Gaming’s future likely includes more attention from the courts, as it continues to gain in mass popularity and questions continue to arise around “mature content” and children, for instance. And, as always, plenty of opinions about various consoles, PC vs. consoles, and the issue of game development from the developers’ perspective (the one-console future, for example).

Billy Pidgeon is the program manager for IDC’s consumer markets: gaming program. In this podcast, he speaks with PodTech’s Jason Lopez about the gaming industry, drawing important distinctions between gaming, which is a massive and growing business, and the more entrenched industries that are built around movies.

The stakes for gaming companies are higher in a way, says Pidgeon, because there are no second chances after a game flops at market (unlike the many, many secondary distribution paths that movies have). But as the industry grows, Pidgeon says, there’s a chance for the world to benefit, not only because of the truly international business that the gaming industry enjoys, but also because a broad interest in gaming might inspire a broader interest in technology and mathematics.

Photo courtesy of Gamerscore Blog, via Creative Commons

Tags: GDC 2008, IDC, Billy Pidgeon

Tags: Coskata, GM, NAIAS, Nano, North American International Auto Show, Rick Wagoner, Tata Motors

He also talks about the connection between the U.S. housing market and Microchip Technology. And then there is his favorite toy: Segway, which is powered by Microchip’s microcontrollers.

Tune in to find out how Steve brought in fresh thinking and perspective to Microchip after spending more than 10 years at Intel.

Tags: Steve Sanghi, Microchip Technology

In this final podcast in the series, Catherine Girardeau speaks with Richard Villars and Dave Reinsel, analysts with IDC, about top topics of discussion at the conference. We also hear from attendees about what’s on their minds as the Storage Networking World wraps up. SNWSpotlight is brought to you by LSI.

Tags: SNWSpotlight, Storage Networking World, Richard Villars, Dave Reinsel, LSI

Tags: HRL Laboratories, GM, Troy Clarke, Volt, Vue

This is an EMC podcast.
(more…)

Tags: enterprise content management, ECM, EMC

Transcript:
Host: Jim Leach – SAVVIS
Guest: Rona Shuchat – IDC

Jim Leach – SAVVIS
Welcome to this edition of Thought Leaders, where, we bring you candid conversations with the people whose research and writing are guiding the buyers and suppliers of IT Solutions. I’m Jim Leach. Today we are pleased to welcome Rona Shuchat, Research Director for Telecommunication Transformation Strategy and top industry analyst from IDC. Rona conducts research in the evolution and roll out of next-generation services, using the Internet Protocol or IP as well as manage network services, Web Hosting, utility and on-demand computing, virtualized services, intelligent content delivery networks, service portals and application,-a way of networking. That’s quite a list Rona, you must be pretty busy.

Rona Shuchat – IDC
Well, thanks for inviting me Jim. It is really fast moving market, I’m covering a lot of areas but there is a lot of new innovation and we’ll talk about that.

Jim Leach – SAVVIS
Oh, we’re so pleased to have you, thanks for joining us here on Thought Leaders. The first question I have is, you bring really a unique prospective to our audience and that you study the strategic impact of both Telecommunications and Web Hosting. So, let’s start with Telecommunications. Ten years ago, at the height of .com boom, corporate networks were the rage. Venture money was pouring in to .com startups to develop new IT gear and billions of dollars were being spent to build out global networks but today corporate networking seems kind of boring. Other than Voice Over IP, is there anything interesting going on in corporate networking?

Rona Shuchat – IDC
Yes, actually there is a lot more going on than it first may be obvious. What comes to mind for me are areas like Deep Packet Inspection. The use of Web Optimization techniques. Even the use Web based portals to administer internal networks. For example, Deep Packet Inspection is a technology that’s helping IT managers, better understand how applications are using their network, helping them to set policies for controlling the utilization of IP Bandwidth, really with the goal of helping them to better control costs. Another innovation that I thought of is really the use of application acceleration products, to enhance the performance of highly dynamic transaction oriented Websites. I think, what we’re really seeing is there’s lot of new or refined optimization techniques incumbent to help companies improve application performance bringing together functionality like low bouncing, caching, compression, read optimization.

If you look at portals, like say more and more reporting and network control functions are being developed with portal type functionality and this is really an improvement over what I call previous separate control systems that often necessitate companies to support large development stuff that have expertise in different languages. So, I could go on and on Jim, but I think I’m going stop there, there really are a lot of interesting developments in corporate networking.

Jim Leach – SAVVIS
It seems like Rona, common thread across those different initiatives in the networking space is focused on the application and what applications need to run effectively and yet those of us in the IT Solution space, I think we tend a look at IT in discrete parts, whether it’s hosting or networks, servers or software. If CIOs are really looking for integrated IT Solutions for their applications, that cut across the Silos, is there an opportunity for telecommunications and hosting to come together to bring value for an IT Department or is it really better for an IT Department to continue buying these pieces individually.

Rona Shuchat – IDC
Jim, I think, there is a far more advantage for corporations to look at bundling a combination of elements to lower their overall total cost of ownership and when I say elements, I’m referring to potentially outsourcing a combination of server hardware, IP Bandwidth, storage, software, security you need in systems to monitoring into a single bundle. As we look out, at the different market segments, it’s really expected that small to mid size companies are really going to have a hard time, keeping up with and absorbing the in-house cost and expertise that they will need to support the growing complexity of their networked applications. From a large enterprise perspective, we believe that they can also benefit from advanced outsourced solutions, that take advantage of functionality like automated virtualization or utility computing and what I’ll refer to as performance application engineering.

These different elements help a company to consolidate their server resources but also enable then to scale, the whole concept of virtualization and utility computing for dynamic allocation of resources, will enable companies to scale their applications while keeping their cost under control, which is really a critical element that CIOs and CFOs will continue to watch, as applications grow and become more complex over time.

Jim Leach – SAVVIS
I think virtualization and utility computing for some of us, they sound just like another buzzword in IT and for those of us who’ve been around the IT block, a few times, I think, were all, a little bit jaded and some of us were even a bit cynical. Can you help us understand, what virtualization and utility computing are and what their real value is, that those concepts can deliver to a corporate IT Department?

Rona Shuchat – IDC
First of all, there is really a lot of media play around virtualization and utility computing. There’s a lot of different interpretations but there is, what I would say a real functionality to these concepts which is being provided in solutions by a number of large providers such as yourself. Simply put, a virtualization is the ability to take a single resource and make it appear as more than one, so that each instance can service separate application. For example, virtualization helps to partition servers, storage or even network interfaces and this in turn allows through the dynamic allocation of fixed resources.

When you think of utility computing, it’s very similar to the way you pay for electricity that you use over, let’s say the power line to your house. You only pay for what you consume over that power line and in today’s hosting world, this concept has been enhanced, I would say to include not only metered usage cost but the dynamic allocation of additional resources as they are needed and those resources might include things like processing power, storage or bandwidth.

So the point here, is that virtualization and on-demand computing can minimize the total cost of ownership for an enterprise, way beyond what they could achieve with a fixed resource model.

Now we are seeing savings in the — anywhere from 25-40% enterprisers say, when they compare a virtualization strategy versus a dedicated model. So, companies can really minimize their overall capital expenditure outlay. They don’t need to buy extra servers, for example, for those unusual peak periods and they can continue to scale and grow their applications and adjust up or down depending on how their growth moves ahead.

Jim Leach – SAVVIS
Oh, let’s talk a little bit more about Web Hosting and that’s another key area of your research and it appears that both supply and demand for Web Hosting are working to drive prices up in this area. There is a demand for high quality data center space with the right kind of power and cooling and security and the supply seems a little bit constrained. Can you talk to us a little bit about what’s driving this demand and do you think it’s going to increase?

Rona Shuchat – IDC
With the wholesale migration of traditional applications to Web-oriented architectures, we’re really seeing a tremendous growth and the need for Web Hosted applications. It’s really leading to, what I have call, resurgence and the need for web support systems and in addition to this migration of existing applications, I’d say that enterprisers are really bringing online, a wide range of new e-business functions, tie it to marketing, sales and transaction type services, there is really no limit for the types of applications that are evolving for e-business and to share some stats with you, IDC’s 2006 research shows, that approximately, 50% of all companies are now outsourcing all or part of their Website operations through an external service provider.

And this is up from about 44% compared to 2004 and we really expect this demand to keep growing. Our latest, Web Hosting forecast for example, shows that the US market for out sourced hosting services is predicted to grow from just under about 7 billion in 2005 to 14.5 billion in 2010, so we’re definitely projecting significant growth in this area.

Jim Leach – SAVVIS
So, if demand is going to continue to grow for Web hosting, you’re actually a trusted advisor to a number of corporate IT Departments. How are you advising them to evaluate Web hosting providers?

Rona Shuchat – IDC
Fairly, with so many options on the table today, it can very well be confusing to a corporate IT Department, there is multiple types of Web hosting providers out there. There’s Telecom Carriers, there’s IT outsourcing firms like IBM or EDS, there’s specialized managed Web hosting companies that are more of a (Inaudible) like a Rackspace for example, and then of course, there is the mass market hosters like GoDaddy or Yahoo, but as an enterprise customer, I think it’s really important, they need to assess whether the hoster can provide the scalability, needed to support their anticipated application growth and complexity and scalability isn’t just about providing data center capacity and processing power.

It may require the use of virtualization services or on-demand utility to achieve the economies of scale that are going to make the difference for that enterprise in terms of really lowering its total cost of ownership in an outsourced model. The enterprise also needs to evaluate the provider’s capabilities in terms of prepackaged solutions, levels of customization available. Last but not least, I’d say, they need to consider, the training and availability of support staff at that Web hoster, what kinds of certification does the staff have, availability of SOAs, what are the penalties for non compliance, there’s just really a whole diligent process, that an enterprise needs to go through to ensure that they are selecting a qualified Web hosting provider.

Jim Leach – SAVVIS
Oh Rona, this has been a great conversation and we’ve gotten a chance to talk with you about telecommunications and networking and Web hosting. Let’s put on your forecaster hat for the last question and give you the opportunity to look out five years, what recommendations would you give to Web hosting companies and corporate IT Departments?

Rona Shuchat – IDC
It’s going to be really important for companies to be able to dynamically scale their applications under increased usage and load and only pay for what they use, I think cost is still going to be a critical consideration for IT Organizations. So, in response to that, I think, it’s going to be a really important for hosting companies to be able to offer very granular utility computing service model, that can support very cost efficient solutions to help companies to be able to scale — outsource more complex applications and in the same breath really keep their costs under control.

Jim Leach – SAVVIS
Oh, thanks again, Rona Shuchat; Research Director at IDC and thanks to our listeners for joining us for this edition of Thought Leaders.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Thought Leaders, SAVVIS, Rona Shuchat, IDC, deep packet, virtualization

Transcript:
Host: Paul Lancour - PodTech
Guest: Jean Bozman – IDC

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Sun Microsystems and Intel Corporation announced a major agreement on Monday, between the two companies. The alliance is centered on Intel’s endorsement of Sun Solaris Operating System and Sun’s announcement that it will be delivering Servers and Workstations, based on Intel’s Xeon processors. The announcement was made by Sun’s CEO Jonathan Schwartz and Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini, in San Francisco. Jean Bozman is Research Vice President of the Enterprise Computing Group at IDC. I caught up with her shortly after the presentation at St. Regis Hotel.

Jean Bozman - IDC
I have covered Sun since the 80’s. It’s pretty much why I wanted to see this because if you look at it in historical perspective. This is very interesting, this is something that a lot of people thought, would never happen.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Why not?

Jean Bosman - IDC
Because, if you look at the history there were a number of point products that they did work on together if you go back, in the 87 to 90 period, they had a workstation and they had Intel Inside, if you want to say,. And then there was the LX50 more recently, which was an Intel based Server in 2002 and they had sort of Blade Server BX2000 I think, it also had Intel based Blade, but when they made those other ones, is particularly with Microsoft, with AMD, it’s sort of seemed like all the issues they dropped drop in the sense, this is one that I think that people had not anticipated because again, they had these point products, but no big, squashy announcement like this.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
So, they have a history with Intel. This is a much different an announcement that they are making today. What’s going on now in the marketplace for both Intel and for Sun that makes it a good idea for that process?

Jean Bosman - IDC
Couple of things, there are some trends out there. One of the primary, which is virtualization and with this virtualization trend what’s happening is we take something on the x86 server platform, which IDC defines, as an x86 architecture including both, the Intel microprocessor and the AMD microprocessors under that x86 name. If you look at x86, and so many virtualization products out there, in fact that’s last form. Sun talked about its virtualization offerings. What you find is, in old days we had a one server, one OS kind of approach to everything, all across the board.

Today things are a lot more kind of put together almost in the same platform at times and in fact you were able to have Solaris on x86, although you’ve got it from an OEM, who would certify it. For example, whether it was a desktop or server that was available. What this does ,what this alliance does it allows for a deeper kind of engineering and optimization, so that any time you have the operating system in the hardware and worked under the same team, you can speed up the functionality that’s true with any OS hardware combination.

So, but in fact they are working more directly here you can expect some optimization perhaps in some specific areas where Sun really has some speed spots, for example in the networking area, in the Telco infrastructures where Sun is very, very strong. There’s a lot of customized or custom Solaris code within the Telco infrastructure we’ve been looking at that as I can see as a matter of fact. And some of the hardware that is running out it is a little bit on the older side, what this does is, it provides yet another platform for that Solaris code to go to in future.

If you look at it Solaris is a very scalable operating system. Mostly x86 servers that you see today in general I think, I don’t want to name the amount of processors, but they tend not to be very large, is the opportunity for some vendors out there, who might want to make a more scalable servers based on X86 technology so another possibility.

So, there is optimization, there is virtualization, there is new potential partnerships with OEMs and sweet spots within the market, networking, Telco, maybe database, certain areas where Sun can demonstrate an expertise in supporting those workloads. So, we talk about workloads a lot at IDC, we tend to work on it.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Looking at it from Intel’s point of view, there are market areas that they are not strong in that to — Solaris will allow them to penetrate more deeply.

Jean Bosman - IDC
Well, it’s just that you have to understand that we are in the middle of a period of IT transformation and if you work at it, there are lot of areas Telco was just one example there were others, where there has been a lot of Sun’s trends, financial services, Telco. And again, you have Solaris applications written there already. So, the idea is, here will be more places whether it would be more servers, whether it would be more virtual spaces on those servers either way. There would be more places for that combination to be run out in the environment.

The other things for interests is with virtualization such as VMware, what you are able to have is, you are able to have Solaris next to Linux, next to Windows on the same server. And again that’s a real change from that, one server, one OS, world that we had at the height of the behind of the dot com bubble, this is a different world.

And I think what you see now is it Sun and with Solaris and Java is covering all the major types of platforms they had (Inaudible), they have their own CMT chip multithreading, they still have AMD and now they are adding one more. But I think what they are doing there, is realizing whether there’s going to be a wide IT infrastructure and they want to be active in as many places on the infrastructures as possible, because it’s going to be a lot of end to end applications that are going to spin the whole enterprise and want to be able to run Solaris and Java in as many places as possible.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Am I right in saying that the big picture on this that is being driven by the hardware in the fact that…

Jean Bosman - IDC
The hardware is being virtualized.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
The hardware is getting the coverage virtualized; they have the Duo and the Quad and the multicore…

Jean Bozman - IDC
There is a lot of power out there.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
There is a lot of power, there is an opportunity to work across operating systems and so that’s what’s driving a lot of…

Jean Bozman - IDC
well and there is something else, all of this is causing or bringing about a lot of customer choice that wasn’t there it works well, and realize that even with today’s announcement, customer still has a number of choices here with this Sun Technology stack, they can go on several processors, including two or three of Sun’s. And they can then again take their software and run on a variety of processors as well. So, it’s just really increasing the number of options that are out there, for people who already have source application, for people who are thinking of writing, or people who are thinking of moving them from one place to another.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Ultimately the customers are going, is going to shake out ultimately by what the marketplace does. I mean it is not giving as many options to the customers, you can and then…

Jean Bozman - IDC
It’s what so hard for people to understand, if I work at a large enterprise today almost any large enterprise, I can go there and survey those large enterprises and finding a place that doesn’t have multiple operating systems and multiple pieces of hardware, would be the exception, rather than work.

So, there is already a great amount of variety, but before we had the Silos right, so here is this part of the shop, and there is that part of the shop, what’s changing out there again, to this virtualization and then changing the hardware, so that the workloads can move more freely around the network, it kind of place to Sun’s tray this is what we said and the network is the computer. So the more network centric something is, the better Sun could demonstrate this value proposition for. There is they are not going to take over the entire x86 market, this improves their position in it.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Thanks very much for taking the time with us.

Jean Bosman - IDC
Well thank you. I finally got a Podcast, alright.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Jean Bozman, Research Vice President of the Enterprise Computing Group at IDC. I am Paul Lancour with PodTech.net.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Jean Bozman, IDC, Sun, Intel

Reporter’s Notes: For more about EnergyCS, Pete Nortman is president. He can be reached here.

Click here for transcript.

Tags: Prius, PHEV, Greg Hanssen, EnergyCS, EDrive Systems, Valence Technologies, Saphion, Pete Nortman

Tags: Danielle Levitas, Women in Technology, IDC Research, Robin Raskin

Tags: Nintendo, Wii

Tags: Intel, Pentium, AMD, Core 2 Duo, IDC

Tags: AMD, ATI, Shane Rau, IDC

“The partnership between Polycom and Skype is a natural fit,” said Will Stofega, research manager of VoIP services at IDC. “Skype is making inroads into business environments which require business-quality solutions. The Polycom Communicator delivers the full range of wideband voice quality for the Skype application and the experience is excellent. The hands-free design and tight integration makes the Polycom Communicator easy to set up and use.”

“Teaming with Polycom, we can offer Skype business customers high-quality, portable communications solutions, based on proven technology, that can help them extend Skype more broadly into their everyday work environment,” said Henry Gomez, Skype’s general manager for North America.

Polycom Communicator was introduced this morning in conjunction with the NASDAQ market opening by Polycom CEO Robert Hagerty, who was accompanied by Polycom CFO Mike Kourey and SVP of Voice Products Sunil Bhalla. The company is celebrating its tenth anniversary as a publicly traded company and the shipment of the two-millionth SoundStation conference phone — the award- winning, triangular-shaped conference phone line that has become an icon for voice conferencing quality in businesses around the globe.

“Personal and group collaboration is a critical communications need in this world of distributed workgroups. Skype’s unique offering, broad global user base, and growing adoption within business environments is a natural fit for Polycom’s leading communications and collaboration solutions,” said Robert Hagerty, chairman and CEO of Polycom. “We are pleased to launch our first Skype Certified hands-free, wideband USB speakerphone, which leverages our expertise in real-time voice communications and is a logical extension of our award-winning voice communications product line. The Polycom Communicator’s deep integration with Skype provides customers with unrivaled quality and performance in a personal PC speakerphone.”

The Polycom Communicator delivers:

— Exceptional voice quality — The device features high-quality, full-
duplex (two-way), hands-free voice communications; high-fidelity
wideband audio quality capabilities and Polycom’s renowned Acoustic
Clarity Technology that eliminates echoes and feedback. The device
also supports Skype’s full wideband voice capabilities.
— Multi-functional capabilities — In addition to the Skype phone
capabilities, the Polycom USB Communicator can also be used as a
high-fidelity speaker (up to 22 kHz) for other PC applications,
including audio presentations, music, games, etc. It also has a
built-in stereo headset port for private conversations.
— Freedom from a headset — Users can hold high quality Skype calls
without the hassle of a being connected via a headset cable or
having a device against or in their ear.
— Convenient call function buttons — With deep integration to the
Skype application, the Polycom Communicator features convenient
buttons enabling users to easily launch Skype on their computer and
control volume, mute, and pick-up and hang-up calls.
— Portable, compact design — About the size of a PDA, the
speakerphone connects to a computer via an integrated USB cable
which also provides power; no batteries or additional power sources
are required The USB cable conveniently stores within the device.
The small size and carrying case makes the Polycom Communicator easy
to transport between home, office and on the road.

The interview is on PodTech at www.PodTech.net/?p=552

At the 2006 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas one of the big themes is how 2006 is the year we finally see the long expected radical shift in media brought on by the power of IP and associated technologies (like the iPod… especially the iPod). Some players will seamlessly change their content from streaming to on-demand. Some merely will move their streaming model to the web. Some will fail.

IDC analyst Susan Kevorkian moderates a CES panel called “The Return of Radio” on Thursday, which addresses the problem of the shrinking radio market and the opportunities for satellite and HD radio to give the market a shot in the arm.

PodTech chatted with Susan just before CES to get her take on the outlook for 2006 on the iPod, streaming and the potential of IP-based audio.

IDC reports that in the July through September quarter of this year the market grew 10 percent compared to the same period a year ago. Storage software makers, globally, brought in $2.1 billion in the quarter. EMC dominated the market by taking 29.1 percent of all revenue. Symantec — which purchased the storage software maker Veritas — was second with 20 percent.

Data storage has become a much more powerful tool as developers continue to add more functionality to the software that manages it. Where once it was enough to merely banish old data, companies need information to be readily available and usable for litigation, regulatory compliance, and other needs.

Replication has also become important because it allows companies to mirror large amounts of data and have it readily usable, rather than having to run the data through archival software before accessing it. Network Appliance benefited greatly, showing a 42.5 percent revenue jump, based on demand for replication software.

PodTech News - Fresh News and Fresh Voices - Jason Lopez Reports

SAN FRANCISCO, December 6, 2005 (PodTech News) – Sun Microsystems says its Sun Fire servers, outfitted with new UltraSparc T1 microprocessors, will make the company more competitive with Dell. The chips, code-named Niagra, operate on less power — generating less heat — with eight microprocessing cores.

Sun CEO Scott McNealy, in a press conference, openly addressed criticism of Sun’s business moves since Internet bubble burst in 2000. The company dramatically fell from its position as a pillar of Internet and enterprise computing.
According to IDC, in the Q3 of 2005 Sun lost share (down 1.5 percentage points from Q3 2004 to 8.7 percent) compared to IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell which all gained. But, Sun promises it will out-engineer its competitors and return to its former stature.
Jason Lopez filed this PodTech podcast about the issues facing Sun.

Jason Lopez PodTech NewsSun Podcast News IBM Silicon Valley John Furrier Business Podcasts podcast shows

IBM’s blogging strategy and podcasting views are a major shift in corporate culture and IBM is pioneering new ground that will certainly change peoples lives. IBM is showing the way and I’m sure people will follow. Very impressive.

Correction: At the end of the podcast I mention that Ben and Christopher are senior executives of IBM. Ben and Christopher are managers that head up the blogging and podcasting initiative. Internally within IBM the word senior executives means a head of a business unit or equivalent. Sorry Ben and Chris for the misquote on the title.

Transcript:

Guests: Ben Edwards and Christopher Barger - IBM Marketing & Corporate Communication Executives
Host: John Furrier, Founder of PodTech.net

John Furrier – PodTech:
Welcome to the PodTech.net infoTalk series. We’re here at the IBM headquarters with Ben Edwards and Christopher Barger, two IBM communication executives that corporate communications. Welcome to the podcast.

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
Thanks John.

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
Thanks very much.

John Furrier – PodTech:
I’m psyched to be here in the IBM studio. It’s very professionally laid out and we’re at corporate headquarters here at IBM. You guys are in charge of the podcasting strategy within IBM. You have a blogging strategy already out there with your employees, communication to the world and amongst themselves. What’s your view on podcasting, how do you guys see this rolling out and what’s your view on that?

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
I think there are two broad areas that we and our colleagues at IBM are interested in podcasting. The first is just to take advantage of the utility and the economics of web distribution / web syndication. A lot of things have happened internally over very large, very expensive teleconferences for example it could be and are going to be transitioned to podcasting. Things like education materials for our very large, very mobile global sales force. That can go into it as well. The second broad area is really for our external audiences to dig into IBM and to listen to the wealth of experts we have here within the company.

John Furrier – PodTech:
IBM is obviously a leader in a lot of areas and considered, on the marketing side, the leader. You guys are looking at podcasting now as a user generated content model within IBM. You guys have been doing big production for years. You have high-end production from annual report to shareholders to, as you mentioned, international events but, podcasting is for everyday people. You have 300,000 employees at IBM some who are blogging, but now podcasting is for everybody. How do you see that kind of trend where the employees can start communicating internally with podcasts and then externally? How are you guys going to handle that?

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
We’re in a transition from one mode to another and there’s a lot of communications we do, that we’ll continue to do, that will come out under the old model. For example, if you look at share holder communications we generate as a company a lot of packaged share holder communications that we get out to our inventors on a periodic basis. As our employees become interested in generating their own content, I think the model for us in corporate is to really encourage those who have talent, who have a good voice, and who are going to improve our ability to be able to create markets, make new markets, and win business and to find them and help them set up and enable them to blog and to podcast and to reach out. On the other hand, to try and allow our audiences, externally, to find the things they want to find within IBM. So, to dig into IBM, to dig into our experts, our employees, and to tune in to the voices or the written materials that they are going to find useful and interesting.

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
One of the interesting, or more exciting things is that in a large company like IBM you’ve got a lot of experts, you’ve got a lot who are among the best there is at what they do, but it’s easy to get lost in such a large company. This is a way of democratizing everything. I might not know somebody in our lab in Silicon Valley who’s a particular expert on something and have no way of realizing what they were good at, what they are so smart on, and why I should be paying attention to them. By democratizing everything, by giving them this kind of a utility, it gives them a voice to get their expertise out. More importantly for me, it gives me a way of identifying who our experts are, identifying the people that I need to be paying attention to, learning more about my own country, learning more about what we have that is out there that is deserving of my attention.

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
I think also, to Chris’s point, demand really pulls talent in this area. Imagine that a company, where you have thousands or even hundreds of thousands of different feeds of one form or another…it’s the marketplace of listeners, consumers that’s going to promote the interesting ones and then other people can find them. It’s really a way of allowing interesting things to filter up to the top.

John Furrier – PodTech:
It’s almost a classic long tale within IBM. You have all this content from research to recruiting to business unit oriented content that traditionally was in written form or marketing materials. The consumers are now looking at consumption with iPods, MP3 players, and young people too are consuming things via this new format. You guys are in communications and you have been communication with your current podcast now on the share holder’s side. On marketing communications, how do you see that marketplace and that trend happening? Do you see the IBM business units moving more towards this format? You’ve been talking about it internally, what’s been some of the reactions and feedback you’ve gotten?

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
There’s a lot of excitement and I think you’re definitely going to see marketing jumping on this. Even as soon as we put the internal tool out and began to promote this internally, we were getting inundated with people wanting to know how we could do this externally. Wanting to know what makes a good one, how we could best grab the audience, just trying to tap into the expertise that we’ve developed even in the past couple of months. There’s tremendous interest. They’re definitely going to be using it. Now it’s just a question of making sure that it’s done well and that we’re adapting our tactics to the new medium rather than trying to force the old into the medium.

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
I think there’s a general sense that people are struggling a little bit with the old ways of marketing and selling product services and they’ve leapt on this (podcasting) because it can be so compelling and it can be so powerful when done well. As Chris says, there is a lot of interest brewing and bubbling on.

John Furrier – PodTech:
People are learning too. You can get started, people can get their voices heard, it’s a learning environment right now. People are jumping in and publishing and people are subscribing.

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
Right. There’s a technical barrier so there is some trepidation about how to record, post and create the RSS feed, and so on. I think that we in corporate communications can help with which is why we were talking about the enablement model.

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
I think there’s an excitement about this too, going back to the previous point, I think there’s a realization that old techniques aren’t working so much anymore. There’s definitely a shift, especially in the younger generation, the way you reach them, the way they will listen to you. There’s a realization among…generally among corporate communications that the old ways aren’t working anymore as well as they used to. Everyone understands the potential of this if done well. That’s why they are leaping on it so fast… the realization that something different and new needs to be done.

John Furrier – PodTech:
It’s a different model too in terms of what I am seeing with my podcasts and talking to other folks with the podcast. It’s really influence marketing because, with blogging and now podcasting, transparency and truth really is a big driver in how things react and distribute within the blogosphere. Podcasting is obviously the brother/sister of blogging, but really it is about providing an influence so a product manager to a CEO can podcast their information and influence the young generation of people consuming. Now within IBM that’s a big shift from how they were doing things before. So it really is about adapting. What hurdles do you see and what challenges are you guys looking at in terms of …this is happening very fast, you guys are doing it, you’re communicating about podcasting. In your mind, as communication pros, what are those next hurdles for you?

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
Well, part of it is technical. We want to help with some pilot projects inside the company. You mentioned shareholder communications podcast. That’s generated as much if not more excitement inside IBM than outside. When people listen to it and think for themselves about the possibility of deploying what you call this influence on marketing model. In other words, really what you are facing is a consumer who really has almost infinite choice of what he or she listens to, watches, or reads. That’s just a proliferation of media. You need to make the actual content of your communications interesting and appealing. You have to give value inside the content. It’s very fortunate that we have this huge resource of experts in all sorts of different fields in IBM that we can tap into and get their voices out.

John Furrier – PodTech:
You have a ton of content. You have pros from on the technical side also on the business side as well. Now all of those are being unleashed very quickly so podcasting can happen very quickly. Within the blogosphere on the internet everyone’s connected the velocity of information travels so fast so it’s a galvanizing of a community. What I’m seeing with podcasting is: when someone publishes their voice, like Chris said a researcher could be in Silicon Valley, he’s reaching out on a virtual basis and actually creating a virtual community of “like minds”. It really is turning out to be a very interesting influence, not so much marketing, but community. How is this different? Community models within IBM were mainly the website. This is kind of new. It’s one of those things where you look at it and you say, “How do we harness it or do we stay away from it?” You guys are actually going into it.

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
Yes. I think the website actually plays a big role. We already have those communities in our various families or sites on IBM.com. We can build that sense of community out further using podcasting and using blogging…getting people interacting, join the conversation, listen to our experts.

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
The best part of it is, to the point that John was making about the change, is until recently the communities have been preconditioned, preset. This is a way to bring everything from the bottom up. The communities create themselves. A person doesn’t have to necessarily go sign up for a specific community or go become part of anything specific anymore. He or she can just look and see who’s blogging, who’s podcasting on the subjects that matter to them that they are interested in, that they have expertise in. Those communities form on their own and they form from the bottom up. That’s really where the shift is happening.

John Furrier – PodTech:
It’s a user generated content model but it’s not just for individuals. It’s for corporations because they have individuals. So it’s a combination of bottom up and top down coming together.

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
Right. That’s a big shift for a lot of companies to realize that you can let go of the control of this and allow the bottom up to work. There is a level of trust of your employees that has to come into play here. That’s a bit of a culture shift.

John Furrier – PodTech:
You guys have mentioned previously when we were talking earlier about self-governance. Within your blogging policy that you have, in essence there is a lot of trust and that is a big part of transparency and truth, and trust. Don’t you see the self-governance becoming a big model? Has that been a big part of why blogging has been successful at IBM? There’s almost like there’s a self governance built in. You guys don’t have a command and control blogging strategy. You have an open and trustful strategy. Explain how that’s working with the folks out there.

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
It works very well and you are absolutely right that the communities govern themselves, that they police themselves. One of the big concerns that was originally brought up was if conversations start going in the wrong direction, what if somebody says something bad. And you find that it’s like an old fashion town meeting, the first time the town loony gets up everyone gives him the microphone and pays there attention, and after he says a few crazy things everyone just rolls there eyes and they don’t pay him any attention anymore. But the smart ones, the ones that are well articulated with well thought out ideas, criticism, or whatever - those are the ones that people flock to. The idea to just let go and trust the community to weed itself and to identify who its leaders are that has been real interesting for me to watch and to see it happening.

John Furrier – PodTech:
I think that is a huge success and think that is the model. A final question for you both if you could both answer that would be great. In the next five years what is your prediction, take your IBM hat off, in communications what is going to be different about our world in five years?

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
We are really in a lot of turmoil at the moment, we are in transition from on world to another and we don’t know what that new world looks like yet. We have a sense of it, the self-governance, user generated content, the web itself is evolving very quickly, with read/write web or Web 2.0 it is very real, very alive, and the web is information, generation platform. By itself, it’s fascinating to watch and it’s happening incredibly rapidly. To hazard a guess, I am interested in a whole bunch of areas in my field of communications, in the corporate side, there is also in the media side, and what happens to the main stream media and how do they adjust to blogging to podcasting. I think that we have clearly established a direction; in terms of adoption of these new media, new forms of production and consumption of communication and content, I think, you’re going to find the generation gap widening. You see that already. You really have layers of practice, and layers of use and there are some people that are tuning into some things and other people are tuning into others and it is sometimes difficult to bridge the divide. I think that is going to widen, actually.

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
I think that you will continue to see the idea of user generated content is only going to get bigger. To Ben’s point, about the main stream media, I think that’s the big adjustment that they’re going to have to make is to understand that everybody has a microphone and everybody can fact check them. They’re going have to adjust that everybody is a player now. And that they have, instead of fifteen or twenty competitors, they got a hundred million competitors. On the technology side I am particular excited about video-casting, vidcasting, or vodcasting, whatever you want to call it. I think that especially as that younger generation starts to come up that is where, they may not have, we were talking about this earlier, they may not have the attention span to listen to 15 minuets they may decide, “I’m used to songs, I want five minuet bursts of information and that is that.” If you add video to it, you double the attention span. I am excited about were that is going to go. I think that’s really going to be a big opportunity for both corporations and for the private side.

John Furrier – PodTech:
We’re here with Ben Edwards and Christopher Barger, who head up the blogging and podcasting strategy. Thanks so much for the podcast. Great predictions talking about your podcasting strategy, how you guys are evolving, very successful blogging strategy. Thanks so much for the podcast.

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