NEW YORK, June 28, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM
(NYSE: IBM) today announced the opening of an IBM Bluemix
Garage in New York City, which
will help power the city's growing concentration of developers,
entrepreneurs, and fintech companies with cloud and blockchain.
The global developer population is projected to reach 25 million
by 2020, according to Evans Data Corp.1 This growing
community is increasingly using Bluemix Garages to tap into IBM
Cloud APIs around cognitive, Internet of Things, unstructured data,
social media and more to swiftly build and launch innovations.
Developers are also using these Garages to accelerate the
exploration of blockchain projects, which can remove friction from
financial transactions and prime blockchain to fundamentally change
how markets function.
The New York City location is
the latest to join IBM's growing network of Bluemix Garages around
the world, which includes a location in Tokyo that is helping companies like Mizuho
Financial Group explore the use of cloud and blockchain. IBM also
operates Bluemix Garages in San
Francisco, London,
Toronto, Nice, Tokyo, and Singapore - with more planned to open in the
latter half of 2016.
IBM Bluemix Garage to Spur Innovation in New York City's Thriving Fintech
Industry
IBM Bluemix Garages serve as a hub where developers, product
managers and designers can come together to build on Bluemix, IBM's
cloud platform.
As the latest initiative in IBM's commitment to New York City, the Garage will be located at
Galvanize's newly launched campus. Its location in this tech
learning community for students, startups and established companies
will deepen IBM's roots in the city's thriving tech scene, and
build on IBM's work with disruptive New
York City companies such as Alpha Modus, an investment tech
firm.
"Ramping up more companies on Bluemix will be a significant
addition to New York City's tech
economy, as it enables financial tech companies like us to innovate
with APIs such as Watson," said
Prashant Bhuyan, cofounder and CEO
of Alpha Modus. "Using Bluemix, we've been able to roll out
transformational apps that leverage cognitive analytics with
unbelievable time and efficiency –helping to shake up the way our
clients invest in the markets."
Since 2014, IBM Cloud has partnered with the City of New York to power the city's
Digital.NYC platform, a hub for New York
City's rapidly growing startup economy. Currently, nearly
8,000 startups – over half of the city's startup base2 –
are using Digital.NYC to connect and collaborate. Also in 2014, the
company announced the opening of its Astor Place offices, which
serves as the headquarters for both its Watson and Cloud businesses.
"Galvanize has been a great home and partner for IBM's
groundbreaking Bluemix Garage on our San
Francisco campus, and we are excited to bring that
partnership to New York City,"
said Jim Deters, co-founder and CEO
of Galvanize. "Having IBM's Garage in New
York City, within the Galvanize community, allows our strong
network of developers and startups to leverage the power of the
cloud and the expertise of IBM to competitively innovate products
and apps in the growing fintech and blockchain spaces."
Located at 315 Hudson Street in New
York City's SoHo neighborhood, an area which in recent years
has become a mecca for startups, the newest Garage will help spur
innovation via:
Business Development: Combining enterprise expertise,
agile methods, and IBM Design Thinking, a unique process
to design, build and deploy, Garage consultants help clients to
refine, iterate on and deliver a business idea into an app.
Hybrid Cloud Integration: Tapping IBM Cloud's hybrid
and open platform, Garage consultants help companies move existing
data workloads to the cloud, lowering cost and adding enhancements,
as well as connecting existing systems and data into new cloud
apps.
Speeding App Development: Through the Garage's
expertise in agility, extreme programming, DevOps and more, Garage
consultants help businesses significantly reduce the time it takes
to design and build new services, applications or products.
Skills Development: Equipping development teams with
the skills and expertise needed on Bluemix, Garage teams help
businesses to rapidly scale cloud capabilities and implement agile
development.
IBM Garages Help Clients Explore Compelling New Blockchain
Projects
A new study from IBM, also launched today, describes how
blockchain networks will vaporize current frictions in the economy
that are inhibiting business growth, propelling the movement of
capital and exchange of value. Today, a number of obstacles -- such
as participants of a transaction not having access to the same
information, or the high price of intermediaries -- add costs and
complexity that drags on global business and trade.
Blockchain technology, which creates a permanent and transparent
record of transactions, will reduce or eliminate these frictions,
recasting our institutions and economy with far greater efficiency
and less risk. This is supported by the findings in the new IBM
Institute for Business Value (IBV) study, "Fast forward: Rethinking
enterprises, ecosystems and economies."
With blockchain technology, these Garages are helping drive the
next wave of financial services and fintech innovation, including
new mobile banking and wealth management apps, and helping to
pioneer the use of blockchain in multiple areas of finance, such as
capital markets and commercial and retail banking.
For example, working with the newly opened IBM Bluemix Garage in
Tokyo, Mizuho Financial Group
recently announced a test of the potential of blockchain for use in
settlements with virtual currency. By incorporating blockchain,
Mizuho will explore how payments can be instantaneously swapped,
potentially leading to new financial services based on this rapidly
evolving technology. For these blockchain networks, Mizuho is using
the open source Linux Foundation Hyperledger Project.
IBM is actively working with hundreds of clients to understand
what it takes to make blockchain ready for business. Through its
open source contributions and resources for software developers,
IBM is helping to advance the science of blockchain, helping to
remove complexity and make it more accessible and open. Financial
services, supply chains, IoT, risk management, digital rights
management and healthcare are some of the areas that are poised for
dramatic change using blockchain.
Bluemix, IBM's Cloud platform, on which more than 120,000 apps
are launched every month, has grown rapidly to become one of the
largest open, public cloud deployments in the world. Based in open
standards, it features over 140 tools and services spanning
categories of big data, mobile, Watson, analytics, integration, DevOps,
security and the Internet of Things.
To learn more about IBM Cloud,
visit: https://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/
To learn more about IBM Blockchain,
visit: www.ibm.com/blockchain
To learn more about IBM Garages,
visit: https://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/bluemix/garage/
To access the IBM Institute for Business Value Blockchain study,
visit:
http://www.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/thoughtleadership/blockchain/
To sign up for Galvanize NYC membership or get a list of meetups
and events, visit: galvanize.com/campuses/new-york-soho
1. Evans Data
2. Angel.co, https://angel.co/new-york
Erin Lehr
IBM Media Relations
1 (212) 671-9363
edlehr@us.ibm.com
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SOURCE IBM