IBM Builds Massive Business Analytics Cloud for 200,000 Employees and Unveils
Version for Clients
ARMONK, N.Y., Nov. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today
announced the world's largest private cloud computing environment for business
analytics, which will provide IBM sales teams and developers new levels of
insight to better meet the needs of clients worldwide. The cloud will launch
initially with more than a petabyte of data, the equivalent of more than 300
billion ATM transactions.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO)
IBM also announced a new solution, the IBM Smart Analytics Cloud, for clients
to build their own private cloud environments based on the same Cloud
infrastructure that IBM is using internally.
IBM's Internal Business Analytics Cloud
Internally called Blue Insight, IBM's cloud environment democratizes
information, providing access to a variety of client and market data
regardless of where an employee sits in the company. It gathers information
from nearly 100 different information warehouses and data stores, providing
analytics on more than a petabyte (1,000 terabytes or 1,000,000 gigabytes) of
data. By turning that data into insight for IBM's sales force and development
communities, IBM will be able to deliver more value in the solutions and
services it offers to its clients. More than 200,000 IBMers will have access
to the new system.
"This new cloud and the insights that our analytics will provide are the next
step in the continuous transformation of our business to better serve our
clients," said Pat Toole, chief information officer (CIO) of IBM. "I expect
this first-of-its-kind approach will help drive both new growth opportunities
as well as have a significant impact in cost savings, which is exactly the
kind of client-focused value that businesses are asking of their IT
organizations."
Structured and unstructured data will be available in the cloud and accessible
from anywhere to provide IBM employees and executives with specific insights:
-- Sales teams will have a deeper understanding of a client's
relationship
with the whole of IBM from around the world - not just their region or
product group - and be able to better predict which products and
services would deliver the most client value based on this view.
-- Product development teams will be able to quickly analyze sales
information, industry trends and customer perceptions, and adjust
product planning and development specifications accordingly.
-- A manufacturing process engineer will be able to evaluate real-time
data
on the plant floor to identify trends and adjust manufacturing
processes
as needed to improve yields and reduce shipment delivery times.
Blue Insight will run on a System z10 mainframe computer with 48 processors
(32 processors for production, 18 processors for development and test
environments) and strong cryptography - capable of handling up to 10,000
secure transactions per second, with redundant backup support.
IBM Smart Analytics Cloud offering for clients
In addition to consolidating, virtualizing and delivering its own business
intelligence via a cloud model, IBM will offer clients a solution to do the
same. Today IBM is also announcing the IBM Smart Analytics Cloud - a private
analytics cloud solution for large enterprises. IBM Smart Analytics Cloud
provides easily-consumable business intelligence services, systems and
software to help customers efficiently deliver shared business intelligence
services across lines of business and functional organizations.
IBM's own Analytics Cloud deployment served as the template for this solution
offering, which features:
-- IBM services - enables a client to transform its corporate business
intelligence (BI) strategy and achieve rapid return on investment with
planning and strategy sessions, installation and implementation of the
Smart Analytic cloud solution, as well as optimization of the cloud
for
the enterprise.
-- IBM Cognos 8 BI - provides the BI capability for the cloud, offering a
broad range of business intelligence services, including reports,
analysis and dashboards to monitor business performance, analyze
trends
and measure results.
-- IBM System z - supports the foundation for the cloud with z/VM,
industry-leading virtualization running Linux on efficient "specialty
engines" for massive scale with resilient, secure, multi-tenant
operations.
In the recent IBM Global CIO Study of more than 2,500 CIOs around the world,
83 percent of respondents identified business intelligence and analytics - the
ability to see patterns in vast amounts of data and extract actionable
insights - as the top way they will enhance their organizations'
competitiveness and ability to meet client needs.
Blue Insight will join a number of other successful Cloud and Analytics
implementations running inside IBM today:
-- Technology Adoption Program: IBM's TAP Cloud, based at IBM's Green
Innovation Data Center in Southbury, Connecticut, enables employees to
become early adopters and evaluators of technology, with more than
125,000 employees accessing more than 100 previously-unavailable
technology programs from a self-serve menu.
-- IBM's Research Cloud, called RC2, has enabled thousands of IBM
Research
and Development team members to access technical applications they
need
for research projects. It has saved IBM more than $500,000 in
deployment
costs in the past year alone.
-- On Target: an analytics program that is a prospecting tool to identify
additional client opportunities. It has already identified more than
100,000 sales leads for IBM.
IBM Smart Analytics Cloud is available today. For more information, visit:
http://www.ibm.com/systems/z/solutions/cloud/smart.html.
More information about IBM's cloud computing products and services is
available at: http://www.ibm.com/cloud.
Media contacts:
Tim Willeford
IBM
(914) 766-3389
twilleford@us.ibm.com
Kelly Sims
IBM
(917) 472-3456
kelly.sims@us.ibm.com
SOURCE IBM
Media, Tim Willeford, IBM, +1-914-766-3389, twilleford@us.ibm.com, or Kelly
Sims, IBM, +1-917-472-3456, kelly.sims@us.ibm.com
