IBM Recognized for Non-Voice Excellence

News Release:


IBM was recently awarded the Non-Voice Excellence Company of the Year Award at the International ICT Awards – Philippines 2012, held at the Marriott Hotel in Pasay City. Organized by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP), the annual event recognizes individuals and companies whose contributions position the Philippines as a business and knowledge process outsourcing (BPO and KPO) destination of choice. 


IBM presently operates in a total of 10 world-class facilities in Metro Manila and Cebu, delivering high-value non-voice Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) solutions for Human Resources, Finance & Administration, Supply Chain Management, and Application Services; as well as voiced-based Customer Relationship Management to both domestic and global clients. 

“IBM has always stood by our values, one of which is “Innovation that matters - for the company and for the world”, says Cassandra “Candy” Soto, Philippines Delivery Leader for IBM Global Process. “This is a priority in our BPO and IT Solutions businesses, where we strive to innovate and continuously improve our processes. As the ICT industry evolves and matures, IBM remains committed to our partnerships with the government, academe and industry to push boundaries and realize shared goals.” 


The company has been a market leader for over 100 years, serving customers in more than 170 countries and acquiring the necessary experience and management discipline to successfully become a globally integrated enterprise. IBM’s rich portfolio of business solutions brings together the most advanced skills with the unmatched advantage of integrating hardware, software, research and high-value services delivery. 


Since establishing its presence in the Philippines in 1937, IBM has evolved to become the leading information technology partner in the country, providing hardware, software, and IT-enabled business services to domestic and global markets. 

IBM Boosts XIV Storage System Gen3 Performance Three-fold

IBM today announced to the local market several key enhancements to its XIV® Storage System Gen3 including a new solid state drive (SSD) caching option that can increase system performance by up to three times, and a new Apple® iPhone® app that lets people monitor their XIV storage environment from virtually anywhere.

With SSD caching, the most frequently used data is stored on solid state memory placed between the system memory and hard drives. Because SSDs use no spinning disks and robotic arms, the storing and retrieving of data is accomplished with virtually no latency, speeding data access by orders of magnitude. In addition to the superior performance, SSD cache requires no separate tier to manage.

The IBM XIV SSD Caching option provides up to 6TB of fast-read SSD and is the latest in a string of advances that IBM has developed for the enterprise storage system over the last six months. In July, 2011, the company introduced the XIV Storage System Gen3, a new generation of the storage family that dramatically lowered the total cost of ownership and improved system performance by four times over the previous model.

With XIV Gen3, IBM also replaced the system’s Ethernet-based backplane with a high-performance InfiniBand backplane that increased the system’s internal bandwidth between modules by 40 times. Then in October 2011, IBM added 3TB disk drives to the system increasing system capacity by 50 percent.

“These latest enhancements to XIV Gen3 are great examples of IBM’s continued commitment to helping customers achieve business outcomes through smarter storage technologies.  It boils down to saving the customer’s time and money with extremely efficient, easily managed, virtualized, and high-performing storage systems like XIV Gen3,” said Ireen Catane, Country Executive, Systems and Technology Group, IBM Philippines.

IBM also announced the ability to mirror data between previous versions of XIV and XIV Gen3 systems, which will ease data migration and help give customers the flexibility to repurpose their XIV models as disaster recovery backup systems.

Building on XIV Gen3’s remote monitoring capabilities, IBM announced the availability of XIV Mobile Dashboard for the Apple iPhone, which lets customers monitor XIV systems from virtually anywhere. The app will be available for download at no cost from the Apple Online Store. IBM released the XIV Mobile Dashboard for the Apple iPad® in October 2011.

For more information on IBM XIV Storage System Gen3, please visit http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/xiv/  

LANDBANK Selects IBM Software Solutions for its Simplified Account Opening Project

News Release


Quezon City, February 2, 2012: IBM announced today that the Land Bank of the Philippines (LANDBANK), a government financial institution and the country’s largest formal credit organization in the rural areas, will be leveraging IBM’s Customer Advisor Accelerator solution to improve the Bank’s customer experience and significantly reduce its account opening processing time.   

The Simplified Account Opening (SAO) initiative is a priority project for the LANDBANK management that aims to simplify the actual account opening processes and reduce processing time by at least 50%. 

“This will enable LANDBANK to become more responsive to our customers’ needs and will provide a more pleasant experience as account opening is normally the first interaction with the Bank,” said Alan Bornas, Senior Vice President and head of LANDBANK’s Technology Management Group.  “This project with IBM is also aligned with the Government Regulatory Requirements and is aimed at improving public governance through the automation and elimination of manual works,” Bornas added. 

The IBM Customer Advisor Accelerator solution is based on the process and service oriented architecture that leverages world class process, service integration patterns and implementation practices. The IBM software solution will utilize IBM's Business Process Management (BPM)/Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) reference architecture as the architectural model.   

IBM BPM would: help the Bank manage information efficiently from various sources and formats, including electronic documents and images; enhance security in banking transactions and customer data; reduce paper-based document archiving; and enable a more efficient regulatory compliance. 

BPM could also assist banks realize faster returns on investment by leveraging a process-centric approach and gain timely insight into potentially fraudulent activities before they become problematic. Banks with BPM would be able to monitor and act on changing consumer trends. 

“IBM’s deep industry knowledge and leading software and services solutions will enable LANDBANK to have integrity of data, improve staff productivity, minimize reputational risk, and more importantly achieve better customer satisfaction starting with a simple and efficient account opening experience,” said Victor Silvino, Country Manager for Software Group, IBM Philippines. 

By leveraging the reference architecture, LANDBANK will have the flexibility to integrate and grow its SOA/BPM progressively over a number of projects which is the recommended best practice. 

The IBM-LANDBANK Simplified Account Opening contract was signed in November 2011 and will be completed in approximately 17 months. 

For more information about IBM BPM, please visit http://www-01.ibm.com/software/info/bpm/what-is-bpm/