Supply Chain Management: Smarter planet through smarter asset management

IBM’s annual service management fest Pulse concluded last week in Las Vegas (21st – 24th Feb 2010). What an event! This was one of the most well organized events I have attended thus far. While the attendance was close to around 5000+ customers and business partners (1000+), it felt like being in an Oracle Open World which usually has 30,000+ attendees. Sessions were well organized and distributed across tracks. I especially liked the separation of topics between general session and the track session. The general sessions were very helpful in providing overall IBM’s approach in the service management space.

The key theme this year was presentation of ISM – Integrated Services Management – as a key enabler of growth in the emerging economy. Positioning ISM in “Smarter Planet” backdrop was perfect and IBM sealed it with Al Gore’s keynote speech in the opening general session on Day1 (22nd Feb) of the event – there couldn’t have been a better candidate to endorse it. While (at least ) I went in to primarily to listen to Al Gore, I was impressed by the sessions before the keynote speech driving clearly how ISM enables service management. The “Smarter City” session (Chesapeake, VA, Venetian , Las Vegas, Swiss Federal Railways) by Laura Sanders and team performed in dramatic setting was quite impactful in driving home the point smarter service management backbone and smarter asset management can offer significant value to all constituents – reduced cost, reduced energy / carbon footprint, smarter / intelligent infrastructure which can proactively detect and correct disruptions.

From technology perspective, combining Asset Management (Maximo) with Security, Storage Network Management and Automation the projected ISM services market offers significant potential to tap into for technology service providers and create new innovative solutions combining these various nuggets of the emerging service management systems.

However this may not translate into equal opportunities across all industry sectors(which is recognized by IBM and the ISM bundle is being offered with specific Industry solutions template). My view is that this will be relatively easier for Energy & Utility services where the core business operations itself is very asset intensive, than some of the other sub-sectors in manufacturing (especially high tech which is heavily outsourced). Nonetheless, this is still a paradigm to pay attention to and even in Manufacturing there is significant potential to offer great bottom line results through smarter asset management – especially in Auto and Industrial manufacturing sectors which have large number of physical assets.

Though sessions were focused on IT implementation and upgrade of Maximo, GM and Ford’s sessions provided some useful insights into how smarter asset management can help in minimizing operations cost.

Overall I think IBM has found the perfect groove to drive new business growth leveraging service management in the increasingly device oriented world which is not only there to stay but grow and explode. My view is that this new frontier will provide IBM with significant inroads back into the technology business which was lost in the battle of enterprise applications dominated by SAP and Oracle today.

Did you visit Pulse this year? Would love to hear your thoughts and comments.