Smarter computing boosts Sri Lanka’s advance towards economic growth, prosperity

IBM yesterday unveiled smarter computing solutions designed to transform, grow and make Sri Lankan enterprises more competitive.

A wide range of workload-optimisation hardware solutions, such as IBM Storwize V7000, IBM Starter Kit for Cloud and IBM BladeCenter blade servers were presented at the IBM Smarter Computing Forum. Tailored to the local market needs through IBM Business Partners, these smarter computing solutions can help bring the benefits of improved economics and business performance to the clients in Sri Lanka.
“Smarter Computing is an approach to IT based on the wide breadth of advanced systems and software that IBM offers and continues to develop,” said IBM Sri LankaCo-untry General Manager Chrishan Fernando.  
“We help companies and governments around the world and in Sri Lanka to adopt smarter computing systems which use intelligence to drive operational efficiencies and optimise workloads, concurrently reducing costs.
The solutions we are introducing today will help our clients tap into the region’s economic expansion and help elevate the role Sri Lanka is playing in the interconnected world.”  
During the event, business and information technology (IT) leaders experienced smarter computing through on-hand presentations and demonstrations, as well as virtually – through the Smarter Computing Workload Simulator. Through the online simulator they were able to test different hypotheses and evaluate areas of potential savings and efficiency through the lens of IBM Smarter Computing systems and technologies.
The demonstrations showed how IBM offerings can be used to help companies of any size – from individual businessmen and family owned ventures to large enterprises or the state administration – to optimise their business processes and gain competitive advantage.
Some of the presentations, for example, showed how IBM storage solutions can help customers free up shrinking IT budgets through automation, true storage virtualisation and true cloud-based storage, to enable them to spend more on innovation.
IBM introduced its Smarter Computing approach to IT last year as a way for organisations to realise greater efficiencies, improved reliability and better performance, all at a lower cost.
This strategy centres around three fundamental aspects – leveraging analytics to exploit vast amounts of data for business goals, utilising optimised systems that are designed for specific tasks; and managing as much of the IT as possible with cloud-computing technologies.  
From providing core banking solutions to running data centres or applying analytics solutions, IBM is engaged with companies from all over the world across its portfolio of services and solutions.
IBM recently announced several Smarter Computing deals in different industries across the world:
Česká pojišťovna a.s, the largest insurance company in the Czech Republic, has turned to IBM’s smarter computing approach to help prevent outages before they occur and streamline the management of the company’s sprawling IT landscape.
The IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager suite, which runs on two IBM Power 550 Express servers, has led to the reduction of annual IT maintenance costs by US$500,000.
Similarly, Zorlu Group, a leading Turkish conglomerate that produces everything from yarn to LCD televisions turned to IBM to manage its increasingly complex and expanding IT infrastructure.
The contract covers provisioning of IT infrastructure services to Zorlu’s 30,000 employees, including server, database and application management, end-user support – helpdesk and desktop standardisation – and network maintenance.
“Many of our clients worldwide are prioritising solutions for reducing costs and increasing productivity. As IBM marshals the best teams, deep industry insight and first-hand experience of implementing smarter computing worldwide, we are in a position to offer our clients in Sri Lanka the best return on investment, turning change and complexity into competitive advantage,” added Fernando.