Today in India only 7 percent of the population has access to the Web, but at the same time mobile phones and services are becoming increasingly affordable and reliable, creating the emergence of a Mobile Web and opening the door for citizens to access important government services through their phones.

Recognizing this opportunity, IBM and KVTSDC will team up to leverage cloud computing, the mobile Web and the Spoken Web to help millions of people across the state find work. A new cloud computing platform will allow job seekers and job providers to connect, expand searches and cross reference candidates, get training and certifications, understand emerging job trends and share information all through their mobile devices and in their local languages. In addition a mobile crowdsourcing platform will enable candidates to rank and refer jobs to one another and drive rapid dissemination of available opportunities. Unique skill matching techniques will be used to match job seekers with available jobs while employability analytics will allow employers and the government to understand demand and supply trends. The employability marketplace will run on the IBM Cloud providing a pay-as-you-go model and elastic scaling.

KVTSDC believes this technology will increase the penetration of its programmes and enable a vibrant employment ecosystem across the state.

“The Karnataka state government is a pioneer in skill development in the country. Our goal is to empower our citizens and create employment opportunities in the state by creating a conducive environment for all the stakeholders. This platform will help us expand our horizon and reach people in the most remote parts of Karnataka,” said Dr. Vishnukanth Chatpalli, Executive Director of KVTSDC. “We are glad that IBM, one of the largest technology companies in the world, has partnered with us in this first of its kind endeavor.”

In addition to cloud computing IBM plans to integrate the Spoken Web. The Spoken Web creates a system that is comparable to the World Wide Web using speech technology and the telephone – landline or mobile. Spoken Web helps people create voice sites using their telephones. The user gets a unique phone number which is equivalent to a URL and when other users access this voice site they get to hear whatever content has been uploaded there.

The first phase of the project will be implemented in two districts, Mandya and Bijapur, and will be expanded to eight more districts in a second phase. Karnataka is the first state to set up a skill commission and take the lead in the Government of India’s objective of having 500 million skilled people in India by 2022. The Karnataka Skill Commission and the KVTSDC were constituted in September 2008 with the objective of creating 1 million new jobs within 5 years.

“IBM’s vision is to apply technologies that enable skills and education transformation and economic uplift in growing economies around the world,” said Paul Bloom, Chief Technology Officer – Telecommunications, IBM Research. “This project is a powerful example of how we can take advantage of societal trends and infuse them with technology to solve real problems in growth economies.”

According to IDC, $17 billion was spent on cloud-related technologies, hardware and software in 2009. IDC expects that spending will grow to $45 billion by 2013.(1)

The demand for cloud computing is exploding as organizations seek to expand the impact of IT to deliver new and innovative services while realizing significant economies of scale. The power of the cloud computing model is the ability to harness varying technology investments by enabling rapid and dynamic scheduling, provisioning and management of virtualized computing resources on demand.

IBM has helped thousands of clients adopt cloud models and manages millions of cloud based transactions every day in areas as diverse as banking, communications, healthcare and government, and securely tap into IBM cloud-based business and infrastructure services. By offering proven solutions to accelerate the deployment of advanced infrastructure virtualization with capabilities to visualize, control, and automate these infrastructures, IBM helps global organizations optimize their ROI from technology.

New software virtualizes a data center in minutes

IBM’s new, advanced virtual deployment software — now available as an open beta program — enables organizations to build a cloud environment rapidly and manage with greater ease than ever before. The software has unmatched dynamic provisioning and scheduling of server resources, two capabilities at the core of cloud functionality.

While traditional technologies deploy virtual machines slowly, requiring significant hands-on management from IT staff, the IBM software can deploy a single virtual machine in seconds, dozens in a few minutes and hundreds or thousands at the unrivaled speed of under an hour.

In addition to speed, the new IBM software provides a powerful “image management” system to help organizations install, configure and automate the creation of new virtual machines to better meet business demands, while minimizing costs, complexity and the risk associated with IT deployment.

An organization’s ability to instantly access computational resources enables quicker response to changing customer demands as well as new business opportunities that require IT resources from a large data center.

For example, a telecommunications operator could leverage a high-performance cloud environment to support rapid development and deployment of fourth-generation applications, reducing time to market from months to weeks; a healthcare provider could leverage the cloud’s computational resources to accelerate retrieval and analysis of medical records to provide better service to patients in a more cost-effective manner.

As organizations rely more heavily on the rapid availability of computational resources, the demand for virtual machines increases dramatically. In fact, virtual machines under management will grow tenfold from 2008 to 2012.(2)  Virtual server images are typically between five to 20 gigabytes in size. Multiply that by the thousands of virtual images created today, with larger enterprises having five to twenty thousand virtual machines, and the resulting complexity makes it challenging for IT managers who are tasked with improving service levels.(3) These types of requirements demand an environment that delivers rapid access to IT resources. It is becoming a critical requirement to have an automated, “low touch” design that supports a much larger number of virtual machines with fewer administrators — reducing costs and risks associated with human error.

“These new technologies deliver a definitive step forward in simplifying the way IT staff can manage the cloud,” said Ric Telford, vice president of Cloud Services, IBM. “They come at a critical time for businesses as the demand for computing resources and new services are becoming nearly insatiable, despite generally stagnate budgets. IBM is delivering again on our promise of leading cloud innovation with a focus on fundamentally transforming the economics of IT.”

In order for urban centers to sustain growth and play a positive and central role in the global economy, cities must grow smart. City infrastructures that deliver vital services such as transportation, energy and water, must rely on a wealth of new information and technologies that will allow them sense and respond intelligently to the needs of their growing populations. With CityOne, IBM is providing a virtual environment that will help tomorrow’s leaders learn how to apply advances in technology and better understand how these systems work.

CityOne will be a no charge, “sim-style” game in which the player is tasked with guiding the city through a series of missions that include the Energy, Water, Banking and Retail industries. For example, one mission involves a city where water usage has increased at twice the rate of population growth, supplies are becoming strained (and possibly polluted); the municipality is losing as much as 40 percent of its water supply through leaky infrastructure; and energy costs are steadily increasing. To complete this mission, the player would be challenged to institute a Water Management System that would include accurate real time data to make decisions on delivering the highest water quality in the most economical way.

Players who promote a more customer-centric business model to the banks represented in their city will discover how mobile payments, dynamic invoicing, and micro-lending can impact business goals. In all of the missions represented in the game, the player will need to determine the best way to invest to meet the financial, environmental and sociological goals of the city’s industries while balancing their budgets and the needs of the citizenry. In parallel, players will learn how the components of service reuse, process management, cloud and collaborative technologies make business models more agile.

“Serious games allow professionals to inherently comprehend system interactions, and accurately model the potential business outcomes that can result, in a way that no other medium can do,” said Nancy Pearson, IBM vice president of SOA, BPM and WebSphere. “CityOne will simulate the challenges faced in a variety of industries so that businesses can explore a variety of solutions and explore the business impact before committing resources.”

Historically, simulation gaming has been used extensively in the military, by athletes and by scientists to discover effective new strategies and techniques and develop the skills needed to implement them. These simulations have migrated into the entertainment space and spawned a new generation of what are known as massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). In these online games, players from all over the globe log into realistic and real-time virtual worlds via the Internet; they learn different roles and skill sets, and come together in self-selecting teams to collaborate and carry out missions in pursuit of common goals. Businesses have realized the value of this and are deploying their own games to create life-like simulations of real markets, customers and business situations that they deal with every day.

“Enterprises are increasingly adopting Web 2.0 collaboration tools to appeal to a new generation entering the workforce that grew up immersed in social media technologies,” said Lisa Rowan, director HR, Learning, and Talent Strategies research IDC. “Training will need to follow suit by incorporating interactivity and gaming to be relevant to this new workforce.”

IBM is not new to the serious games space. Over the years, IBM has released a number of games such as INNOV8, RoboCode and PowerUp that are used by schools, businesses, museums and conferences.  Additionally, IBM has conducted an extensive study of massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs), and the results have underscored how a rotating leadership model is likely to affect an enterprise.  Based on these results, last year IBM announced the second in the INNOV8 series of games that teach the fundamentals of Business Process Management (BPM) using a 3D environment. The INNOV8 series is now being used by more than 1000 universities worldwide and is offered for free to schools via IBM’s Academic Initiative.

Mark McGibbon, a PhD DBA professor of IT and Business at a leading university has used INNOV8 in three of his classes including Process Improvement, his Software Acquisition Class and Analytics and Simulation.

“Using serious games like INNOV8 to teach something as slippery as Business Process Management has really helped my students visualize directly the impact of these systems on a business,” said McGibbon. “We are greatly looking forward to the next IBM game.”

IBM will be unveiling the CityOne Demo in the Agility@Work Zone during the IMPACT Conference. A special session titled ‘Using Games to develop strategies and skills to thrive in a real-time world’ is part of IBM’s Executive Education Track at the upcoming IMPACT conference. Michael Hugos of the Center for Systems Innovation and Phaedra Boinodiris, IBM’s Serious Games Program manager will be presenting how  businesses can profit from simulation gaming.

For more information on IBM serious games and details on how IBM is helping clients and Business Partners to make smarter, faster decisions, please visit: http://www.ibm.com/cityone.

Konkan Railway selected IBM Informix Dynamic Server, when they developed their “Railway Application Package” (RAP) system to help manage, analyze and maintain train running information, schedules and reduce the passenger delays. Real-time data is fed into the management system that uses smart analytics to respond to information in real time — whether it is scheduling delays, abnormalities or passenger queries. The RAP solution helps minimal staff manage all aspects of Konkan’s business, from real-time management of Train-running, collecting ticket revenue, managng finances and Human Resources, to automatically controlling Station platforms lighting with Train-movements.  Informix software provides Konkan Railway with cost-effective performance, availability, requiring only 2 Database Administrators managing 66 database server instances. A reliable, easy-to-maintain data-server is a necessity as Konkan Railway operates in very remote areas.

IBM technology has helped us keep our IT management costs down, while supporting rapid growth of our Railway system” observes Vijay Devnath, Chief Manager (IT), Konkan Railway. “With the Railway Application Package system running on IBM technology, Konkan Railway has significantly improved its ability to analyze, maintain and present data, helping to reduce the likelihood of passenger delays and cultivating better decision-making. Additionally, by automating the light-switching at stations with train arrival-departures, the system has helped cut such energy costs by approx. 20 percent.”

“National railways are the backbone of the economy in many developing countries which is why governments all over the world are investing in innovative technology solutions to make railways more efficient and secure, and to improve the overall commuter experience,” said Keith Dierkx, director, IBM’s Global Rail Innovation Center. “Our technology and rail expertise allow Konkan Railway to lay the foundation for smarter railway transportation and set an example for all other railways system within India and worldwide.”

IBM software also helps in managing the platform lights for all passenger-carrying trains at each station and ventilation in few long tunnels. These long tunnels are each greater than 2 kilometers long. Konkan Railway developed information-flow systems & analytics to manage timely air-circulation and platform lights, in an effort to be energy-efficient. Not only does this help the Railway operate more efficiently, but has also resulted in significant energy savings. The same system also offers a web-based train location system, train-operations and ticketing management operations.

Konkan Railways was the winner of the 2009 The Great Mind Challenge for Business award for Information Management. This Award recognizes innovative solutions that deploy an information infrastructure (using IBM Information Management products) to enable organizations to deliver relevant and trusted information in real time to its employees, customers and partners and become an on demand business.

IBM is collaborating with many other leading rail operators in various projects around the world where it is helping to build smarter rail systems. Earlier this year IBM opened a Global Rail Innovation Center in Beijing, China to maximize expertise in rail.  By using a combination of IBM hardware, software and services, leading rail networks are able to improve the speed, safety, reliability and efficiency of both passenger and freight trains while reducing operating costs.