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An
innovation-rich environment prompted IBM to locate in
the Research Triangle Region 40 years ago, and helps
the company remain leading edge today
In 1965, IBM
announced that it would locate a major new manufacturing
plant in a tract of land set aside as Research Triangle
Park (RTP). There, it manufactured components for the
IBM System 360, the first modular mainframe computer
that launched the computer revolution and, ultimately,
the Information Age.
This year, as
IBM celebrates its 40th anniversary, the Research Triangle
Region celebrates one of its greatest success stories.
IBM has been a large corporation nimble enough to transform
itself again and again to keep pace with the market
it helped create. The company that took the mainframe
mainstream revolutionized computing again with the launch
of the IBM Personal Computer.
Today, IBM trades
in the Research Triangle Region's leading commodities:
technological and business expertise. It operates in
some 50 buildings and 4.5 million square feet of space
in the region and employs 13,000 area residents.
"Innovation is
what brought IBM to RTP some 40 years ago and it's the
thing that keeps us here today," says Rusine Mitchell-Sinclair,
IBM's senior executive for North Carolina. "We come
to work every day with only one goal in mind: providing
new and improved products, services and processes for
our clients in the United States as well as internationally.
It's what we do for a living."
IBM's local facilities
hold row after row of servers that host Web sites for
government agencies, department stores, investment banks
and large and small enterprises of all kinds. It operates
a huge software development lab and provides business
consulting and a range of other services from 30 divisions
that maintain a presence in the region.
"You may be in
Atlanta working on a cash register, but the data is
managed by IT equipment here at our offices in RTP,"
says IBM spokesman John Lucy.
IBM is a world
leader in pervasive computing, the combination of computer
technology and communication networks that make information
accessible anywhere. IBM's success validates the selection
of pervasive computing as one of 10 key industry clusters
targeted by the Research Triangle Region's competitiveness
plan, called "Staying on Top: Winning the Job Wars of
the Future." The five-year strategy aims to create 100,000
jobs in the region and boost employment in all 13 of
its counties.
IBM benefits
from the region's favorable economic climate and from
productive relationships between businesses and government
here, Lucy says. The region's high quality of life,
affordable housing supply and abundant recreational
opportunities help IBM attract top talent. And the company
has always enjoyed close, mutually beneficial relationships
with the region's research universities, he said.
For example,
Fred Brooks Jr., the project manager for the System
360, is now on the faculty of the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. IBM retiree and Chapel Hill
resident Dr. Dave Bradley was part of the small group
of IBM engineers who developed the IBM Personal Computer.
He now teaches engineering at North Carolina State University.
Bradley is known the world over as the inventor of the
familiar control+alt+delete PC command.
An RTI International
study commissioned by the Research Triangle Regional
Partnership (RTRP), which directs the Staying on
Top plan, examined pervasive computing's economic
potential. It found that the region's technological
expertise creates impressive opportunities for the region
to develop new electronic products and services, including:
- Medical devices that enable real-time patient monitoring
and improve rural healthcare.
- Wearable electronics incorporated into textiles
or worn unobtrusively on the body.
- Remote sensor networks for inventory tracking, precision
agriculture and homeland security.
- Laboratory information management systems to support
pharmaceutical/biotech research and clinical trials,
with database-enabled "virtual labs."
"We are selling
business solutions, including helping companies understand
how they might need to reinvent their own company,"
said Lucy. "We reinvented ours. We're using what we've
learned to consult with other companies of all kinds.
Innovation is mystifying to some, but it's what we do."
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