NextGen Services Delivery

Services are a means to provide value to a client without exposing the client to the cost & risk of delivery. IT has emerged as a core enabler for delivering services more efficiently and delivering services that previously were not even conceivable. Where in the last decade we have experienced a significant increase of IT enabled services, we are currently witness to new, potentially disruptive changes in the services delivery model. A few years ago, IT resources were dedicated investments into physical infrastructure; today IT services can be delivered on "rented" resources through a Cloud solution. Globalization and globally integrated enterprises were a vision only a few years ago, today services are more and more delivered from anywhere in the world without compromising quality, whether for remotely managed infrastructure or globally organized services. A few years ago internet and mobile phones were on the rise; today they are pervasive in a way unprecedented in established markets. Finally, a few years ago, the notion of workforce was well defined and contained both in size and structure; today, as work is shifting more and more to growth markets, we are facing a new type of work-force, more fluid, younger, technology savvy and growing at an unprecedented rate.

As a premier Research lab, we are at the innovative core of many of these developments. Many of the challenges are inherently buried in the scale of problems as we are facing a globalized world. Services are not being delivered locally anymore. Whether you consider a retailer, a health care provider, or an IT service provider, next generation services will be large scale, highly distributed, agile and enabled through non-PC end-user devises, offering great challenges to rethink existing science and invent new approaches. We are developing technologies that differentiate IBM in delivering services. But most importantly, jointly with IBM business units our team is shaping the next generation of service delivery.

We are structured in multiple teams working on:

• Cloud Computing and its impact on IT outsourcing
• Social computing and its impact on service delivery in times of globally connected enterprises
• Virtualization and its impact on greening data centers
• Analytics and its impact on efficient service delivery