Salesforce.com News Release:

Microsoft and Salesforce.com Announce Global Strategic Partnership

Industry leaders to deliver new solutions and mobile experiences for mutual customers

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and salesforce.com chairman and CEO Marc Benioff to host conference call for press and analysts at 1:45 p.m. PDT on May 29

REDMOND, Wash., and SAN FRANCISCO — May 29, 2014 — On Thursday Microsoft Corp. and salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) announced a strategic partnership to create new solutions that connect salesforce.com’s customer relationship management (CRM) apps and platform to Microsoft Office and Windows so customers can be more productive. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“We are excited to partner with salesforce.com and help customers thrive in a mobile and cloud-first world.” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “Working together we’ll deliver new solutions that connect the customer insights of Salesforce to the cloud productivity of Office 365, cloud platform of Azure and the mobility of Windows, so our customer can do more.”

“Today is about putting the customer first,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “Together with Microsoft, we are building bridges that allow customers to be more productive.”

The companies plan to deliver the following solutions:
• Salesforce1 for Windows and Windows Phone 8.1. Will enable customers to access Salesforce and run their business from their Windows devices. A preview is planned to be available in fall 2014 with general availability in 2015.
• Salesforce for Office 365. New interoperability between Salesforce and Office 365 will give customers access to the content they need to collaborate, sell, service and market from virtually anywhere. Plans include the ability to:

o Access, share, edit and collaborate on Office content from within Salesforce and on Salesforce1 using Office Mobile, Office for iPad and Office 365

o Use OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online as integrated storage options for Salesforce.

o Use Salesforce and Outlook together with a new Salesforce App for Outlook.

o Connect Salesforce data to Excel and Power BI for Office 365 to visualize information and find new insights.

Company CEOs to host conference call
More information about the partnership will be shared in a teleconference Thursday, May 29, with Nadella, and Benioff. The teleconference will begin at 1:45 p.m. PDT.
* A live audiocast of the conference call can be accessed through salesforce.com’s Investor Relations website, http://www.salesforce.com/investor, and Microsoft’s Investor Relations website, http://www.microsoft.com/investor.
* Participants who choose to call in to the conference call can do so by dialing (866) 901-7332 for U.S. participants or (706) 902-1764 for international participants, passcode 47761253.

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the world’s largest provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software. For more information about salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), visit: www.salesforce.com.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchasesalesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CRM.” For more information please visit http://salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

Salesforce.com News Release:

Salesforce.com Executives to Participate in Upcoming Investor Events

Events to be audiocast live on salesforce.com’s investor relations website


SAN FRANCISCO, May 27, 2014 -- Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the world’s #1 CRM platform, today announced that salesforce.com executives will participate in the following investor events:

• Thursday, May 29, 2014: David Havlek, Senior Vice President, Finance and Strategy, will participate in a BMO Capital Markets hosted tech tour at 8:00 a.m. (PDT) / 11:00 a.m. (EDT) in San Francisco, CA.

• Tuesday, June 3, 2014: Graham Smith, Chief Financial Officer, will present at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2014 Global Technology Conference at 3:35 p.m. (PDT) / 6:35 p.m. (EDT) in San Francisco, CA.

Audiocasts of the events will be available on salesforce.com's website at www.salesforce.com/investor.

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the world’s largest provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software. For more information about salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), visit: www.salesforce.com.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchasesalesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CRM.” For more information please visit http://salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

Business is Booming: How 5 Small Companies Improved Their Communications [Friday Five]

Today, small companies are under intense pressure to grow their business fast, deliver exceptional customer service and to beat their larger competitors. Adopting a cloud-based phone service can help fast-growing small companies meet their goals and succeed in a tough market. Here’s how 5 small companies grew their business using RingCentral:



Business is Booming: How 5 Small Companies Improved Their Communications [Friday Five]

Infographic: Is BYOD Cloud-ing the Minds of Workers?

In a world ruled by smart devices, how is consumerism in IT really impacting employees? According to a recent study by RingCentral, 40% of workers are constantly connected to work by at least two devices. But does this mean employees are more productive? The answer might surprise you…

Outstandingly, 17% of employees in the United States work 6 hours or more on the weekends! This is according to a survey conducted in January of this year. The survey was taken from more than 448 businesses of all sizes. This large sample size seems to suggest that many employees are continuously blurring the lines between work life and personal life.

Infographic: Is BYOD Cloud-ing the Minds of Workers?

Red Hat | Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6.3 Beta Available for Download

Red Hat | Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6.3 Beta Available for Download: By the Red Hat JBoss Middleware team

Red Hat | Telefónica to Work with Red Hat and Intel to set the Ground for next-generation Telecommunications Virtualized

Red Hat | Telefónica to Work with Red Hat and Intel to set the Ground for next-generation Telecommunications Virtualized: Joint work will become part of Telefónica’s recently created Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) Reference Lab.

Oracle Press Release

Oracle Introduces MySQL Fabric, Simplifying High Availability and Scalability with MySQL

Automatic Failover and Data Sharding Now Available for Web and Cloud Applications

Redwood Shores, Calif. – May 27, 2014

News Summary

Meeting the demands of today’s web and cloud applications, Oracle announces the general availability of MySQL Fabric. MySQL Fabric provides an integrated system that makes it simpler to manage groups of MySQL databases. It delivers both high availability - via failure detection and failover - and scalability through automated data sharding.

News Facts

Continuing to drive MySQL innovation, Oracle announced the general availability of MySQL Fabric, an open source framework to manage farms of MySQL servers.

Available for download at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/fabric/, this integrated and extensible system makes it easier to scale out or add high availability to MySQL applications.

For more details, join the Webcast on Thursday, June 19, 2014 at 9:00 am PT.

MySQL Fabric Capabilities

Automatic failure detection and failover when used with MySQL Replication for high availability, including:

Monitoring of the master database; if the server fails, MySQL Fabric selects one of the slave databases and promotes it to be the new master.

Automatic routing of transactions to the current master and load-balancing of queries across slave databases. Topology and state of the servers are transparent to the application.

Automated data sharding and re-sharding make it easier for development and operations, or DevOps, teams to manage the process. This enables users to:

Allow tables to be sharded for scale-out of both reads and writes.

Select which tables should be sharded and specify the columns to be used as sharding keys, including whether to use a HASH or RANGE based mapping.

Move existing shards to new servers or split them into multiple shards.

For Extensions to PHP, Python, and Java connectors allow transactions and queries to be routed directly to the correct MySQL Server, eliminating the extra latency caused by passing through a proxy.

Supporting Quote

"Many of the world’s largest websites and cloud-based applications rely on MySQL replication and sharding to deliver high availability and scalability,” said Tomas Ulin, vice president, MySQL Engineering, Oracle. “MySQL Fabric makes high availability with automatic failure detection and failover, as well as automated data sharding, accessible to all. With this integrated and open source framework, Oracle makes it easier to safely scale out MySQL applications, either on premises or in the cloud.”

Supporting Resources

MySQL Fabric

Join the Webcast on Thursday, June 19, 2014 at 9:00 am PT.

MySQL Fabric is part of the MySQL Utilities 1.4.3 package that can be downloaded here. Terms, conditions and restrictions apply.

White Paper - MySQL Fabric - A Guide to Managing MySQL High Availability and Scaling Out

About Oracle

Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center.  For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), visit www.oracle.com.

Trademarks

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Microsoft announces 2014 Partner of the Year winners and finalists

REDMOND, Wash. — May 27, 2014 — On Tuesday, Microsoft Corp. announced the winners and finalists of the 2014 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. The annual awards celebrate top Microsoft partners that are solving customer challenges with creative technology solutions. Award winners and finalists, chosen from nominations from around the world, will be recognized at the 2014 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, taking place July 13–17, 2014, in Washington, D.C.

This year, there are 46 awards that celebrate each of the core partner competencies, including cloud technology; Windows 8, Office and SharePoint applications; public sector; citizenship; sales excellence; and many more. More than 2,800 entries were collected from more than 117 countries; the award finalists and winners were selected from a group of nominations based on their commitment to customers, their solutions’ market impact and exemplary use of Microsoft technologies.

Microsoft announces 2014 Partner of the Year winners and finalists

IBM News Release:

TransWiseway and IBM Improve Driver Experience With Connected Vehicle Platform

New Cloud-Based System to Deliver Enhanced Full In-Vehicle Services to Ten Million Drivers

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ARMONK, N.Y., and BEIJING - 30 May 2014: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it is collaborating with Beijing TransWiseway Information Technology Co. Ltd. to build the largest connected vehicles platform in China that will transform the development of the country’s connected car services industry. The cloud-based platform will use advanced analytics for applications that offer real-time, in-vehicle services to mobile devices, such as weather advisories, traffic alerts and alternate route suggestions.

TransWiseway teamed with IBM to design an Internet of Vehicles (IoV) platform to connect millions of trucks as well as tens of millions of devices and sensors from vehicles. Using IBM Internet of Things technologies, the trucks and vehicles are connected to the Internet as well as with each other on this single IoV platform. Built in the cloud, the IoV platform applies analytics to data from mobile devices and sensor data, instantly turning them into valuable information that drivers and authorities can access via the Web or through a mobile app to improve decision making.

"We are committed to embracing mobile and other advanced technologies to spearhead an enterprise transformation, aimed at delivering enhanced services to satisfy the increasing customer demands in this age of mobility," said Zhang Tong, general manager of TransWiseway. "This initiative is in line with the government’s objectives to improve the safety of its citizens, given the mandate that all truck companies be connected to an IoV platform in the future.”

TransWiseway selected IBM to extend its current, public IoV platform -- part of the government’s traffic safety initiative implemented during Shanghai World Expo 2010 -- which currently is connected with about 300,000 trucks in nine provinces. To build a commercially viable platform to deliver value added services more broadly to drivers and other third-party organizations, TransWiseway turned to IBM for its Internet of Things expertise, and ability to scale the current IoV platform while building in analytics and security capabilities to support millions of additional vehicles in the future. The new IoV platform is expected to connect with 1.5 million trucks next year and ultimately with 10 million in two to three years.

As part of the agreement, IBM will help build out the TransWiseway IoV platform with capabilities to connect millions of vehicles, sensors and mobile devices in real time with IBM MessageSight, part of the IBM MobileFirst portfolio.

In addition, TransWiseway and IBM China Development Labs will set up a joint innovation lab, where a team of developers and experts from TransWiseway and IBM will use the IBM MobileFirst application development portfolio, including IBM Worklight, to develop apps that deliver services -- from transportation and fleet management to in-vehicle infotainment.

The IoV platform will also allow cloud-based access to analytics generated from sensor data to enable Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to use secure APIs to expedite the development of apps from concept to testing and development. This will include real-time traffic navigation, vehicle maintenance advisory and driver safety alerts, for example, that will allow truck companies to improve their operational efficiency and reduce cost.

For example, with the ability to correlate events such as poor road conditions, accidents or erratic driving behavior, the IBM technology can perform real-time analytics in the cloud to enable TransWiseway’s operating officers to warn drivers, based on their location, of impending danger with a warning signal sent to the driver's mobile device. In case of accidents such as a car crash, rescue teams would be able to arrive at the scene much faster and issue travel advisories for other drivers as a safety precaution.

“We are proud to partner with TransWiseway on this important project to help meet its scalability and expansion goals,” said Ernie Hu, vice president, Software Group, IBM Greater China Group. “This effort targeted for improving in-vehicle services will make an important impact on the whole driving ecosystem in China and combining mobile and cloud technologies will drive innovation across the automotive industry.”

About TransWiseway

TransWiseway specializes in developing transportation information service systems and applications for traffic monitoring projects. Its clients include municipal transportation administrative agencies and transportation companies. It currently operates a traffic management and control platform that has been integrated into various government-owned and enterprise-wide platforms in 31 provinces, servicing more than three million vehicles across the nation. For more information, visit: http://transwiseway.com/index.aspx

About IBM MobileFirst

For more information on IBM MobileFirst, visit the press kit or www.ibm.com/mobilefirst. Follow @IBMmobile on Twitter, and see IBM MobileFirst on YouTube, Tumblr and Facebook.

IBM News Release:

Made in IBM Labs: Patented IBM Invention Helps Eliminate Fraudulent Behavior in the Cloud

Patented IBM invention helps prevent fraud after logon credentials are breached
Analyzes browsing behavior to protect individuals from fraudulent charges

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ARMONK, N.Y. - 30 May 2014: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has patented a technique that helps online and cloud-based businesses improve their ability to eliminate fraud by analyzing browsing behavior to determine whether customers are who they say they are after accessing a website or app via a computer, tablet or other mobile device.

IBM’s patented invention can help web site operators, cloud service providers and mobile application developers more efficiently and effectively detect and deal with threats by using analytics to thwart fraudsters.  

For example, when individuals access a banking or shopping site, they subconsciously establish characteristics of how they interact with the site, such as clicking certain areas more often than others; using the up and down arrow keys on the keyboard to navigate; relying solely on the mouse; or tapping or swiping the screen of a tablet or smartphone in a distinct manner. Similar to how individuals recognize changes in the behavior of a family member or friend on the phone – even when the audio is fuzzy – by the words they use, how they answer the phone, their mannerisms, etc., IBM’s invention helps businesses analyze and identify sudden changes in online behavior.

If the invention detects a change in behavior, it triggers a secondary authentication measure, such as a security question. This helps businesses and website operators avoid unintentionally hindering legitimate customer activities or transactions.

“Our invention improves the effectiveness of authentication and security systems with insights derived from real-time data analytics,” said Keith Walker, IBM Master Inventor and co-inventor on the patent. “For example, if an individual suddenly changes how they interact with an online bank or store, such as due to a broken hand or using a tablet instead of a desktop computer, I want these web sites to detect the change, and then ask for extra identity confirmation before accepting a transaction.  Our experience developing and testing a prototype, which flawlessly confirmed identities, shows that such a change would more likely be due to fraud, and we all want these sites to provide more protection while simultaneously processing our transactions quickly.”

As commerce is increasingly conducted online and via the cloud, a new generation of criminals is using digital channels – such as mobile devices, social networks and cloud platforms – to probe for weaknesses and vulnerabilities, including the ability to steal login and password information from the ecommerce sites we use every day. Despite strong passwords and authentication systems, troublesome fraudulent charges remain a reality in today’s digital world.

IBM received U.S. Patent #8,650,080: “User-browser interaction-based fraud detection system” for the invention.

This invention further reinforces one of IBM’s 5 in 5 predictions made last December that in five years a digital guardian will protect you online. Security is evolving from being based on rules, such as passwords, to being automatic and made stronger by taking advantage of the natural behavior of users.

In March, IBM announced new software and services to help organizations use Big Data and Analytics to address the $3.5 trillion lost each year to fraud and financial crimes. The new counter fraud portfolio includes IBM Counter Fraud Management, an integrated offering to help clients aggregate and analyze diverse sets of data to prevent, identify and investigate suspicious activity; and Trusteer software, used to fight malware often used by cyber thieves to compromise user names and passwords. 

IBM invests around $6 billion annually in R&D and consistently explores new approaches to security and analytics that will deliver a competitive advantage to the company and its clients. For 21 consecutive years, IBM has topped the list of U.S. patent recipients. In the area of fraud, IBM holds about 290 patents. The company’s invention and patent leadership is illustrated here.

For more information about IBM’s Smarter counter fraud initiative, visitwww.ibm.com/smartercounterfraud and follow the conversation on twitter at #counterfraud.

For more information about IBM Security, please visit www.ibm.com/security, follow @IBMSecurity on Twitter or visit the IBM Security Intelligence blog.

IBM News Release:

IBM Introduces Customizable Cloud Business Solutions

Subscription-based Solutions Delivered Through the IBM Cloud Marketplace to Advance CXO Agenda

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ARMONK, N.Y. - 29 May 2014: As part of an ongoing commitment to cloud computing, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced plans to deliver 20 new cloud-based business solutions that can be easily personalized to support a client’s unique business requirements. The offerings combine the scale, speed and ease of cloud with the industry insight of IBM consulting services to address specific industry verticals and business functions such as mobile, asset management and analytics.

Today’s announcement builds on IBM’s significant investments in cloud computing. Called IBM Cloud Business Solutions, the portfolio includes multiple components packaged into a single client agreement and delivered “as a service” for speed and simplicity. This includes consulting services, pre-built assets from IBM Research, software, advanced analytics, ongoing support and cloud infrastructure delivered via Softlayer, an IBM company. Pricing is based on a subscription model. Clients pay a set-up fee up front, and then ongoing subscription or usage-based fees.

This approach recognizes the mandate for speed and time to value, along with the requirement of clients to personalize business solutions to their own processes and deploy them via the cloud. For example, a healthcare provider could start by moving their existing solutions to the cloud and then add pre-built IBM assets to counter medical fraud or address a range of additional business priorities. The solution would then be customized with consulting services and support aimed at transforming their business, thus establishing a competitive advantage. 

"Our clients view cloud as the catalyst for entirely new business models, not just technology innovation. The decision to use cloud to support business priorities is being strongly influenced -- if not entirely determined -- by leaders across the C-Suite," said Kelly Chambliss, Chief Technology Officer, IBM Global Business Services. “IBM Cloud Business Solutions represent the next evolution in high-value business services, in line with the expectations and priorities of our clients. We’re providing access to the best IBM has to offer -- from cloud to data analytics – as a simple, accessible and customizable service."

TP Vision, which manufactures the Philips TV brand, uses IBM's Customer Data Cloud Business Solution to deliver a personalized consumer experience and manage its smart TV service, capturing and analyzing data in order to fuel the development of new services. Smart TVs have changed the business landscape for both the manufacturer and service provider by offering direct interaction with consumers. TP Vision uses a cloud-based environment to manage and collect data from these interactions. By being able to quickly analyze it, the company can constantly update the personalized user home screen for the customer, personalizing every interaction.

"IBM’s Cloud Business Solutions allow us to place the service and application intelligence into the cloud and reduces the complexity of managing software in the TVs for our consumers,” said Albert Mombarg, Director Smart TV, TP Vision. “This provides an economic, more flexible way to create new services for our viewers, driving ongoing business innovation. The user experience is constantly fine tuned and upgraded in the cloud, eliminating the need to continually update the actual TV set to accommodate new applications and services. This helps reduce costs for both the consumer and the manufacturer."

IBM will initially offer 12 solutions, with plans to bring at least 20 industry-focused solutions to market this year. Many of the solutions come with deep analytics prowess from industry-tested assets developed by IBM Research. Each solution includes multiple, industry-specific versions to adapt with ease to variances across industries, while leveraging common cross-industry patterns. The first Cloud Business Solutions include:

• Care Coordination – With a goal of improving patient outcomes while reducing healthcare costs, this solution enables different stakeholders in a healthcare ecosystem to collaborate across the continuum of care. It integrates the capabilities of care coordination, management, analytics and patient engagement.
• Customer Data – To help clients gain insights and apply them rapidly to business processes, this solution brings together disparate, internal and external data sources to improve marketing operations and planning performance across all channels. By leveraging analytics, clients maximize marketing return on investment.
• Mobile – Mobile initiatives increasingly span enterprises and spur business transformation. This suite of solutions for industries such as banking, retail, healthcare, insurance and travel and transportation provides clients the assets and agility needed to re-imagine and define mobile engagement models with employees, customers and partners. It includes mobile accelerators, mobile designs and development models that support an agile, iterative development process.
• Predictive Maintenance – A lack of visibility into equipment health and inability to accurately forecast downtime results in expensive, unscheduled maintenance. The Predictive Maintenance solution enables a proactive analysis process using equipment and application data to plan, monitor, manage and mitigate equipment failures.   
• Smarter Asset Management - Asset management is critical to business operations, but not an area in which business leaders want to invest significant capital. Smarter Asset Management provides clients with minimal resources and low capital investment, optimized for maximum performance.

For a complete list of currently available Cloud Business Solutions, visithttp://www.ibm.com/services/us/business-consulting/cloud-business-solutions.

These offerings are now available on the  IBM Cloud Marketplace, which serves as the digital front door to cloud innovation, bringing together IBM’s capabilities-as-a-service and those of partners and third party vendors with the security and resiliency enterprises expect.

IBM Cloud Business solutions are founded on proven assets and repeatable patterns. They include ongoing support and enhancements provided via a managed service in a private or hybrid cloud environment. The subscription-based pricing model includes start-up and ongoing fees that are often based on usage or outcomes based on client requirements. Clients have the option to leverage previously purchased software and to transition the solution ‘in house’ in the future.

About IBM Cloud Computing

IBM has helped more than 30,000 clients around the world with 40,000 industry experts. Since its acquisition in 2013, IBM SoftLayer has served 4,500 new cloud clients. Today, IBM has 100+ cloud SaaS solutions, thousands of experts with deep industry knowledge helping clients transform and a network of 40 data centers worldwide. Since 2007, IBM has invested more than $7 billion in 17 acquisitions to accelerate its cloud initiatives and build a high value cloud portfolio. IBM holds 1,560 cloud patents focused on driving innovation. In fact, IBM for the 21st consecutive year topped the annual list of US patent leaders. IBM processes more than 5.5M client transactions daily through IBM's public cloud.

For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/cloud.  Follow us on Twitter at @IBMcloud and on our blog at http://www.thoughtsoncloud.com. Join the conversation #ibmcloud. 

For more information on IBM Global Business Services, please visithttp://www.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/consulting/.   

IBM News room - 2014-05-29 SAP and IBM Collaborate to Serve Transportation and Logistics Industry - United States

ARMONK, NY and WALLDORF, Germany - 29 May 2014: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and SAP AG(NYSE: SAP) today announced plans for a global collaboration to provide tailored business applications and consulting services for the transportation and logistics industry.

Across the globe, transportation companies such as ocean liners, freight forwarders and railways recognize that challenges from energy costs to economic volatility remain outside their direct control. However, they can drive improved performance via superior service to their customers if they evolve core business process execution with analytics, cloud computing, mobile and other technology advances. IBM and SAP intend to meet this market need by delivering a next-generation transportation platform that aims to standardize functional processes while enabling innovation at the business process level to improve operational performance.



IBM News room - 2014-05-29 SAP and IBM Collaborate to Serve Transportation and Logistics Industry - United States

IBM News room - 2014-05-29 The Department of Science & Technology and IBM Collaborate to Build an Intelligent Operations Center for the Philippines - United States

Manila, Philippines - 29 May 2014: The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled a new intelligent operations center to provide a central point of command for disaster management. The new center will help the Philippine government better manage ongoing and future disaster response and recovery efforts following Typhoon Yolanda in 2013.



IBM News room - 2014-05-29 The Department of Science & Technology and IBM Collaborate to Build an Intelligent Operations Center for the Philippines - United States

IBM News Release:

China Academy of Railway Sciences and IBM Transform Passenger Experience with Mobile

New Mobile Ticketing System Supports Millions of Simultaneous Users Who Rely on the World’s Largest National Railway

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ARMONK, N.Y., and BEIJING - 29 May 2014: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the China Academy of Railway Sciences (CARS), the research institute under China Railway Corporation, announced the successful deployment of a mobile-based platform using analytic insights to ease congestion and improve the user experience during peak travel times.

Specifically, CARS relied on the IBM MobileFirst application development portfolio to develop a new mobile ticketing reservation app, “Railway 12306,” which registered 19 million downloads in the first few months following its launch. Passengers are now able to use their mobile devices to query and book tickets, make secure payments, cancel a booking and check in, among many other features. The app was developed, in part, to support demand around the Chinese Spring Festival, which is considered the most significant travel event in the world. China’s transport departments estimated about 3.62 billion trips were made on all modes of transportation during this year’s 40-day travel rush.

“Together with IBM, CARS is using advanced mobile technology to resolve the country’s most pressing transportation challenge and provide a hassle-free ticket reservation service to customers,” said Wang Mingzhe, associate researcher, CARS. “The new mobile app played a pivotal role in this year’s Spring Festival travel rush. It allowed passengers to have an alternative, reliable channel to purchase train tickets in spite of the extremely high demand throughout the peak travel period.”

“China Railway Corporation led by example, demonstrating how a business can use technology to transform how it engages with users,” said Dr. Matt Wang, vice president, IBM China Development Labs. “We are pleased to provide CARS with IBM’s strategic consulting and services, as well as cutting-edge software to advance technological innovation and improve the lives of Chinese citizens.”

During the Spring Festival, about 235 million passenger trips were made on railways, which is the most popular mode of inter-city transport in China. The demand for train tickets far exceeded the supply. In 2011, China Railway Corporation began to sell tickets online to offer a more convenient option than making purchases at stations or ticket offices. In response to the growing demand for mobile services in China, CARS collaborated with IBM China Development Labs for the development of “Railway 12306,” which is available on iOS and Android platforms.

On the first day of its launch, “Railway 12306” recorded half a million downloads and became the most popular app on the Apple App Store. About 60,000 tickets were sold on the first day, and peaked at 440,000 tickets in a single day during the hectic travel period.

With IBM Worklight app development and management capabilities, an integral part of the IBM MobileFirst portfolio, CARS managed to expedite time to market and decrease overall costs. Running on WebSphere Application Server and DB2, "Railway 12306" is seamlessly connected and synchronized with China Railway Corporation’s backend system and massive data to support millions of simultaneous users accessing the mobile ticketing system.

About China Academy of Railway Sciences (CARS)

Founded in 1950, CARS is the only comprehensive research institute with multi-disciplines and multi-specialties in the China Railway industry. With more than 2,500 researchers and industry experts, CARS plays an important role as the main force in railway sciences and innovation and has made numerous contributions to the technological progress of China Railway. For further details, visit: http://home.rails.com.cn/en/index.php?id=1.

About China Railway Corporation

China Railway Corporation is the national railway operator in China under the Ministry of Transport. China Railway has 16 bureaus and five companies under its administration. As of 2008, approximately two million people work in China Railway. For more information visit:http://www.china-railway.com.cn/index1.html.

About IBM MobileFirst

For more information on IBM MobileFirst, visit the press kit or www.ibm.com/mobilefirst.  Follow@IBMmobile on Twitter, and see IBM MobileFirst on YouTube, Tumblr and Facebook.