With the theme of "A New Era of Smart", the conference is a chance for IT leaders to gain insight into best practices in the biggest trends in business today, including cloud computing, mobile, and social and big data.— VNS Photo

At the opening general session of the three-day conference, Ginny Rometty said that 90 per cent of all data available today had been created in the last two years.

Data has become the new basis for competitive advantages in every industry and constitutes a vast new natural resource.

The conference has attracted 2,500 attendees including clients, business partners, analysts and information technology leaders from 50 countries and territories in the world, including Viet Nam.

With the theme of "A New Era of Smart", the conference is a chance for IT leaders to gain insight into best practices in the biggest trends in business today, including cloud computing, mobile, and social and big data.

During the conference, discussions centered on a smarter enterprise and the transforming of business outcomes with the power of big data and analytics delivered in the cloud.

Smarter commerce and social businesses were two of many topics discussed by IBM's leading experts.

At the solution showcase during the event, the company unveiled new services that help to quickly move key department workloads into the cloud for immediate returns.

Known as pure systems, power systems, smarter storage systems and technical computing, they provide the flexibility clients need to quickly deploy clouds.

"IBM is positioned to compete aggressively for public, private and hybrid-cloud computing opportunities," said Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president of the company's System and Technology Group and Integrated Supply Chain.

On the same day, the company announced that the two organisations from emerging economies had selected the cloud to drive business expansion, enable growth and offer new customer services.

The Tien Phong Commercial Joint Stock Bank of Viet Nam said it had used the company's cloud solutions for financial and banking services, especially in its core banking upgrade, mobile applications, e-banking services and other test operations.

As a result, the bank saw within one year a 50 per cent hike in its number of customers.

"The adoption of cloud computing is increasing in emerging economies and the momentum is expected to continue," said Justin Gatlin, director of Cloud Services, Global Technology Services, at IBM Growth Markets Units.

InterConnect 2013 will close on Friday. — VNS