Irving Wladadwsky-Berger

BM visionary Irving Wladawsky-Berger insists he's not the brain behind on-demand computing, but he stands front and center as the man driving the concept out of the labs and into the street.

In an interview with CRN at his office in Somers, N.Y., the trained physicist-turned-computer-scientist said the convergence of Internet standards and Linux with budding technologies such as grids, autonomic computing and Web services enables a realtime, connected enterprise and a way to look at business processes and decision-making more systematically. In short, he is pioneering the physics of business.

Wladawsky-Berger acknowledges that his 33 years of experience heading up IBM's ivory R&D tower and his expertise transferring technologies,ranging from IBM's parallel sysplex code developed in the 1970s, to Internet, Linux and grids,from the lab into products puts him in a unique position to help steer on-demand computing in a commercial setting.

"IBM has been quietly introducing AI-based technologies under sensible-sounding names," says Ron Herardian, CEO of e-mail integrator Global System Services, Mountain View, Calif. "It's very interesting that they are not attempting to commercialize the technologies as products. Instead, they are leveraging the technologies as value-added components to gain competitive advantage."