IBM Teams Up With American Cancer Society

The tech giant is geared up to create virtual health advisor to give personalized assistant to the cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers

International Business Machines Corporation and American Cancer Society have formed an alliance to make the most of the tech giant’s cognitive computing platform, Watson, by integrating its expertise with patient support services and cancer research offered by the non-profit organization.

On Tuesday, at the 13^th annual World Health Care Congress –a conference which brings top executives from life sciences and health companies at a common place to have a thorough discussion regarding the important issues affecting the industry –CEO Ginni Rometty disclosed the tech giant’s “Watson Health” initiative. The two entities will offer accessibility of personalized and exhaustive cancer resources to the cancer patients, caregivers, and survivors.

Chief health officer of IBM, Kyu Rhee expressed that the cognitive technology had perused a huge amount of oncology literature however this initiative will require Watson to comprehensively learn about the cancer support relating to the support required by the “cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers in their journey.”

Each year, around 1.6 million Americans got diagnosed of this life-threatening disease. Additionally, the patients are in a desperate look out for the accurate information which specifically relates to their disease. The American Cancer Society has already assembled around 14,000 pages providing the detailed information regarding 70 different cancer topics. The data also relates to the early detection information and risk reduction. The vetted information is currently available on the entity’s website, named, cancer.org.

The Watson will take in the information and synchronize it with Watson Health Cloud –which is a secure storage of “de-identified data of the patients.” The information will then be act as a coherent basis for the health advisor to provide personal and direct assistance to the user without the necessity of internet searching.

Roughly, the system will work in the following manner: For instance, a woman has been diagnosed by a particular type of cancer for which she has signed up for the treatment but subsequently, after maybe first round of chemotherapy, she suffered excruciating pain then she could turn to the health advisor who, after going through the accumulated information of the patients having similar conditions, will recommend whether the sufferings is out of ordinary and a doctor should be recommended or it is normal. Over a period of time, the health advisor might figure out that the woman needs support sessions and can recommend a day –on which she has reported to feel best –to attend such sessions.

The extensive skills and format of the “health advisor” has not been confirmed yet. Both the entities intend to launch the service early next year. According to Rhee, the service can be made available as an app on phone or tablet or it can be conveniently integrated with Big Blue’s Watson for Oncology offering. Watson for Oncology is a platform which places deep clinical knowledge on the palms of the doctors so that they may make evidence based treatment decision. It was developed by collaborating with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and is currently being used in Thailand and India.

By collaborating the clinician focused platform with patient centric new advisor, the Big Blue looks for a successful approach to cancer treatment. The cognitive technology will first assist the doctors to come up with a clinical treatment decision and afterwards it will allow the doctors to smoothly transition over the “health advisor option” to give out the information on “localized cancer services” such as “volunteer transportation options.”

IBM Partners With VMware Inc.

The tech giant is leaving no stone unturned to get the company back on the road to growth

Big Blue has announced this Monday that it has signed partnership with VMware so that the workload can be conveniently launched in IBM SoftLayer cloud infrastructure by the  VSphere customers. Apart from IBM, many other companies, who have any kind of public cloud strategy, look forward to get around the existing VMware vSphere consumers.

The importance of VMW customers can be deduced from the fact that VSphere server are being used by nearly 80% of corporate customers in their data centers. Moreover, a large number of customers intend to integrate their applications and data into an enterprise-class cloud so that they can reap benefits of potential cost advantages and flexibility from the consumption of shared computing and storage.

The New York based organization, at IBM InterConnect, is likely to disclose how the workloads of VSphere can be managed in IBM’s public cloud in Las Vegas. The proposed project is quite in the line of VMware VCloud Air, which has been launched approximately three years ago.

Once declared as a potential rival to Amazon Web Services, the Silicon Valley business’ VCloud Air focus has been narrowed by VMware. This decision triggers IBM’s and other cloud players interest in the service. Few years ago, Amazon Web Services released a set of tools which let the administrators of VMware conveniently manage AWS and VMware workloads by working on the same screen. However, according to IBM’s chief technology officer, Jim Comfort, the company envisions taking the VSphere workloads to a new level and enabling the VSphere to be “pushbutton accessible on our cloud.”

Comfort further said: “We can do that globally. If you do that with a provider here and one in Singapore we have globally connected network in 49 data centers.”

Comfort further cited that it may seem that the $129 billion firm is planning to work on the plain VSphere however the company intends to do the same for VMware’s NSX network virtualization technology and for VSphere plus NSX plus vRealize management software.

Big Blue has been persisting strongly for the hybrid cloud message where, the company says, the consumers can choose to let some workloads run on IBM’s cloud while the rest being run in their own infrastructure. Consumers can also choose to handle the transition or let IBM do it.  

How far can IBM take this VMware’s partnership will be revealed in the future. Hopefully the quivering ship of the company be back on the track to success.

IBM Has Claimed To Launch The World's Most Secure Server For Cloud, Mobile and Data Center.

The technology company has launched the world's most secure server and along with that it also plans on introducing its very on digital currency by the name of Blockchain.

On February 16, 2016 International Business Machine Corporation announced and is launching a newer version for its z13 mainframe; this latest version of the cyber-frame includes cyber analytics, security innovations along with speedy encryptions. The novel version for the z13 was introduced back in January 2016 which used 1 billion dollars and five years for development by the Big Blue.

The previous fifteen quarters of IBM have got the investors and shareholders of the technology in quite turmoil as it managed to report a decline in sales throughout that time. Despite the fact that it has been going through a rough patch, the tech company has referred to the z13 mainstream as one of the most sophisticated system that it has built yet.

According to the measurements carried on at IBM’s Internal Lab, the system can process over 2.5 billion transactions in a single day which could be equivalent to over 100 Cyber Mondays daily. It has the ability to protect information without affecting the performance of the system or the transactions; additionally its can encrypt and decrypt data twice as fast as the initial system that were performing the same function; thanks to the advanced cryptography built-in feature.

The Vice President of International Business Machines’ Security, Caleb Barlow stated that with the help of the new mainstream system (z13) the tech organization has been able to help mid-market clients to encrypt their entire businesses; including any financial transaction that is processed in their data center to any order placed by any customer. He added that the organization and its system is able to do so with compromising the performance of the software

Additionally, it is also offering another feature to its customers which is, its latest cybersecurity analytics services – this feature/service can help z system users by providing top notch security through which the user will be able to track any unidentified behavior that is carried out. This new security service is coming from the company’s security unit.

In other news, the tech business has also become the biggest ‘backer of technology’ that works in the Bitcoin Digital currency as it aims to test its own personal service with variations that is called Blockchain. This new digital currency will be working on simplifying the lives of IBM’s customers, especially those who lease the company’s computer hardware, according to the information provided by the technology organization.

IBM stock presently is being traded in the market for a share price of $121.04 which shows an increase of 2.71% from its previous trading session. The market cap of the tech giant is reported to be 120.60 billion along with earnings per share of $13.62. The trade commenced at a share price of $119.26 during the current trading session and was seen at a high end of $121.05 and a lower share price of $118.35. Furthermore, during the past year the highest level at which the share price of IBM was seen at was $176.30 and the lowest at which it was seen at was $116.90 during the year.

IBM Posts Financial Results For Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2015

The technology company has seen a declining stock price, but yet to see how it performs in year 2016.

In 2015, International Business Machines Corporation stock has dropped by as much as 14%; it underperformed the S&P 500 Index. In the past couple of years, the technology company has seen a drastic decline in its hardware-manufacturing sector due to which it was forced to enter the analytics, cloud and security sectors.

On January 19, the technology company was supposed to report its financial results for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2015. The Street predicted on what report is expected by the company. For the quarter, The Street believed that IBM might be posting revenues of as much as $22 billion, which indicates a decline of 9% on a year-over-year basis. While it stated that the earnings per share – EPS – is predicted to be around $4.81, which indicates a decline of 17% on year-over-year basis. Free cash flow is likely to be at $5.1 billion and 53.7% as the gross margin.

IBM has always focused to keep its major investments towards improving its bottom line due to which it has mostly not lived up to The Street’s expectation of the revenue generation, but it has always outperformed the EPS estimates. For the past consecutive nine quarters, business managed to outperform the revenue estimation only once; while on the other hand, earnings estimates have been outperform by the company for at least seven times.

In the previous quarter of the current fiscal year, it had reported decreasing earnings in more of its segments while only the cloud, analytics, and security sectors performed comparatively well. In the third quarter, revenue of $19.28 billion was reported while the estimation of the analysts at The Street was $19.64 billion. Additionally, the EPS predicted by The Street for the third quarter was $3.30 and the company reported $3.34.

Ever since the business dropped its EPS guidance for 2015, IBM stock has declined by as much as 6%. During December past year, the tech organization kept going with its acquisitions in order to target its “stronger go to market and sales commitment” the strategic partnership was expanded with Box. Apart from being on an acquisition spree, it has also decided to lay off a number of its employees. In Germany, as many as 3,000 workers at IBM could lose their jobs are equal to 18%of its total workforce.

Analysts are predicting that investors are likely to focus on the company’s software sector in the year 2016 along with aiming at a stable free cash flow.