Trust effort connects business logic, legacy technology, and blockchain technology using a combination of Java/JavaScript and IBMs blockchain product. It runs on IBM Bluemix (cloud) using IBM’s Blockchain High Security Business Network. It also relies on key management to ensure record/data isolation and enforce geographic jurisdiction. In the end it facilitates managing the fund lifecycle more efficiently than the previous primarily paper-based process.

More interesting to DancingDinosaur is the selection of the z through LinuxONE and blockchain’s use of storage.  To begin with blockchain is not really a database. It is more like a log file, but even that is not quite accurate because “it is a database you play as a team sport,” explained Arijit Das, Senior Vice President, FinTech Solutions, at the analyst briefing. That means you don’t perform any of the usual database functions; no deletes or updates, just appends.

Since blockchain is an open technology, you actually could do it on any x86 Linux machine, but DancingDinosaur readers probably wouldn’t want to do that. Blockchain essentially ends up being a distributed group activity and LinuxONE is unusually well optimized for the necessary security. It also brings scalability, reliability, and high performance along with the rock-solid security of the latest mainframe. In general LinuxONE can handle 8000 virtual servers in a single system and tens of thousands of containers. Try doing that with an x86 machine or even dozens.   You can read more on LinuxONE that DancingDinosaur wrote when it was introduced here and here.

But you won’t need near that scalability with the private equity application, at least at first. Blockchain gets more interesting when you think about storage. Blockchain has the potential to generate massive numbers of files fast, but that will only happen when it is part of, say, a supply chain with hundreds, or more likely, thousands of participating nodes on the chain and those nodes are very active. More likely for private equity trading, certainly at the start, blockchain will handle gigabytes of data and maybe only megabytes at first. This is not going to generate much revenue for IBM storage. A little bit of flash could probably do the trick.

Today, current legal and administrative processes that support private equity are time consuming and expensive, according to Peter Cherecwich, president of Corporate & Institutional Services at Northern Trust. They lack transparency while inefficient market practices leads to lengthy, duplicative and fragmented investment and administration processes. Northern Trust’s solution based on blockchain and Hyperledger, however, promises to deliver a significantly enhanced and efficient approach to private equity administration.

Just don’t expect to see overnight results. In fact, you can expect more inefficiency since the new blockchain/Hyperledger-based system is running in parallel with the disjointed manual processes. Previous legacy systems remain; they are not yet being replaced. Still, IBM insists that blockchain is an ideal technology to bring innovation to the private equity market, allowing Northern Trust to improve traditional business processes at each stage to deliver greater transparency and efficiency. Guess we’ll just have to wait and watch.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Please follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog. See more of his IT writing at technologywriter.com and here.

 

IBM Puts Blockchain on the z System for a Disruptive Edge

Get ready for Blockchain to alter your z-based transaction environment. Blockchain brings a new class of distributed ledger applications. Bitcoin, the first Blockchain system to grab mainstream data center attention, is rudimentary compared to what the Linux Foundation’s open HyperledgerProject will deliver.

As reported in CIO Magazine, Blockchain enables a distributed ledger technology with ability to settle transactions in seconds or minutes automatically via computers. This is a faster, potentially more secure settlement process than is used today among financial institutions, where clearing houses and other third-party intermediaries validate accounts and identities over a few days. Financial services, as well as other industries, are exploring blockchain for conducting transactions as diverse as trading stock, buying diamonds, and streaming music.

IBM in conjunction with the Linux Foundation’s HyperledgerProject expects the creation and management of Blockchain network services to power a new class of distributed ledger applications. With the HyperLedger and Blockchain developers could create digital assets and accompanying business logic to more securely and privately transfer assets among members of a permissioned Blockchain network running on IBM LinuxONE or Linux on z.

In addition, IBM will introduce fully integrated DevOps tools for creating, deploying, running and monitoring Blockchain applications on the IBM Cloud and enable applications to be deployed on IBM z Systems. Furthermore, by using Watson as part of an IoT platform IBM intends to make possible information from devices such as RFID-based locations, barcode-scan events, or device-recorded data to be used with IBM Blockchain apps. Clearly, IBM is looking at Blockchain for more than just electronic currency. In fact, Blockchain will enable a wide range of secure transactions between parties without the use of intermediaries, which should speed transaction flow. For starters, the company brought to the effort 44,000 lines of code as a founding member of the Linux Foundation’s HyperledgerProject

The z, with its rock solid reputation for no-fail, extreme high volume and performance, and secure processing, is a natural for Blockchain applications and system. In the process it brings the advanced cryptography, security, and reliability of the z platform. No longer content just to handle traditional backend systems-of-record processing IBM is pushing to bring the z into new areas that leverage the strength and flexibility of today’s mainframe.  As IoT ramps up expect the z to handle escalating volumes of IoT traffic, mobile traffic, and now blockchain distributed ledger traffic.  Says IBM: “We intend to support clients looking to deploy this disruptive technology at scale, with performance, availability and security.” That statement has z written all over it.

Further advancing the z into new areas, IBM reemphasized its advantages through built-in hardware accelerators for hashing and digital signatures, tamper-proof security cards, unlimited random keys to encode transactions, and integration to existing business data with Smart Contract APIs. IBM believes the z could take blockchain performance to new levels with the world’s fastest commercial processor, which is further optimized through the use of hundreds of internal processors. The highly scalable I/O system can handle massive amounts of transactions and the optimized network between virtual systems in a z Systems cloud can speed up blockchain peer communications.

An IBM Blockchain DevOps service will also enable blockchain applications to be deployed on the z, ensuring an additional level of security, availability and performance for handling sensitive and regulated data. Blockchain applications can access existing transactions on distributed servers and z through APIs to support new payment, settlement, supply chain, and business processes.

Use Blockchain on the z to create and manage Blockchain networks to power the emerging new classes of distributed ledger applications.  According to IBM, developers can create digital assets and the accompanying business logic to more securely and privately transfer assets among members of a permissioned Blockchain network. Using fully integrated DevOps tools for creating, deploying, running, and monitoring Blockchain applications on IBM Cloud, data centers can enable applications to be deployed on the z. Through the Watson IoT Platform, IBM will make it possible for information from devices such as RFID-based locations, barcode scans, or device-recorded data to be used with IBM Blockchain.

However, Blockchain remains nascent technology. Although the main use cases already are being developed and deployed many more ideas for blockchain systems and applications are only just being articulated. Nobody, not even the Linux Foundation, knows what ultimately will shake out. Blockchain enables developers to easily build secure distributed ledgers that can be used to exchange most anything of value fast and securely. Now is the time for data center managers at z shops to think what they might want to do with such extremely secure transactions on their z.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst and writer. Please follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog. See more of his IT writing at technologywriter.com and here.

 

IBM Simplifies Internet of Things with developerWorks Recipes

IBM has a penchant for working through communities going back as far as Eclipse and probably before. Last week DancingDinosaur looked at the developerWorks Open community. Now let’s look at the IBM’s developerWorks Recipes community intended to address the Internet of Things (IoT).

TI SensorTag

The Recipes community  will try to help developers – from novice to experienced – quickly and easily learn how to connect IoT devices to the cloud and how to use data coming from those connected devices. For example one receipe walks you through Connecting the TI Simplelink SensorTag (pictured above) to the IBM IoT foundation service in a few simple step. By following these steps a developer, according to IBM, should be able to connect the SensorTag to the IBM quickstart cloud service in less than 3 minutes. Think of recipes as simplified development patterns—so simple that almost anyone could follow it. (Wanted to try it myself but didn’t have a tag.  Still, it looked straightfoward enough.)

IoT is growing fast. Gartner forecasts 4.9 billion connected things in use in 2015, up 30% from 2014, and will reach 25 billion by 2020. In terms of revenue, this is huge. IDC predicts the worldwide IoT market to grow from $655.8 billion in 2014 to $1.7 trillion in 2020, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.9%. For IT people who figure out how to do this, the opportunity will be boundless. Every organization will want to connect its devices to other devices via IoT. The developerWorks Recipes community seems like a perfect way to get started.

IoT isn’t exactly new. Manufacturers have cobbled together machine-to-machine (M2M) networks Banks and retailers have assembled networks of ATMs and POS terminals. DancingDinosaur has been writing about IoT for mainframe shops for several years.  Now deveoperWorks Recipes promises a way for just about anyone to set up their own IoT easily and quickly while leveraging the cloud in the process. There is a handful of recipes now but it provides a mechanism to add recipes so expect the catalog of recipes to steadily increase. And developers are certain to take existing recipes and improvise on them.

IBM has been trying to simplify  development for cloud, mobile, IoT starting with the launch of Bluemix last year. By helping users connect their IoT devices to IBM Bluemix, which today boasts more than 100 open-source tools and services, users can then run advanced analytics, utilize machine learning, and tap into additional Bluemix services to accelerate the adoption of  IoT and more.

As easy as IBM makes IoT development sound this is a nascent effort industry wide. There is a crying need for standards at every level to facilitate the interoperability and data exchange among the many and disparate devices, networks, and applications that will make up IoT.  Multiple organizations have initiated standards efforts but it will take some time to sort it all out.

And then there is the question of security. In a widely reported experiment by Wired Magazine  hackers were able to gain control of a popular smart vehicle. Given that cars are expected to be a major medium for IoT and every manufacturer is rushing to jam as much smart componentry into their vehicles you can only hope every automaker is  scrambling for security solutions .

Home appliances represent another fat, lucrative market target for manufacturers that want to embed intelligent devices and IoT into their all products. What if hackers access your automatic garage door opener? Or worse yet, what if they turn off your coffee maker and water heater? Could you start the day without a hot shower and cup of freshly brewed coffee and still function?

Running IoT through secure clouds like the IBM Cloud is part of the solution. And industry-specific clouds intended for IoT already are being announced, much like the Internet exchanges of a decade or two ago. Still, more work needs to be done on security and interoperability standards if IoT is to work seamlessly and broadly to achieve the trillions of dollars of economic value projected for it.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran IT analyst and writer. Please follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog. See more of his IT writing at technologywriter.com and here.