IBM Fellow Grady Booch discusses how the trend towards developing “smarter products” is mandating a new approach to systems engineering. Manufactured products are converging with information technology to form revolutionary ecosystems that are permanently changing how we work, live and play. Grady talks about how manufacturing and software companies will need to participate in larger “systems of systems,” such as OnStar, Google Maps, or the smart electric grid. Intelligence will be placed wherever it most logically fits, sometimes in embedded software and sometimes in backend systems accessed over a network. In what might be described as a “new era of client-server,” the client may be a car, airplane, cell phone, medical device, game system, or smart meter, where the software capabilities in the “client” are integrated with the product’s mechanical, electrical, and electronic engineering design.
For more information please visit http://ibm.com/rational/announce/smartproducts
