On 2 and 3 September 2015, more than 650 C-Suite executives, business partners and startups from across ASEAN gathered at the Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore for IBM’s annual signature event, IBM Connect 2015.The conference hosted an expansive line-up of over 25 IBM Executive and guest speakers from Singapore Airlines, DBS Bank, Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, Twitter, APD, KPJ Healthcare, PLDT ALPHA Enterprise, and many more, focusing on how enterprises can innovate through cloud, analytics, mobile, security and social technologies. Attendees also got to hear from IBM experts about best practices through experiential demo tours, function-relevant breakout sessions and industry panel discussions.
To kick off IBM Connect 2015, IBM and the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) jointly announced the launch of the IBM Smarter Commerce Centre of Competency (SCCOC), which aims to develop new products and solutions for running online shopping and customer engagement sites. Together, IBM and EDB will team up with industry associations such as the Singapore infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) and the Marketing Institute of Singapore (MIS) to reach out to marketing professionals on how they can leverage technology. Industry leaders such as OCBC Bank and StarHub will also be brought onboard to help identify industry challenges that the SCCOC can aim to address with Commerce Proof of Concepts.
The second day of IBM Connect 2015 featured a series of keynote sessions, panel discussions and demo sessions that were centered on providing startups with tips and the knowhow on how to scale at speed. Sessions were led by IBM and SoftLayer Technical Evangelists, founders and venture capitalists such as Jungle Ventures, Gree Ventures, Rakuten Ventures, Spaze Ventures, TradeGecko, Graymatics, and Yello Mobile. Selected startups also met with IBM experts at the Startup Clinic for a chance to discuss their business’ top challenges and explore solutions to tackle these problems.
IBM Connect 2015 concluded with the IBM Global Entrepreneur SmartCamp, powered by LAUNCH and angel investor Jason Calacanis. GridComm Pte Ltd from Singapore emerged as the winner beating six other finalists from the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam for a chance to be accepted into the LAUNCH Incubator with a USD25,000 investment prize, and become IBM Global Entrepreneur of the Year.
