Walter Isaacson

Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, as well as the biographer of Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs, talks about the commonalties among the three men, including their drive to innovate.

Isaacson talks about Jobs’ penchant for compelling people to take on difficult tasks by telling them: “Don’t be afraid, you can do it.”

After his keynote, Isaacson passes the baton to Marie Wieck, general manager, application and integration middleware of IBM’s Software Group, to run the show.

IBM’s Weick takes a line from Isaacson and admonishes the 8,500 attendees that they can all succeed with IBM’s new hardware and software technology, saying: “Don’t be afraid, WE can do it.”

Wieck says that developers are everywhere, and they come in all shapes, sizes and ages.

Wieck says anyone can access your information if it’s out on the Internet.

Cloud, mobile, big data and social networking are changing entire industries, according to IBM.

Service-oriented architecture is the foundation that can support all kinds of workloads.

The next step in overcoming the challenges of complex and varied workloads is to build on a proven platform, such as IBM’s own WebSphere.

Alan Douville, global vice president of IT at Whirlpool, discusses Whirlpool’s challenges.

Douville laid out and discussed Whirlpool’s IT strategy.

Then, Douville discussed Whirlpool’s business transformation.

As IBM already has, Whirlpool is celebrating its 100th anniversary.

WebSphere leads to better efficiency for IT, according to IBM.

IBM solutions accelerate and extend the lifecycle of apps.

IBM’s new Mobile Foundation portfolio helps enterprises manage and secure their mobile applications in a world of laptops, smartphones and tablets.

IBM’s Marie Wieck announces the IBM Mobile Foundation, which is a comprehensive portfolio of software and services designed to help organizations capitalize on the proliferation of mobile environments, including laptops, smartphones and tablets.

IBM’s SOA-based solutions enable users to build systems that go across organizational borders.

IBM’s Wieck introduces WebSphere MQ and Message Broker, and WebSphere Cast Iron Live.

WebSphere Cast Iron Live is a complete multi-tenant cloud service, which consists of both Web API services and cloud integration services.

IBM introduced two members of the PureSystems family of integrated hardware and software: PureFlex and PureApplication.

This is the IBM PureApplication system.

Jason McGee, distinguished engineer and chief architect, WebSphere cloud computing, IBM Software Group, discussed some of the features of the new system.

McGee’s shows off the system’s fault tolerance by removing and then replacing a rack to show how the system performed without a hitch by forwarding workloads to other processors.

IBM introduced new patterns to make it easier for customers and partners to use the new systems.