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LAS VEGAS–IBM proved why it is considered a leader in the big data space with a slew of analytics, big data and cloud announcements at its IBM Insight 2014 conference here.
For starters, IBM announced that its portfolio of analytics capabilities–including Cognos Business Intelligence, SPSS predictive analytics platforms and the newly announced Watson Analytics–will be available via IBM Cloud Marketplace.
IBM Cloud Marketplace is an online destination that serves as the digital front door to cloud innovation, bringing together IBM’s capabilities-as-a-service and those of partners and third-party vendors with the security and resiliency enterprises expect.
As businesses increasingly look to data as the new basis of competitive advantage, they also are looking to take advantage of cloud computing as a growth engine that will help drive faster innovation. According to Gartner Research, 25 percent of net-new business analytics deployments will be in the form of subscription to cloud analytics platforms or application services by 2016.
Access to cloud-based analytics services such as IBM Watson Analytics can put powerful analytics in the hands of individuals to help them see patterns, pursue ideas and improve all types of decisions without needing to tap into a data scientist.
Businesses can quickly use the insights gained from cloud-based analytics solutions to implement innovative new services, drive corporate performance and manage governance, risk and compliance. Developers can leverage analytic services, such as reporting, in their applications through Bluemix, IBM’s cloud application platform.
“With today’s news, IBM continues to put advanced analytics into the hands of every business user,” said Alistair Rennie, general manager of Business Analytics at IBM, in a statement. “We believe that these cloud-based services, along with our data refinement capabilities also announced today, are changing the industry as we know it.”
Moreover, in addition to making its big data and analytics portfolio widely accessible for on-premise, cloud and hybrid deployments, IBM also announced five solution accelerators aimed at helping data professionals tackle some of the most significant and widespread challenges facing businesses today: Customer insight, operations insight, security and fraud insight and data warehouse modernization projects. The customer insight accelerator provides increased insight into customers to support sales, marketing and customer service; improving customer acquisition, cross-sell and retention.
The operations insight provides increased insight into the condition of assets and performance of equipment to optimize operations, service and support; enable predictive maintenance, improve demand/supply forecasting, and drive process efficiencies. The security and fraud insight provides enhanced situational awareness to enable faster response to safety, fraud and data security threats; improving intelligence and early warning of potential anomalies by turning large amounts of data into actionable intelligence.
Meanwhile, the risk and compliance insight provides the ability to make risk-aware decisions to better manage financial risk, operational risk and compliance; optimize the use of capital, minimize losses and reduce compliance costs. And the data warehouse modernization projects enable organizations to capture and maintain a broader set of information and enable increased analytic capabilities at reduced costs; providing quicker access to information generated across the enterprise.
IBM said the pre-integrated software solutions and industry and technology-specific services expertise will enable businesses across a range of industries to incorporate five different types of data-driven insights to improve business performance.
Regarding timing, IBM said IBM Cognos Business Intelligence on Cloud is currently in beta and will be available in the first quarter of 2015. And IBM SPSS Modeler will be available via IBM’s Cloud Marketplace within 30 days. IBM also today announced a new generation of data services on the IBM Cloud that are designed to ensure more trusted information can be applied more readily across an organization.
IBM has established a deep portfolio of big data and analytics technology that spans research and development, solutions and software. Big Blue has invested $24 billion to build its capabilities in big data and analytics through R&D and more than 30 acquisitions. Today, more than 15,000 analytics consultants, 6,000 industry solution business partners and 400 IBM mathematicians are helping clients use big data to transform their organizations, IBM said.