At its annual Information on Demand Global Conference, IBM today announced a broad expansion of its business analytics portfolio with new capabilities that enable clients to drive business analytics and optimization using trusted information for faster, more accurate and smarter business decisions.

(http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO )

In the recent IBM Global CIO Study, 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 way they will enhance their organizations' competitiveness.

To help clients use business analytics, IBM is aggressively expanding its multi-billion dollar investment in this area. The offerings include:

  --  New analytics software for sales, talent management and procurement.
      These pre-configured applications help organizations improve business
      performance by providing ready-made reporting and analysis
      capabilities so they can gain faster insight from information more
      cost effectively than if they were to build it themselves.
  --  New Content Analytics software that will help employees more easily
      access and analyze structured and unstructured data, such as email and
      blogs, to drive smarter decisions based on external and internal
      insights.
  --  Enhanced stream computing technology that enables organizations to
      make sense of structured and unstructured information stored in data
      warehouses and process it in real time.

  --  New Master Information Hub software that makes it easy for clients to
      go beyond the pre-configured data categories offered by traditional
      master data management products.

Today, IBM also announced new offerings that support IBM's Smart Archive strategy that enables clients to effectively manage structured and unstructured information. Businesses can apply analytics to stored information, extracting key content as business needs arise, regardless of the storage location.

Last year, IBM introduced 18 industry-specific workshops and services to help clients establish a cross-enterprise strategy called Information Agenda for using information as a strategic asset. In the past 12 months nearly 500 companies, including Lufthansa Cargo, have participated in these workshops with IBM vertical industry experts. Formed in 1994, Lufthansa Cargo is one of the largest freight carriers in international aviation, handling over 1.76 million tons of cargo and mail each year across a network spanning more than 500 destinations worldwide. Part of Lufthansa's objective is to maintain a competitive edge in a highly contested market. With business analytics technology using IBM Cognos BI, Lufthansa is now able to carefully manage their global delivery chain, accurately monitoring transportation times, measuring quality of service, identifying and correcting trouble spots, and tracking overall performance trends.

"To maintain a lead in this market, it is crucial that we be able to quickly access accurate critical information about our delivery chain," said Kerstin Hofmann, Manager of Business Intelligence and Planning at Lufthansa Cargo AG. "IBM business analytics gives us the real-time performance insights we need to confidently make the right decisions that will deliver optimal services worldwide and significantly improve the customer experience."

Gaining Faster, Deeper Insights

New Content Analytics applications from IBM can be applied in any industry to combine the internal view of the organization based on transactions with the external view of the organization based on customer correspondence or market trend reports. The result is an integrated view of all the information that is relevant for a business in one place regardless of where it is being stored.

Using content analytics, an organization can take a deeper look at data obtained from external sources such as email, forms, documents, blogs and websites. For example, with this new information, businesses can better manage and control their data, while providing valuable insight into their content across the enterprise.

IBM Cognos analytic applications for sales, supply chain procurement and talent management provide reporting and analytics technologies that give line of business professionals faster insight into their department's performance, with the ability to quickly adapt content to meet changing business conditions. The new offerings work with existing transaction systems helping businesses avoid costly vendor lock-in while making it easy for people to access the insights they need to make faster decisions. New offerings include:

  --  IBM Cognos Customer Performance Sales Analytics provides business
      executives and sales managers with faster insight on sales performance
      that extends across sales reps and customers to the actual order. This
      detailed visibility helps businesses recognize and anticipate emerging
      market trends, create an integrated view of performance that extends
      beyond the sales department to other areas of the organization and
      respond more quickly to existing and emerging revenue opportunities
      and threats.
  --  IBM Cognos Workforce Performance Talent Analytics provides
      capabilities for organizations to fully assess recruitment and
      learning performance. It is designed to help human resource
      departments evaluate the effectiveness of recruitment, training and
      succession planning and evolves with the changing talent management
      requirements of the organization.

  --  IBM Cognos Supply Chain Performance Procurement Analytics provides
      procurement professionals with the ability to assess the performance
      of suppliers' capacity to provide products and services in accordance
      with the contractual obligations and the business goals of the
      organization. As a result, organizations can gain greater insight into
      overall spending and supplier performance through a ready-made package
      that services the unique information needs of procurement
      professionals, enabling them to make smarter decisions on spending and
      sourcing.

  Innovating with Streaming Data

Designed for perpetual analytics, InfoSphere Streams helps organizations analyze information from any source to narrow down precisely what people are looking for and continuously refine the answer in real-time. Now, with the InfoSphere Streams Mining Toolkit demo organizations can re-use existing scoring models such as PMML, an open-standards-based language used in data warehousing, in InfoSphere Streams to obtain real-time insights from data in-motion.

Researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) are using InfoSphere Streams to analyze smoke patterns during wildfires. The goal of the research is to provide fire and public safety officials with a real-time assessment of smoke patterns during a fire, allowing them to make more informed decisions on public evacuations and health warnings. Current analysis of smoke patterns is limited to weather forecasting data that is updated every six hours, observations from front line workers and low resolution satellite imagery. With InfoSphere Streams, the UMBC team will be able to instantly process the massive amounts of data available from drone aircrafts, high resolution satellite imagery and air quality sensors to develop more effective models for smoke dissipation.

Expanding the Single View to Cover New Types of Information

To achieve better business outcomes, organizations must have access to a single version of truth among the data spread across their systems. IBM is introducing Master Information Hub, an optional component of the newly released InfoSphere Master Data Management Server 9.0. Master Information Hub was created for clients seeking to build a master data management system that includes custom-built data domains instead of or along with pre-built domains for customer, product and account. These clients can use Master Information Hub to customize their MDM Server to establish a trusted view of any type information -- including reference data such as state and country abbreviations. For example, a retailer could add a calendar of store events and relate it to participating suppliers; a food manufacturer could use a list of GPS locations to track the provenance of the ingredients it buys; or a hospital could see government codes for infectious diseases together with patient records.

Today's announcements are part of IBM's ongoing focus on helping customers use their information as a strategic asset through Business Analytics and Optimization. IBM recently created a new Business Analytics & Optimization services organization, with 4,000 consultants who can help clients get up and running with deep analytics capabilities and made significant acquisitions in the analytics space such as the recent $1.2 billion acquisition of SPSS.

For information on the IBM IOD Global Conference visit: http://www.ibm.com/press/informationondemand

On Twitter #IOD2009

For more information on IBM Information Management and IBM Business Analytics, visit: Information Management, IBM Business Analytics & Optimization Online Press Kit

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  Contact:
  Kaveri Camire
  IBM Software Group
  +1-914-625-6395
  kcamire@us.ibm.com

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact: nkaplan@us.ibm.com

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SOURCE: IBM Corporation