In reviewing the progress of STG for the first half of 2011, he said the unit’s growth was driven by “smarter computing,†the intelligent use of IT to make customers more efficient, cost-effective, and nimble. Serving global clients in automotive, banking, telecommunications, healthcare and manufacturing, he believes in the creation of system architecture that’s “tuned for task,†providing computing power to manage massive databases or operate within highly integrated environments.
“The first component of our strategy was a focus on momentum because there’s nothing like business momentum, and how you get business momentum is focus on execution and results,†he asserts. “Once you start to establish that momentum, that helps build up confidence, and we have a world-class team that has produced some very positive results in terms of IBM’s overall performance. It’s all grounded in focus, building the momentum, providing the right products that would allow our clients to see some type of value in terms of economic benefit.â€
To achieve that end, Adkins believes Big Blue must be the definitive driving force for innovation. An engineer by training, he’s passionate about the prospects of new and inventive developments such as Watson: “We’re going in what I think is a much more exciting era, where systems like Watson that are analytic based can do deep computations on massive amounts of data to deliver new insights and new capabilities.â€