Embracing a digital world.

Tanapong Ittisakulchai is country manager for IBM Thailand¡¦s Systems and Technology Group.

Global connectivity is driving increasingly complex supply chains, ultra-empowered consumers, and making issues such governance and compliance, risk management and fending off security threats increasingly difficult. Businesses, governments and private citizens are not prepared to get out from under staggering amounts of data.

As nations look at spending ¡§stimulus¡¨ funds to turn around the world economic crisis, it¡¦s important not to just build roads and bridges, but ¡§smart¡¨ infrastructure as well.

This smart infrastructure will help determine the way services are delivered, the way everything from people and money to oil, water and electrons move, the way products are built and sold, and the way billions of people live and work. It will rely heavily on service management, deploying computing power to more intelligently manage business processes and physical assets, such as power grids.

Building an intelligent 21st-century infrastructure will require that we do several things, including:

ƒÜƒnIntegrate the best attributes of our current physical infrastructure into a new digital model, significantly enhancing our ability to use information technology to manage business processes and increasingly intelligent physical infrastructure and assets, and to drive new and improved services.

ƒÜ Greatly enhance our ability to manage, store, and analyse the 15 new petabytes of information the world is now generating every day, which amounts to eight times more information than exists in all the libraries in the United States combined. The average company with about 1,000 employees spends more than $5 million (Bt180.55 million) per year, just to find information.

ƒÜ Reduce massive inefficiencies. Data-centre costs for energy, space and other requirements have risen eight times since 1996, while on average, servers are at only six to 15 per cent of their capacity.

Work is already underway. Smart thinking and smart systems are transforming energy grids, supply chains and water management. They are ensuring the authenticity of pharmaceuticals and the security of currency exchanges. They are changing everything from organisations' business models to how they enable their employees to collaborate and innovate.

It¡¦s time for leaders of government, business and our communities to embrace the vision of a 21st-century infrastructure capable of handling the increasing demands of a globally integrated society.

Tanapong Ittisakulchai is country manager for IBM Thailand¡¦s Systems and Technology Group.