No crisis here: IBM fulfills Wall Street firm's server needs

摘要

Last August, when the subprime mortgage lending crisis triggered the need for more computing power at a Wall Street brokerage, the firm was able get the servers it needed on short notice. IBM, its server supplier, fulfilled the order in three days without resorting to crisis tactics of its own. According to Glenn Johnson, director of supply chain optimization for IBM's Integrated Supply Chain organization, the order shows the ability of enterprise software and a Web-based applications infrastructure to rapidly meet unexpected customer demand without holding vast quantities of finished goods, or bypassing processes such as financial approvals. Instead, says Johnson, the applications tap into the real-time capacity of a just-in-time (JIT) supply network to build exactly the servers needed.