Wow! what a year! – a review of the wide range of projects this year.

well here is a brief look at some of the 26 projects I have been involved in … and I ask you

where else can you have such a wide range of interesting work ?

And given that mobile, in IBM and our clients, is finally taking off,  there will just be more to come.

They are roughly in chrono order,  and the themes are mobile, M2M, integration,  and doing things that have not been done before (see the auto work, and the second screen for that)

I’ll make this client anonymous for obvious reasons.

Looked at how a broadcaster should re-use a tape robot to make their digital asset management more effective.

Reviewed a failing M2M project for a tier one mobile operator, all in 4 days, very intense.

For a bid: architected a Service Gateway for the same operator to use in their countries, for internal use facing back to the central IT function. However the client canceled the RFP at the last minute.  Still was a good use of Datapower.

Worked with a different European Operator on a strategy to sell “Smarter Cities” as a part of their M2M portfolio.

Helped in a bid to provide a connection to every single electrical meter in the country, even those in cellars of factories, in remote farmhouses, anywhere, everywhere.  Learned a lot about infill radio from the experts.

Was the architect and lead tech on a build project, most unlike me.  In this case for an auto manufacturer to create a virtual 3D car, life size and photo realistic.  Used kinect sensor to track the user so they could look around the car, and interact with it, opening doors, getting inside, tracking their head etc.  Able to change the options to make the car of your choice.  Went live on time on budget.  Each vehicle was about 5 million triangles and we used 4,500 GPU processors to render it in real time !

This was a first of a kind.

Couple of bids, one for an Integration Domain (enterprise Level) for an operator, several seeder projects to start them on the right path.  Funding issues at the client mean were are still waiting to start ! another to a business publisher for their web presence.

Architecture Work for a replacement M2M platform for another operator.  Interesting because no one in IBM has worked at this scale before.

Also bid for a piece of work for Data Migration of customer accounts from one M2M platform to another,  however as per above the client was simultaneously looking at replacing the data migration’s target system ! needless to say they are now reconsidering their strategy! I learned a lot about how to do Data Migration though.

Working on “Second Screen” which is a proposition being created by the Data Analysis chaps,  where they provide an app for a PC/tablet that will show the momentum in a sports match.  Using professional data streams and clever analytics.  So many folks use tablets / laptops while watching TV.  Needless to say having fun.

The most interesting part for me was to provide a radio interface to sports people who are moving at speed and can be up to 10kms from the radio receiver! not easy when the unit has to way just a few grammes. Needless to say there is an IBMer who knows how to build such a widget. This has never been done before, so again a first of a kind !

A Financial Services company needed a strategy for starting to provide APIs to developers and directions on how to create a hybrid whitelabel app.  Wrote the a paper,and that seemed to do the trick.  It’s amazing how late to the API party this business is.  Ended up with a Service Broker based on DataPower (or Big IP F5) and an orchestration engine.  No surprise there then.

And I’ll be starting next year creating a strategy for a major mobile operator around apps, stores and enterprise.

So a wide range of projects in telco, broadcast, Financial Services, industrial and publishing sectors.

If you want a wide ranging, interesting job, with continual learning, exciting challenges and colleagues who are open and willing to help, then join IBM as an architect, you could do far worse.