IBM announced this week the continued adoption of its
smarter computing systems, software, and services across China’s private and
public sectors.
IBM is working with the China
National Bureau of Statistics, Guizhou Provincial Health Department and Guizhou
Mobile to help each build more advanced IT environments based on IBM’s
optimized system architecture, data and analytics integration, and cloud
computing capabilities. Through these smarter computing initiatives, each
organization will improve their operational efficiencies and end-user services.
“IBM’s smarter computing capabilities are designed
to help clients across all industries build a solid IT framework and enable the
business transformation required on the journey to a smarter planet,” said
Andy Ho, general manager of Growth Markets for IBM Systems and Technology
Group.
“Our smarter computing initiative leverages IBM’s
strengths in the key areas of big data and analytics integration, optimized
systems and cloud computing to transform client IT infrastructures and make
them smarter,” Ho added.
The China National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) organizes
and coordinates statistical data across China and plays a key role in
supporting government decision-making in the country.
However, due to the increasing complexity and volume of
data that NBS collects and manages, the organization was increasingly
challenged by underperforming equipment, the proliferation of information
islands, low efficiency in resource utilization, and high operation and maintenance
costs.
In early 2010, the NBS Data Management Center launched an
innovative IT strategy to build a core smarter computing business platform
leveraging the cloud. The platform, anchored by IBM Power systems, ensured the
smooth operation of two major NBS application systems the sixth national
population census and the direct business information reporting process.
In particular, during the sixth national population
census, the new system completed statistical forms for 1.3 billion people in
just two minutes. The same process running on the former system took an entire
day to complete.
The NBS system leverages IBM PowerVM virtualization
technology, IBM Tivoli Monitor, and IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager to monitor
core business systems and handle the automatic distribution of computing
resources in the country.
NBS will soon embark on the second phase of the IT
infrastructure project which will add four IBM Power 780 servers to the mix. In
addition to increasing online direct reporting to 10 million cases a month, the
solution will also enable the integration of system resources.
In Guizhou, where hostile weather and terrain have made
it difficult to not only provide medical services, medical fee reimbursement
services, farmers’ well-being and health were always at risk. To address the
problem, Guizhou Provincial Health Department and Guizhou Mobile jointly
developed an information system for the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme
(NRCMS), based on a wireless cloud solution.
The NRCMS platform was built on IBM Power Systems,
consisting of IBM PowerVM server virtualization technology and storage
virtualization technology. The cloud platform not only resolves the traditional
‘silo’ model of IT development, but provides a full-scale and virtualized
platform, capable of delivering IT resources in the form of services.
As a result, the platform has enabled more flexible
resource management, reduced the demand on IT resources, and lowered operation
and maintenance costs.
Today, farmers in remote villages can get reimbursed for
their medical fees for minor illnesses simply by swiping their insurance ID
cards in card readers at community clinics.
For cases of serious illness, farmers can choose to
settle their medical expenses with the township, county and provincial health
institutions, and then apply for reimbursement online. With thousands of
information terminals installed in clinics across 64 counties and 805
townships, the NRCMS information system is able to support more than 18 million
people in rural areas.
In addition to the mobile cloud, Guizhou Mobile turned to
IBM to help develop a cloud platform to use in developing new business
applications. Since February 2010, Guizhou Mobile has launched 36 business
applications.
IBM recently announced that WinHire Technologies,
provider of a video-based social networking solution for virtual recruitment,
has selectedthe IBM SmartCloud Enterprise solution to roll out their
next generation business model leveraging social media. Making a choice over
Amazon, Win Hire preferred the IBM solution as it allowed them to access a
secure enterprise class shared private cloud computing infrastructure to drive
higher efficiency, manage costs and increase speed-to-market.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
