Press release:

IBM Helps Cities Worldwide Measure Public Social Sentiment on Critical Issues

IBM Social Sentiment Index: Analysis of Traffic in India’s Three Largest Cities Reveals What Citizens Feel is Impacting Congestion in Their City Most

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Armonk, N.Y. and New Delhi - 13 Sep 2012: Today at the IBM Smarter Cities Forum in New Delhi, India, IBM (NYSE: IBM) unveiled a new social sentiment capability based on sophisticated analytics technologies to help cities around the world better measure and understand public opinions on key city issues and services such as public transportation or education.

The company also unveiled findings from the latest IBM Social Sentiment Index on traffic, which looked at public sentiment across India’s largest cities -- Bangalore, New Delhi and Mumbai. Analysis of publically available social media showed that the worst congestion is primarily caused by accidents and bad weather (three out of four times) when looking at the three cities together. It also indicated some interesting variations between the cities analyzed. For example, social conversation in Mumbai about stress around traffic is about half as high as Bangalore and New Delhi; references to the impact of rush hour on congestion in New Delhi are between five and seven times more negative than in Bangalore and Mumbai. 

With a wealth of online content and public commentary on social channels such as Twitter and Facebook, city officials need new ways to measure positive, neutral and negative opinions shared by citizens regarding important city issues. IBM’s advanced analytics and natural language processing technologies used to analyze large volumes of public social media data in order to assess and understand citizen opinions are now available to city governments around the world via new capabilities delivered with the IBM Intelligent Operations Center (IOC) for Smarter Cities. The IOC – which combines IBM software and services to integrate city operations through a single dashboard view to help cities improve efficiency – is now augmented with social media analytics capabilities that will help city officials make more informed decisions by looking at unfiltered citizen attitudes and actions, distinguishing between sincerity and sarcasm and even predicting trends as they surface online. 

Combining the knowledge that population will rapidly increase in Bangalore, New Delhi and Mumbai in the coming years, with sentiment on commuters’ preferred mode of transportation, could help these cities more accurately plan for needed investments in transportation infrastructure and its potential impact. City officials could also gauge where public awareness campaigns need to be administered to shift commuters to different modes of transport in order to alleviate growing traffic congestion. 

The IBM Social Sentiment Index on transportation in India’s three largest cities surfaced several insights including: 

·     The top three factors impacting traffic congestion that citizens in each city talked about most online were diverse. Delhites chattered about public transportation, weather and the stress of commuting, while Bangaloreans show more concern for their overall driving experience, construction and parking issues, and Mumbaikars are talking about private transportation, accidents and pollution more often.  

·     Conversation in Bangalore around parking is viewed three times more negatively than in the other cities. 

·     Despite recent infrastructure improvements, less pollution and a solid public transit system, Delhites are experiencing a far higher amount of stress (50 percent) than those in Mumbai (29 percent) or Bangalore (34 percent). Most likely, this can be explained by an uptick in rallies and weather events this year, as well as the recent power outage. 

·     Surprisingly, sentiment on the topic of construction was relatively positive in Bangalore and New Delhi, and positive and negative sentiment on infrastructure in each was relatively even. Together, these may suggest that the transportation infrastructure improvements being made over the last two years in each city are beginning to positively impact citizens. 

·     Analysis shows that the relative negative sentiment for rush hour (35 percent) is one of the key drivers impacting traffic in New Delhi, which may explain why citizens talk about stress significantly more than commuters in Mumbai or Bangalore. 

By applying analytics capabilities to the area of social media sentiment, organizations are able to better understand public opinions, and city officials can gain additional insights in order to draw logical conclusions about where they should focus their attentions and resources. For example: 

·     Take Bangalore, the technology hub of India. Understanding that most commuters prefer private transportation despite negative sentiment around parking and construction may indicate that city officials should consider if it makes sense to advocate for more commuters to use mass transit and invest in infrastructure that will keep up with demand as more companies locate there. 

·     Since Dehlite’s indicate that public transportation is the preferred mode of transportation, city officials could use this insight to study which areas have high ridership and less road traffic and then implement similar actions in highly congested areas.  

·    In Mumbai, negative sentiment around traffic and weather at the peak of monsoon season (August) generated 5.5 times more chatter than in November. If the city could measure the fluctuation of public sentiment on these potential causes over time combined with specific weather data like rainfall or temperature, it might be able to better prepare to divert traffic during monsoon season or determine areas where a public safety campaign is needed. 

“Like all rapidly growing cities across the world, there are infrastructure growing pains in many Indian cities,” said Guru Banavar, vice president and chief technology officer, Smarter Cities, IBM. “However, when city officials can factor public sentiment – positive, negative or otherwise -- around city services like transportation, they can more quickly pinpoint and prioritize areas that are top of mind for their citizens. This could mean more targeted investment, improving a particular city service, more effective communication about a service that is offered, and even surfacing best practices and successful efforts that could be applied to other zones of a city.” 

Methodology

Public social media content was analyzed by IBM Cognos Consumer Insights, which assessed 168,330 online discussions from September 2011 to September 2012 across social platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Forums and News Sources and derived 54,234 High Value Snippets through a series of advanced filtration techniques for insight analysis. The IBM Social Sentiment Index helps companies tap into consumer desires and make more informed decisions by looking at unfiltered consumer attitudes and actions, distinguishing between sincerity and sarcasm, and even predicting trends. 

About the IBM Social Sentiment Index

The IBM Social Sentiment Index uses advanced analytics and natural language processing technologies to analyze large volumes of social media data in order to assess public opinions. The Index can identify and measure positive, negative and neutral sentiments shared in public forums such as Twitter, blogs, message boards and other social media, and provide quick insights into consumer conversations about issues, products and services. Representing a new form of market research, social sentiment analyses offer organizations new insights that can help them better understand and respond to consumer trends. For more information about IBM Business Analytics, please visit: www.ibm.com/analytics. Follow the conversation at #IBMIndex on Twitter. 

For more information about IBM Smarter Cities, visit www.ibm.com/press/smartercities. Follow the conversation at #smartercities on Twitter. 

Registered journalists and bloggers can view and download video and images here.

A Test of Smart Cars Gets Under Way

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Wednesday, August 22, 2012

A Test of Smart Cars Gets Under Way

By BILL VLASIC

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Federal regulators on Tuesday announced a yearlong “smart car” project to determine whether wireless communication between vehicles can improve safety on the nation’s highways.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said 3,000 cars, buses and trucks in this city near Detroit would be equipped with data recorders and a technology akin to Wi-Fi that can transmit information about accidents or hazardous traffic conditions.

Drivers in the connected vehicles will be warned, for example, of sudden changes in traffic patterns or potential collisions through data transmitted from similarly equipped cars and roadside devices.

Mr. LaHood said the $25 million study would yield data useful in deciding whether the government should require such crash avoidance technology in future vehicles.

For more, visit www.nytimes.com.

PRESS RELEASE

Cisco Security Solution is Helping Protecting Online Retailer Schneider's Data Traffic

• Security strengthened with Cisco IronPort Hosted Email Security and Cisco ScanSafe Web Security cloud services
• Spam load reduced by 99 percent
• IT department can focus on core tasks again

MUNICH, August 20,  2012 - Online retail group Schneider is protecting its email and Web traffic with Cisco IronPort® Hosted Email Security and Cisco® ScanSafe Web Security cloud-based services. These two solutions provide the retailer with a comprehensive package of email security, spam protection and Web security. Mobile user devices, too, are integrated into the services through Cisco AnyConnect™ Secure Mobility Client. For Schneider, the benefits are a higher level of security and a significant reduction in the effort involved in security management. The solutions also provide centralized policy management for all of the company's Internet breakouts. At the same time, Schneider has been able to improve its customer service, because the cloud acts as a buffer, preventing the loss of email. The retailer's IT team can now concentrate on its core tasks again.

Ninety-nine percent of spam mail eliminated

With around 250,000 inbound email messages a day, Schneider had been experiencing a steady rise in Web traffic, which meant expending more and more effort on managing its conventional security solutions. To prevent data traffic jams, the company had 15 decentralized breakouts in branch offices, forming a bridge to the Internet. Each access node was equipped with its own anti-spam and anti-virus engines.

Integralis, a security solutions vendor and long-standing Cisco Registered Partner, offloaded security into a cloud-based solution consisting of Cisco IronPort Hosted Email Security and Cisco ScanSafe Web Security components. The IronPort spam protection now blocks the flood of spam using a multitier scanning architecture. At the heart of the solution is a Cisco Reputation Filter, which checks email messages against a database in real time. The Cisco IronPort Context Adaptive Scanning Engine analyzes the content and structure of every message. Together, these technologies can eliminate more than 99 percent of the spam.

"Today, we don't get the 250,000 emails a day that we used to: our servers only receive around 5,000 – namely, those that are important for our business operations," explains Arne Klingauf, head of the project in Schneider's IT team. "The Cisco cloud acts like a buffer, storing all email for at least 24 hours. That extends our maintenance window and helps us ensure that we don't lose email from customers, even if there's a system outage." The new solution has greatly reduced the IT department's workload, allowing the staff to concentrate in full on their core tasks again.

Images are available on Cisco's Flickr photostream:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciscogermany

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate.  Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go tohttp://newsroom.cisco.com. Cisco equipment in Germany is provided by Cisco Systems International B.V. and Cisco International Limited, wholly owned subsidiaries of Cisco Systems, Inc.

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American Restaurant Industry Starts to Simmer, Says GE Capital

Press release:


27 March 2012

American Restaurant Industry Starts to Simmer, Says GE Capital

Increased consumer spending and foot traffic boost expectations

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.--27 March 2012-- The American restaurant industry is starting to simmer. Consumers are spending more on meals, and foot traffic at establishments is improving, albeit from a diminished base, according to the 22nd edition of the Chain Restaurant Industry Review, released at this week’s Restaurant Leadership Conference by GE Capital, Franchise Finance. As sales trends recover, operators are translating those positive feelings into a greater willingness to invest in their businesses. And with increasingly accessible credit, they’re able to commit to higher capital expenditures.

“The restaurant industry has come through the upheaval of the past several years by listening closely to the consumer and adapting to their changing tastes – and they’ve done it well,” said Agustin Carcoba, president and CEO of GE Capital, Franchise Finance. “Depending on their segment, brand and focus, operators have emphasized food quality, service quality, menu options and other factors that will lead to renewed growth this year and in the years ahead. Even better, operators did it all while managing operational costs.”

Consumers spent $406.6 billion at restaurants in 2011. For 21 consecutive months, they spent more at restaurants than grocery stores, and that trend is expected to continue. Last year, quick-service restaurants (QSR) accounted for 48.0 percent of that figure, while full-service restaurants (FSR) counted for 48.1 percent. The QSR category includes limited service, fast casual, take-out locations and snack and non-alcoholic beverage bars, while FSR includes family, casual, high-end casual and fine dining establishments.

Operators’ improved expectations can be partially attributed to positive results that were sustained throughout last year. QSR same-store sales grew 3.2% last year – ahead of the FSR rate of 2.4%. QSR benefitted from eight consecutive periods of growth due to more consistent traffic, while FSR relied more on menu price increases and higher average checks.

“Restaurateurs are no longer in survival mode; now they’re planning for the future,” said Trey Brown, commercial leader of GE Capital, Franchise Finance. “To capture that growth and maintain a competitive advantage, they’re investing in their businesses by building new stores, remodeling existing ones or investing in new equipment.”

The level of liquidity available in the restaurant space continues to improve. Merger and acquisition activity – an indicator of the popularity of the restaurant industry among investors – increased last year. Total syndicated volume in the restaurant space increased more than 26% to almost $12 billion in 2011. Strategic buyers returned, such as American Blue Ribbon Holdings LLC, Darden Restaurants and Landry’s Inc. Private equity firms were also active; for example, Golden Gate Capital acquired California Pizza Kitchen.

“We expect restaurants to continue to be appealing acquisition targets because of the ongoing increases in food dollars spent away from home, as well as the scalability of this business model,” Brown added.

About GE Capital, Franchise Finance

GE Capital, Franchise Finance is a leading lender for the franchise finance market via direct sales and portfolio acquisition. With more than 30 years of experience and $10 billion in served assets, we serve over 3,000 customers and over 18,000 property locations. We specialize in financing mid-market operators with multiple stores in the restaurant and hospitality industries. Our team of industry experts will work with you to help develop your own growth plan with access to our proprietary industry research and customized tools. More information is available atwww.gefranchisefinance.com.

GE Capital offers consumers and businesses around the globe an array of financial products and services. For more information, visitwww.gecapital.com or follow company news via Twitter (@GECapital).

GE (NYSE: GE) works on things that matter. The best people and the best technologies taking on the toughest challenges. Finding solutions in energy, health and home, transportation and finance. Building, powering, moving and curing the world. Not just imagining. Doing. GE works. For more information, visit the company's website at www.ge.com.

U.S. Stores Learn the Ropes of Shipping to Foreign Shoppers

Excerpt from an article in

The New York Times

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

U.S. Stores Learn the Ropes of Shipping to Foreign Shoppers

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

Macy’s has long marketed itself as a shopping destination for visitors to the United States. It offers a savings card with a 10 percent discount for foreign shoppers, custom programs for tour groups and travel agents, and a tourism Web site that lists shopping events and recommended hotels near Macy’s flagship stores.

But only last year did Macys.com — which shoppers worldwide can look at — offer overseas shipping.

“We were getting international traffic,” said Kent Anderson, president of Macys.com. “It was coming whether we were offering them, frankly, any realistic way to interact with the site or not.”

Macy’s is one of several retailers trying to extend its international presence to its Web operations by shipping overseas. In the last year, Williams-Sonoma, J. Crew, Aéropostale, Crate and Barrel and Lane Bryant have added international shipping to their Web sites, while Ann Taylor and Neiman Marcus are working on it.

Some of the retailers are meeting existing or anticipated overseas demand, while others are testing the waters before opening stores in other countries. Either way, they are discovering that shipping beyond the United States is not a simple undertaking.

“Typically the guys we’re talking to start off thinking they can toss it in a box and give it to U.P.S. or FedEx and hope it gets there,” said Michael DeSimone, chief executive of FiftyOne, a technology company that helps retailers add international shipping capabilities.

But there are problems with ordering systems, customs and postal fees, he said.

For example, many retailers do not have software in their warehouse management systems that recognizes foreign postal codes, which — unlike those in the United States — do not always have five digits.

“It sounds like a really stupid reason not to sell internationally,” Mr. DeSimone said, “but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this was the biggest roadblock.”

The appeal to reaching customers in other countries is based largely on the popularity of mobile phone sales overseas. Forrester Research expects online retail sales in the Western Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America regions to increase 67 percent from 2011 to 2015, compared with 42 percent for the United States.

And traffic to American Web sites from international visitors is already high.

News Release from Microsoft - High Capacity Business Needs

News Press Release
Film Industry Selects Windows Azure for High-Capacity Business Needs

Windows Azure supports SAG Awards during peak usage.

inShare3

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 24, 2012 — The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) has selected Windows Azure to provide the cloud technology necessary to handle high volumes of traffic to its website during its biggest annual event, the SAG Awards. SAG worked with Microsoft Corp. to port its entire awards site from Linux servers to Windows Azure, to gain greater storage capacity and the ability to handle increased traffic on the site. “Windows Azure is committed to making it easier for customers to use cloud computing to address their specific needs,” said Doug Hauger, general manager, Windows Azure Business Development at Microsoft. “For the entertainment industry, that means deploying creative technology solutions that are flexible, easy to implement and cost-effective for whatever opportunities our customers can dream up.” And the Winner Is … Windows Azure Previously hosted on internal Linux boxes, the SAG website experienced negative impact due to high traffic each year leading up to the SAG Awards. Peak usage is on the night of the awards ceremony, when the site hosts a tremendous increase in visitors who view uploaded video clips and news articles from the event. To meet demand during that time, SAG had to continually upgrade its hardware. That is, until the SAG Awards team moved the site to Windows Azure. “We moved to Windows Azure after looking at the services it offered,” said Erin Griffin, chief information officer at SAG. “Understanding the best usage scenario for us took time and effort, but with help from Microsoft, we successfully moved our site to Windows Azure, and the biggest traffic day for us went off with flying colors.” Windows Azure helped the SAG website handle the anticipated traffic spike during its 2012 SAG Awards show, which generated a significant increase in visits and page views over the previous year. This year’s show generated 325,403 website visits and 789,310 page views. In comparison, the 2011 awards show saw 222,816 total visits and 434,743 page views. Windows Azure provides a business-class platform for the SAG website, providing low latency, increased storage, and the ability to scale up or down as needed. Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Cisco to Issue Updated Mobile Internet Traffic Forecast

News release from Cisco:

PRESS RELEASE

Cisco to Issue Updated Mobile Internet Traffic Forecast and Host Panel on Global Policy Implications of Surging Bandwidth Demand

Related Information

Dr. Robert Pepper, vice president of global technology policy, Cisco

SAN JOSE, Calif., and LONDON, Feb. 9, 2012 – On Tuesday, Feb. 14 at 10 a.m. (GMT) at the Royal Opera Housein London, Cisco will announce the latest findings of the Cisco Visual Networking Index(VNI) forecast for global mobile Internet traffic. The event will also include a panel discussing the implications of surging bandwidth demands on service provider networks, consumers, business services and policies for the radio spectrum. The event is available via webcast for those unable to attend in person.

Who:

Doug Webster, Cisco senior director of global service provider marketing, will share the latest findings of the Cisco VNI forecast for global mobile Internettraffic through 2016.

Dr. Robert Pepper, Cisco vice president of global technology policy, will then host a roundtable discussion with the following international policy experts:

• Professor Martin Cave, Imperial College Business School visiting professor and deputy chair, UK Competition Commission.
• Gabriel Solomon, GSM Association global head of public policy.

Date: Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2012

Time: Live Broadcast: 10 a.m. (GMT) / 5 a.m. (EST) / 2 a.m. (PST)

      Rebroadcast (Americas): 12 p.m. (EST) / 9 a.m. (PST)

      Rebroadcast (Asia Pacific): 6 p.m. (PST)

To view the webcasts go to: Cisco VNI Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update (2011-2016)

Tags/Keywords

Cisco, Visual Networking Index, VNI, Mobile Internet, Mobile Data, Mobile Video, Mobile VNI, Service Providers, Doug Webster, Robert Pepper

RSS Feed for Cisco: http://newsroom.cisco.com/rss-feeds

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go tohttp://newsroom.cisco.com.

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Start-Up Plans to Disrupt Networking Giants

Excerpt from an article in The New York Times
Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Start-Up Nicira Plans to Disrupt Networking Giants 

By QUENTIN HARDY

SAN FRANCISCO - Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon already turn millions of computers into single clouds of supermachines, managing the flow between personal computers of cat videos, e-mails and the president's recent chat on Google Plus.

Millions more of these computer servers figure out what to sell you while you browse the Web. These global systems work only because of something called virtualization, a kind of software that tricks one server into doing the tasks of several. The cost savings and flexibility revolutionized the data management business, since virtualized machines can run on cheap semiconductors.

High-price networking gear still ties together most data centers, however. Companies pay for it because managing data traffic is tougher than mere computation. Now a small company called Nicira, along with a few other scrappy players, is pursuing what is called software-defined networking, which should cut costs and make equipment more efficient.

A software-defined network, which originated in government spy agencies, is similar to server virtualization, and because of that is quite likely bad news for networking equipment makers like Cisco and Juniper Networks. If proprietary systems can be mixed together and cheap chips used in place of custom semiconductors, prices for the gear would most likely will drop.