Client zero

In 1964, IBM bet the company on a machine called System/360 — and enterprises handed it their payroll, their inventory, their arithmetic. Computing became something a company simply had, like electricity. Sixty years later, the interesting machines no longer compute answers; they take actions.

IBM's rule for technology hasn't changed since the mainframe: before you sell it to anyone, run it on yourself. Internally, the rule has a name — Client Zero.

This evening opens the books on that experiment — the one IBM says has unlocked 4.5 billion dollars in productivity since 2023. First, the transformation itself: a large enterprise rebuilding HR and IT around software that acts. The password resets no human touches anymore. The employee transfers that used to cost a manager twenty minutes each, thousands of times a year. And the decisions that stubbornly stay human. Then the part that never makes the demo: the architectural building block that makes all this work today — and puts the same capability within reach of every enterprise, not just IBM.

That second talk comes from IBM's research lab in Rüschlikon, on the shore of Lake Zurich, part of IBM Research Europe. IBM has run a research lab in Switzerland since 1956, and this one has two Nobel Prizes in physics, won in consecutive years. The 1986 prize was for the scanning tunnelling microscope, the first instrument that let scientists see individual atoms on a surface. The 1987 prize was for superconductivity in ceramic materials, discovered at the lab only the year before: by IBM's account, the shortest gap between a discovery and a scientific Nobel on record. Today researchers from more than 45 countries work there on AI, data and security. On the same campus, Haig A. Peter runs the IBM Think Lab Europe and Innovation Studio, where IBM's clients come to see what those researchers are building.

Q&A after the talks, then an apéro — the part where the real questions get asked. Seats are limited, and registration is open on this site. Salle Centerstage, first floor — twenty metres from the Lancy Pont-Rouge train station.