IBM follows the money to clean tech
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Blog: IBM's Venture Capital Group is placing its own bets on clean tech in energy efficiency and water conservation.
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The Eco-patent Commons--starting with IBM, Sony, Nokia, and Pitney-Bowes--will share environmentally friendly technologies.
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IBM is moving aggressively into the software space.
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Blog: Energy efficiency technology to manage peak demand attracts more clean tech investment.
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IBM has created a process for repurposing scrap semiconductor wafers.
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IBM planned to announce yesterday that it will invest US$250 million over the next five years and employ 1,000 people in a new business unit to support products and services related to sensor networks.
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Blog: Money is pouring into clean tech start-ups, but recent reports examine longer-term issues.
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Tape upgrades, new tape products, basically a lot of tape IBM is introducing new products to its virtual tape line for mainframe customers and enhancements to its virtual tape engine billed as low-power "green" alternatives for midrange and large businesses.â¦
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Small as today's computers are, their environmental impact keeps getting bigger. Computers use huge amounts of electric power and are built from toxic chemicals that can wind up tainting our land and water. David Douglas, vice president for eco-responsibility at Sun Microsystems Inc., spoke with Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray about his company's commitment to clean computing. Q Why is Sun ...
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Tech giants IBM, Yahoo and Motorola declared the global economy healthy Tuesday by reporting strong fourth-quarter earnings and worldwide growth. IBM, the world's largest technology company, said sales were up in each of its key businesses  and in all markets worldwide.
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A group of technology companies is offering to share some of its patents to encourage the development of environmentally friendly technologies.IBM, Nokia, Sony, and bulk-mailing equipment manufacturer Pitney-Bowes have together donated patents to the Eco-patent Commons, an organization set up to share the patents for technology with environmental benefits.Any organization willing to donate a patent for environmentally friendly technology to the commons can join the group. The patents are made available for use by members and nonmembers alike.So far, patents pledged to the commons cover fields such as waste water treatment, air purification, cell-phone recycling and reducing printer ink consumption. IBM has pledged 27 patents, Pitney Bowes two, and Nokia and Sony one each.The Eco-patent Commons will be administered by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a group which brings together CEOs in industries such as cement, electrical utilities, timber, mining and transport.The group wants businesses to donate patents for technologies that have a positive environmental impact, but that are not related to their core business.It hopes that access to patents in the Commons will enable businesses facing environmental challenges that have already been solved by others to develop cleaner, less energy-intensive products as a result.The move is inspired by the success of the free and open-source software sector, where the sharing information has resulted in the creation of many new products, the group said.Together, the companies apply for thousands of patents each year. IBM in particular regularly tops the league tables for&#160;most filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
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IBM (NYSE: IBM) is the first personal computer maker to install National Semiconductor's (NYSE: NSM) SafeKeeper Trusted technology, which protects security data using specially designed chips, on selected models of its PCs.
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(InfoWorld) - As blue chip companies in developed marketsÂ scramble to outsourceÂ high-cost jobs to low-cost countries, one of the world's biggest technology companies -- IBMÂ -- seems content to keep more than 1,800 highly trained, well-paid IT engineers at its R&D (research and development) lab in BÃ¶blingen, Germany. You wonder why. The German lab, IBM's first in Europe, was launched in 1957 by Thomas Watson, who believed the company had to develop and manufacturer products in markets where it had large customers bases. In recent years, however, IBM has either shut down or sold many of its computer manufacturing operations around the world, Germany notwithstanding. Yet the BÃ¶blingen lab, one of the group's largest, has remained largely intact. This is no small feat given that it's located in a country with high taxes, strict labor laws, and long vacations -- not what you would call useful qualities when competing with markets such as China and India. Despite the growing importance of China and India, where IBM is beefing up its R&D activities, Herbert Kircher, director of development and chairman of IBM Deutschland Entwicklung, sees a continued strong role for his lab and the others in France, Switzerland, and the U.K. as well as those in the U.S. "Yes, an Indian engineer may cost one third of what an engineer costs in Europe or the U.S., and we need to take advantage of this as we are doing," he said. "But we will not exit high-cost regions such as Europe and the U.S. We need the balance." The German lab has strengths of its own, Kircher is quick to point out. "We are able to retain highly skilled, highly motivated engineers," Kircher said. "Unlike IBM engineers in India and China who work for the company for an average two years, our engineers in Germany stay around 10 years, with some as many as 20 years, bringing with them a lot of project and customer experience as well as market know-how." Whereas IBM R&D executives in China or India often assign development projects to engineers with two years' experience or less, Kircher relies on what he calls "the right mix" of engineers. On the one side are engineers and researchers who are fairly new to the company and bring fresh ideas; on the other are staffers with a wealth of experience. "This mix contributes to our success in developing new products," he said. To make sure innovative ideas don't die in committee, the IBM lab in BÃ¶blingen invites engineers and researchers who have been with the company less than five years to participate in an annual, day-long event to present their ideas to senior executives. "This is a great opportunity to discuss and share ideas," Kircher said. In addition, all young researchers are assigned a mentor who can help push through ideas that, for whatever reason, are blocked in their teams. Staff turnover at the German lab is around 1 percent per year. Of these engineers, a number leave Germany -- not IBM -- to work for the company in the U.S., according to Kircher. "Many of our people are approached by competitors who offer more pay and other benefits but they stay because they like their work and their working environment," he said. "We attach great importance to a corporate culture that honors values and high performance." The IBM labs have developed specific competencies over the years. The German lab, for instance, took a lead in engineering the open-source Linux operating system to run on IBM's Z series mainframe computers. The lab also has expertise in workflow software, collaborating closely with German business software vendor SAP AG, which, it so happens, was founded by a group of former German IBM employees. "Some of our people have their own office at SAP's headquarters," Kircher said. "That's how close the cooperation is." In addition to its RFID (radio frequency identification) competency stemming from research conducted more than 15 years ago, the German lab is developing specialized know-how in the area of data analysis. Researchers in BÃ¶blingen are working on an intelligent software system that, for instance, can automatically analyze huge volumes of data collected from millions of video surveillance cameras. "In the future, we could have systems that recognize and interpret a picture, say, of people who enter an airport with luggage," Kircher said. "The system, for instance, could be designed to automatically detect travellers who enter certain areas with bags and leave without them without having people view all this footage." There are plenty more projects underway, according to Kircher, but they must remain confidential for competitive reasons. "We have a very nice, productive working atmosphere in BÃ¶blingen," the head of IBM's German development said. "People like to work here, and we aim to keep it that way."ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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Share and share alike to save the planet A number of big name tech firms including IBM, Sony and Nokia have joined forces to work on a patent-sharing plan, dubbed Eco-Patents Commons.â¦
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IBM shored up commitment to its mainframe computing platform Thursday with a series of new technologies, investments in emerging markets, new industry-focused solutions, and new partnerships.
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Big opportunities await patient investors in nanotech, cleantech, and robotics.
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Companies like Microsoft and Google have committed to improving the power efficiency of equipment they make and use.