IBM Pulse offers industry pulse

In between the Michael Phelps' no-show incident, Smash Mouth, and celebrity talking-head Forrest Sawyer, IBM's Pulse event in Las Vegas was a good microcosm of the state of IT today and where it is going. Here are a few of my takeaways:

• IBM's "Smart Planet" initiative previews the future. Within the next few years, all kinds of stuff will be instrumented with RFIDs, IP addresses, and bountiful cheap processing power all connected by wired and wireless broadband networks. Organizations that capitalize on this infrastructure will successfully collect, analyze, and make decisions on this overwhelming global intelligence. Even in tough economic times, IBM is reminding business folks that they better be prepared for this inevitability.

• Data continues to explode. All of this smart technology is spitting out a ton of data and there's no end in sight. In spite of the recession, many customers complained that their biggest problems were either finding space for new storage devices or keeping up with storage operations. Clearly we need more automation in this area. IBM seems to be doubling down on storage hardware, software, and services to capitalize on this insatiable storage appetite.

• Cloud computing is confusing--and profitable. I must have heard 50 questions about the definition of cloud computing which should tell every marketing manager in the tech industry to tighten up their messaging. In spite of this confusion however, IBM seems to be doing quite well in areas like managed backup, desktop, and security services.

• Security is baked into everything. IBM deserves credit for recognizing that big honkin' global "smart planet" applications could open up a ton of new security threats. I just hope that its customers get this message.

• IBM's industry focus should help it weather the storm. IBM announced service management solutions for six industries including banking, utilities, and communications. These offerings should be especially attractive in emerging markets building massive new infrastructure.

Finally, a note to IBM CEO Sam Palmisano: Cut all event budgets by 25 percent. Smash Mouth was fun and I wished my sons were with me, but the crowd of 50-year-old techies was headed to the exits after a few songs with fingers in their ears. Forrest Sawyer was an interesting choice as behind-the-scenes moderator but he really added no value. I'm pretty sure IBM could cut unnecessary fluff like this without impacting the substance at all.

[Cube Over]

First bullet - why "preview the future" when you can harness the power of Apple's Xgrid "yesterday"?
This is massive, distrubuted computations and it's been done. Only few customers really need huge computing horsepower, and even trojan horses for you PC can do that now. Why market at high level?

Most need more data storage - yes, this is good point.
EMC2 is capitalizing fast on this as we speak.

Last one - "weathering the economic storm" - sure it's more reliable with such giant ship as IBM. Thanks to them. I hope we can afford the ticket.
Smaller companies, on the pro side, are more flexible and provide fast fixes and feature changes to their product.
Bigger houses compensate lack of agility with extensive, often redundant and confusing, portfolios of offerings. Quite often you'd like to combine features of, say two backup solutions, but you can't - it's IBM's prerogative to decide and do so.