Talking Web 2.0, how IBM's WebSphere Cloudburst appliance came about and mobile computing with Sandy Carter, IBM's Vice President of SOA, BPM and WebSphere Marketing at IBM's IMPACT 2009 conference.While at IBM's IMPACT 2009 conference, I had a chance to ask Sandy Carter a couple of questions that I hope InformationWeek's readers can find useful:

CS: As a Web 2.0 Executive (for those who don't know, Sandy is an avid user of Twitter and you can follow her @sandy_carter), what can you tell our readers about the Web 2.0 side of things from IBM? SC: I can tell you about Lotus Live - communities in the cloud. Lotus Live offers collaboration services through which you are able to find colleagues, partners and other resources you may need for a particular project. What Lotus Live is actually built on are service orientation techniques, using and reusing services. We achieved this in Lotus Live by using the same technology found in Lotus Connections. Elements of Lotus Live are also present in BPM BlueWorks, which we just announced for the BPM community, where we pulled out certain services to power the technology.

CS: What can you tell us about IBM's new private cloud offering, the IBM WebSphere Cloudburst appliance? I consider it to be the right thing at the right time with all the attention "cloud computing" has been getting lately, what would you like our readers to know about it? SC: Every year we have something called the 'Inner Circle' at our IBM IMPACT conference, a roundtable of our top 300 customers. We had a whole set of discussions where they admitted that the public cloud is "interesting, it's something we're going to play with it for a little while but we're not sure what information we're going to share." However, they admitted that it would be great to have the cloud in-house. Since they didn't want to share their sensitive data, they could still reap the cloud's benefits without going outside the firewall. They actually helped us design the Requirements Document when we were here last year. We sat down with them and broke out our dream list for Jerry Cuomo, and Jerry built the WebSphere Cloudburst in 10 months. With client feedback along the way, we were confident that what we were delivering was what they actually wanted.

CS: Another hot item out there today is Apple's iPhone. Is there anything IBM is doing with Apple, on the iPhone in particular? SC: I have to admit that I love my iPhone. Along with my applications and my iTunes, I also have my own WebSphere Business Monitor dashboard. Our CICS group has an application now that you can install on the iPhone that allows you to view CICS information on the iPhone. In their latest release, they embedded real-time events that you can monitor on the iPhone. Lotus will be releasing Notes on the iPhone, so I'm currently running the Beta version of Notes on my iPhone.

We're also working on an iPhone application with a company in NY. If you go to downtown NY, you have to hail a cab. You raise your hand and sometimes it may take up to 30 minutes before a cab comes down that particular street. You can walk up and down on multiple streets, in the rain and cold, and sometimes you're just not going to find a cab. So using your iPhone, you will be able to send out the coordinates of your location, which will then be sent to the nearest cab company using our WebSphere technology stack. Using GPS, they will be able to tell whether you are sitting in a particular location or you're continuing to walk and shop while waiting for the cab to arrive.