IBM Secure Trade Lane Goes "Drinking"

On Friday, at the RFID Journal Live conference in Amsterdam, IBM along with several of its partners and clients will be making a significant announcement around its Secure Trade Lane solution. Without spilling the beans or in this case the "drink" (that's a hint) the team will be announcing a new pilot project using the technology.
But the significance of this announcement isn't the technology, the reality is the technology has been available for several years. The real importance here is that for the first time, 3PLs, manufacturers, retailers and governments are now able to share reliable, real-time cargo shipment information in an open standards environment worldwide. Based on a Secure Trade Lane's Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) not only can the parties collaborate, it will also allow for the paperless documentation of all shipping manifests that will cut costs, enable faster customs processing and encourage international trade.

Is it a Container or a Data Center or Both?

In the past I've written about how containers are being used in prefab homes and most recently for a trendy handbag store in Zurich. But today, we are taking containers to a whole new level as Sun Microsystems has decided to turn containers into a prefab data warehouse. So think of your typical TEU container fitted with millions of dollars of server equipment that can run anything from your website to your internal email. The funny thing is that the containers can only withstand a drop of 6 inches. Anything more and the owner can expect some level of damage. 6 inches doesn't sound like a lot of leeway to me. At least they are saving a few trees from all of the cardboard and wooden crates that would typically be used to ship this much hardware. Next up, the TEU automobile.

The Reverse Logistics of Global Battery Recall

So the laptop battery recall hit me. No, fire, but after checking on the serial numbers of my Apple previous I was asked to return my primary and back-up batteries to Apple for replacements.

The process was simple enough using an online form. Roughly, four weeks later I received the new batteries from UPS from the Netherlands. The Netherlands distribution center must support Europe, as I am still in Vienna. The boxes contain everything I needed to ship the batteries back to Apple with no expense to me. But my only question is, why should I? Less than 20 of the five million batteries Sony made have caused problems, less than 5 have actually caught fire. With four battery packs I'll never run out of juice even after the nine hour flight to NY for the holidays. Besides this, what exactly is Sony going to do with 5 million batteries? They are a environment headache and in such as mass quantity you can't just simply bury them somewhere. So I look at it as doing them a favor.

Criteria for Global Sourcing

Doing business in emerging markets is all the buzz these days. But how does a company choose the right location. In a recent internal presentation I was given a closer look at what IBM looks for in an emerging country. From a general overview I don't think you'll be surprised that we look at:

• talent and skill base
• quality of local universities
  
• overall population of the city and country
• unemployment levels, which could or couldn't be relevant depending on how emerging is market is
  
• economic issues: salary range, taxes, currency
  
• space availability
• infrastructure
  

Some things I initially didn't consider were:

• availability of public transportation and the costs for employees
• number and quality level of local subscontractors and suppliers
• bandwidth
• ease of recruitment
  

These are a just a few of the topics. The procurement folks that presented certainly know there stuff as IBM has opened dozens of new competency centers and outsourcing centers around the world over the last few years and all of them are doing quite well.