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IBM is about to blow the doors clean off with some major announcements and webcasts in a few short days. Perhaps Power7+ is on the agenda? Let's explore.

Smarter Computing in the New Era of IT

The first webcast, entitled "Smarter Computing in the New Era of IT," is taking place October 3, 2012, at 10:45 a.m. EST.

This webcast showcases the following:

• IBM's new approach to Smarter Computing—As technology has evolved, so has IBM's vision of Smarter Computing and the need to build an infrastructure that will drive lasting value.
• The key to delivering growth—Companies must protect, dynamically deliver, and create insights from their core information inside and outside of the cloud. IBM's enterprise systems have evolved to meet these and other essential business needs.
• The launch of IBM systems designed for Smarter Computing—IBM's new system innovation will enable organizations to quickly and cost-effectively meet the demands of today and tomorrow.

The last statement about IBM's new system innovation could be the announcement of the new Power7+ that IBM has planned on releasing in Q4 2012. That alone would be a major announcement, and it's the third bullet on the list!

You know something big is imminent when IBM has the following people presenting on the webcast:

• Rod Adkins—Senior Vice President, IBM Systems and Technology Group (STG)
• Dr. Colin Parris—General Manager, Power Systems
• Brian Truskowski—General Manager, System Storage
• Satya Sharma—IBM Fellow, Power and z Systems
• Paulo Carvao—Vice President, System z Global Sales

These are major names from STG, Power Systems, Storage, and System z. This announcement is about not only big iron, but storage and big data as well, which will also tie in with analytics and the cloud, considering IBM's recent heavy advancement into those arenas.

Given that Oracle will apparently be announcing its new Sparc T5 16 core processor a little later that day (3:00 p.m. EST on October 3, 2012), IBM's Smarter Computing announcement will not be one to miss and should be dressed to impress, regardless of whether Power7+ is part of it or not.

You can register for Smarter Computing in the New Era of IT here.

#chatSC Twitter Chat

Conveniently, at 1:00 p.m. EST on the next day, IBM is hosting what they're calling a Twitter chat, more commonly known as a "tweetup," with the hashtag #chatSC. You can follow the conversation on Twitter by searching with the #chatSC hashtag or visiting this website.

The chatSC tweetup aims to enable organizations by focusing on the following topics:

• Unleash innovation through the cloud
• Unlock the power of big data
• Safeguard the security of critical information and business processes

From the IBM Smarter Computing Blog:

"2013 will mark a strong return to the conversation around enterprise systems. With current and future opportunities and challenges centering around cloud computing, data and analytics, and security, IT and business leaders are being forced to ask themselves if their existing enterprise systems can support the goals of their organization to grow and profit.

The launch of new IBM systems designed for Smarter Computing will enable organizations to quickly and cost-effectively meet the demands of today and tomorrow."

IBM is taking advantage of social concepts by launching this tweetup, hoping to drum up some online banter and to engage the community. That's the whole purpose of a tweetup: the conversation! I'm sure that IBMers will be part of the tweetup as well, so this will be a good time to fire them questions and get fast responses.

"The launch of new IBM systems" is a telling phrase as well. Any new tin on the shelf will certainly be up for discussion.

If IBM does announce Power7+ the day before this tweetup, I'd imagine Twitter will be chock full of information on the speeds and feeds surrounding it and the other announcements.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you get a lot of information by searching for #chatSC the day of the "Smarter Computing in the New Era of IT" webcast. Get involved! Get informed! You don't even need a Twitter account if you want to read and not tweet.

You can also follow moderators Larry Dignan and Adrian Bowles, along with @IBMSmrtrCmptng on Twitter.

Expert IT: Accelerate Big Data and Cloud with Expert Integrated Systems

A week after the Smarter Computing information becomes available, IBM will also be hosting a live broadcast about IBM PureSystems and the Expert Integrated Systems concept. This online broadcast on October 9, 2012, at 2:00 pm. EST will show you how to:

• Accelerate cloud deployment with expert integrated systems that are built for the cloud
• Take control of massive volumes of transactional data to reduce IT costs and minimize risk
• Turn your data challenges into business opportunities by efficiently managing different data-intensive workloads to drive innovation and growth
• Streamline how you utilize customer data and operational analytics in real time

Literally, this has big data, analytics, and cloud written all over it. Paired with the Smarter Computing announcement, we could also be seeing further expansion into what PureSystems can do, especially in a cloud computing model.

The "data center in a can" concept, whether cloud-based or on-premises, is a very simplistic viewpoint of what PureSystems really is; however, the more simple IBM can make the concept for customers, the more likely they'll buy into it. The initial PureSystems announcement was a little cloudy, if you'll pardon the pun. This webcast will hopefully be much more simple and straightforward, with more meat and potatoes rather than concepts.

I do like what I hear so far. These basic mantras have stayed the same: built-in expertise and integration by design. Hey, those sound very familiar. I wonder where I've heard those before....

You can register for the webcast here. Or you can catch a live broadcast if you're in one of the 10 cities playing host. Register for a live broadcast here.

IBM Announces Worklight Entitlement

IBM recently announced that if you have an active software subscription and support contract for the following products, you will be entitled to use two IBM Worklight consumer edition applications with WebSphere Portal:

• IBM WebSphere Portal Server
• IBM WebSphere Portal Enable
• IBM WebSphere Portal Extend
• IBM Customer Experience Suite
• IBM Intranet Experience Suite
• IBM Collaboration Accelerator with WebSphere Portal
• IBM Content and Collaboration Accelerator with WebSphere Portal
• IBM Content Manager

As per the announcement, "With this new entitlement, your WebSphere Portal content and applications can now be extended to access the full capabilities of a wide range of mobile devices giving your organization a rich cross-platform hybrid mobile experience on smartphones and tablets. IBM Worklight Consumer Edition offers organizations a wide set of services aimed at helping manage, develop, and deploy rich, cross-platform mobile applications, and when combined with IBM Web Experience offerings, organizations can create highly customized, engaging, consistent, and personalized experiences across web, mobile web, and mobile hybrid."

Essentially this means you can leverage IBM Worklight to deploy two existing applications to your mobile devices. Fantastic news since this is such a hot-button item. This new entitlement will help you get started.

Lotus Notes and Sametime Beat Microsoft Solution 
 

And last but certainly not least, I wanted to mention that Tata Group has selected IBM Lotus Notes and Sametime over Microsoft for email and instant messaging. Tata Group, India's largest industrial conglomerate, has been a long-time Lotus Notes and Sametime customer, with 180,000 Lotus Notes and 140,000 Sametime Standard users.

Tata Group was under pressure to make a decision to migrate to Microsoft products and evaluated other options but decided to commit to IBM. As part of their new commitment, they also expanded by adding an additional 25,000 Lotus Notes licenses and 50,000 Sametime licenses.

I'm telling you this because many companies are offering alternatives to Lotus Notes. You don't hear IBM brag about Lotus Notes too often, but it's very much still out there and still very viable as a true collaboration platform. When you get down to the marrow of a cost justification to migrate, you just may find that the IBM Lotus solution is less expensive and more feature-rich than the competitors. Just food for thought for when a Google Apps reseller comes knocking.