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IBM (NYSE: IBM) has announced new software to provide clients with a better way to handle the data deluge and speed up business processes, making it easier for decision makers to gain insights from data.
The new software is based on innovations from IBM labs that continuously access, compress and analyze data, freeing up IT staff to work on higher-value tasks such as big data and business analytics, IBM said. Indeed, over the past four years, more than 100 clients, 200 business partners, and hundreds of experts from IBM Research and Software Development Labs around the world collaborated to develop the new software.
To help clients meet the increasing challenges of big data, IBM announced DB2 10 and InfoSphere Warehouse 10 software, which integrates with big data systems, automatically compresses data into tighter spaces to prevent storage sprawl, and slices information from the past, present and future to eliminate expensive application code.
The software addresses business opportunities made possible by the rise of mobile, social and cloud computing by automating the flow of data between new applications for big data and business analytics with minimal human intervention. These applications require new kinds of data to be instantly available on a scale and pace not previously experienced.
During testing, clients performed data warehouse queries up to 10 times faster to speed up decision making, freed up storage space up to 90 percent to dramatically reduce storage sprawl, and easily migrated data from expensive Oracle Database to IBM DB2 software with 98 percent code compatibility that didn’t require changing the data itself or retraining staff.
Using the new software, IBM customers can access big data for deeper insights. Big data integration and real-time data analysis provides faster insights from unstructured data, such as social networking information or text from mobile devices. Insights from Hadoop-based systems are now easily integrated with real-time analysis of structured data in the warehouse to enable better and faster business decisions, IBM said.
The new software speeds up business processes and lowers data management costs. Adaptive Compression and Multi-Temperature Data Management instantly compresses data to make it easier for business applications to use it and place it into the most effective storage, IBM said. Compression speeds up the flow and better manages big data for use by analytics applications. IBMs new software automatically assesses how frequently data is needed and moves it to cost-effective storage based on how “hot” or “cold” it is.
Moreover, the new software enables users to look into the past and future to improve decision making. Time Travel Query enables easier access to data at any point in time. For example, an online travel agency can automatically detect inconsistencies in itineraries such as a hotel booked in Rome for eight days while a car is reserved in New York City for three of those days, IBM said. Previously, database administrators and application developers had to write complex code to uncover this relationship.
Todays Growing Data Volumes Make It Tougher for Clients
Todays growing data volumes make it tougher for clients to access the right data when they need it to stay competitive,” said Arvind Krishna, general manager of IBM Information Management, in a statement. IBM has advanced database and data warehouse technology to the point where data management can be automated and insights shared more broadly than ever before, freeing up decision makers and IT staff to focus on business growth.
IBM said Coca-Cola Bottling Company has been using DB2 10 to drive increased performance and lower software and hardware costs.
Coca-Cola Bottling Company has saved more than $1 million over the past four years in licensing, maintenance, and storage costs by migrating from Oracle to IBM database software, said Tom DeJuneas, IT team manager at Coca-Cola, in a statement. Weve reinvested these savings into other business projects, while keeping our operating expenses flat. As a result, we dont have to pass rising costs on to consumers, which allows us to maintain our sales volumes and market share.
The upgrade to DB2 10 further enhances performance and boosts business processes, IBM said. Coca-Cola has seen the time-to-process queries decrease dramatically. This improves supply chain management processes with increased average response of SAP workloads from 30 to 60 percent, which helps bring products to market faster, IBM officials said.
Other customers discussed their use of IBM’s new database software.
Banking customers today require instant and anytime access to accounts either online or through mobile devices, Lefentse Sennelo, DB2 database specialist at ABSA Bank, a member of the Barclays Group, said in a statement. IBM’s new database software allows us to meet these demands and helps predict and address network bottlenecks so there is not an interruption in service. The high availability and disaster recovery features helps ensure our customers get the best experience every time.
IBM’s new database software allows Mindray to compress business data flowing through our SAP applications by nearly 77 percent, which means we spend less time and money on managing and storing our data, said Eric Xu, DB2 database administrator at Mindray Medical International Limited, in a statement. This new feature is automatic and we don’t have to take our data offline or require an administrator to spend time working on it, freeing up valuable resources.
As one of Chinas top 15 manufacturers, Jianlong Steel is interested in controlling costs and improving performance as we process 6.5 million tons of steel each year, said Feng Wang, database administrator at Jianlong Steel, in a statement. We tested the IBM software and found improved performance and cost savings from the new adaptive compression and workload manager features. We think the new database software will prove very valuable to our business.