IBM hails real-time analytics as business information future
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Only IBM has the breadth and scale to let customers sweat their information assets, the computing giant argues
IBM’s current incarnation bears little resemblance to the company two years ago, let alone when it teetered on the brink of collapse in the late 1990s following the decline of its proprietary mainframe and mid-range businesses.
But with a dramatic shift in focus from hardware to software and services, and the sale of its personal computing division to Chinese company Lenovo in 2005, ‘Big Blue’ has been free to focus fully on the next big business: information.
IBM’s ‘Information on Demand’ (IOD) strategy, deployed in 2006 as a competitive differentiator amid great fanfare, is going from strength to strength (if the scale of the company’s recent IOD conference in
That ‘innovative use of data’ is provided by Cognos, the BI vendor IBM acquired for $4.9 billion earlier this year.
“Cognos is the extra layer of icing that encourages people to think about [business] optimisation,” explains Martyn Christian, head of IBM’s ECM division.
An industry shift
IBM’s vice president of software Steve Mills believes the IOD strategy is leading an evolution of the IT industry from simply automating businesses processes to “helping businesses understand what is happening, when it’s happening”.
“There is no ROI in re-doing your accountancy systems. The next big breakthrough for business is real-time analysis,” Mills said at the IOD event, predicting that the business case for analysis, particularly risk management, would emerge strongly within the financial sector as it recovers.
“[Banks] will look to capture more original source data to reduce reliance on third-party ratings agencies as well as comply with regulations,” he said. “All this money has been driven into [the financial system], and the regulatory regime around that represents a huge opportunity [for us].”
Beyond the rising acceptance of business analysis – witness the growing familiarity of business leaders with terms such as ‘dashboard’ – “the implications of putting intelligence into physical assets – think trains, buses and trucks – are enormous,” Mills said. “There are huge opportunities for efficiencies, and we are investing heavily in the capability to do this. With due respect to [analysts at] IDC and Gartner, I think they underestimate the size of the market for information management.”
The size of that emerging market will also provide some insulation from the credit crisis, Mills added.
“IBM has expanded to 150 countries, including [growth economies] in Eastern Europe, Asia and the
“Everything in
Mills’ forward-thinking emphasis on business optimisation is echoed by the general manager of the company’s information management division, Ambuj Goyal.
“What we are finding is that clients do not see information as a strategic asset. If you treat it as an asset you can do a much better job of optimising your business,” Goyal says, explaining that IBM’s approach is as much a consultative one as it is sales. “If you’re a data warehouse vendor then you sell what you have. But it’s not only tools you need, it’s an information agenda. We want to have open standards and focus on the business case.”
Further reading
The new line up for ECM
Four types of vendor are emerging in the ECM market – survivors, innovators, gorillas and open-source champions
Information orchestration
The drive towards more effective information management. An Information Age Research Report
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