How IBM Teams Up With Partners to Address the Data Deluge

by Darryl K. Taft

IBM helped the National Football League (NFL) redesign its data center and transition its employees from 5 percent to 95 percent virtualization. The result: a faster, more secure system for employees at offices on each coast. In addition to adding efficiency to meet the NFL’s growing data management needs, IBM’s analytics allowed the NFL to optimize its annual game schedule to enhance the fan experience. By using IBM software and hardware, the NFL now analyzes hundreds of thousands of options when deciding a season schedule to provide fans with the most exciting games at the most strategic times during the year.

Each year, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) teams up with IBM to deliver a dynamic online and mobile experience to fans of the U.S. Open tournament. The IBM SmartCloud-based infrastructure consistently generates increasing amounts of data, as well as a corresponding rise in demand for greater access and analysis. During the 2013 U.S. Open, for example, the USTA churned out 2.9 million hours of live-streaming video and served more than 400 million page views on its tournament Website over the course of just two weeks. A key component of the infrastructure is IBM’s Elastic Storage that enables the USTA to scale quickly to provide U.S. Open fans constant access to real-time scores, statistics, video, etc.

Infinity Red Bull Racing uses IBM Platform Computing to power its research behind computational fluid dynamics, which supports the design, simulation and analysis that go into developing its award-winning Formula One cars. With the power of IBM behind them, the Infinity Red Bull team has cut in half the time it takes to design and build a Formula One car.

This molecular profiling company generates more data per patient through its genomic sequencing than any other lab in the United States—with more than half a terabyte of information being generated on a daily basis for individual patient samples. To provide a solution for its big data needs, Caris partnered with IBM for a scalable storage and robust analytics infrastructure capable of faster processing and smarter management of data. Combining the power of its cutting-edge research tools with IBM’s data solutions, Caris is able to provide multi-threaded analysis and recommendations for oncologists to use in tailoring custom therapeutic plans for their patients’ unique cancer diagnoses.

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), another IBM partner, conducts more than 12,000 tests annually using state-of-the-art diagnostic and prognostic molecular and genomic assays for personalized profiles that facilitate individualized therapy, diagnoses and prognoses for patients faced with inherited diseases, hematological malignancies and solid tumors. In addition to providing diagnostics and specialized care, UPMC facilitates educational training and medical research, ranging from head and neck cancer to mechanisms that promote the recruitment and activation of innate immune cells in asthma and pulmonary fibrosis—all adding up to terabytes of genomic data that must be stored, analyzed and accessed for rapid use.

Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) is a scientific research organization in Germany that is dedicated to providing scientists with faster access to insights into the atomic structure of semiconductors, catalysts, biological cells and other samples. DESY’s mechanism used to gather data—the PETRA III accelerator—churns out up to 20GB per second, meaning data management is no easy task. With the high volumes of X-ray data produced by detectors in quick succession, DESY uses IBM software-defined storage capabilities to tackle its analytics challenges. With software-defined storage, DESY is achieving the scalability, speed and agility needed to become a real-time analytics service provider for researchers worldwide.

For Penn State’s Research Computing and Cyberinfrastructure (RCC) group, IBM Elastic Storage has increased the performance of its systems and services sixfold to ultimately provide access to more than 5,000 faculty and students for data-driven research and teaching, while also saving power and reducing costs.

Florida Polytech’s new supercomputing center is composed of IBM high-performance systems, including software-defined storage, that provide students with an opportunity to receive hands-on training in big data and analytics, cyber-security and other STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) skills to form the next-generation of emerging tech professionals.

A consortium of most of the nearly 26 public universities in the North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) region of Germany has come together in a unique experiment in inter-university collaboration to provide cloud-based storage and file-sharing service to 500,000 staff and students on study materials, research projects and reports. Built on IBM Elastic Storage and file-sync software from Boston-based startup, Owncloud, the first-of-its-kind solution will have the capacity to scale to petabytes and will allow students to access and share educational materials from multiple devices and across multiple universities.