IBM Accelerates Analytics Push With Cognos 10

Seamless access to data

In other news, IBM is announcing new database software to bring simplicity to analysing past, present and future trends and data. Developed out of IBM’s Silicon Valley Lab, IBM is introducing new DB2 database software for System z that enables faster, more accurate decision-making. Typically, a timely and costly process for database administrators to correlate, access and integrate information from a variety of sources, DB2 10 enables seamless access to all data for faster analytics. Because of the explosive growth of data it is more critical now than ever before that businesses have high performance cost effective data management systems. New DB2 10 database software delivers up to 40 percent performance improvements while also providing 10 times more scalability to manage future growth. This translates into more efficient use of systems resources and cost savings to System z clients.

The automotive world’s BMW Group is using DB2 for z/OS. DB2 for z/OS plays a key role in managing BMW’s global supply chain from manufacturing to managing third-party suppliers and producing custom-ordered parts, the company said. BMW has been evaluating DB2 10 and is already seeing significant performance improvements of many of these critical production workloads, IBM said in a press release. According to BMW, they have measured an almost 40 percent reduction in processing power required for insert-intensive workloads for their data, which translates directly to lower costs for their IT department. Also, the reduction in time to process critical supply chain data helps BMW deliver its parts even more efficiently to its customers.

IBM also has introduced a new version of its InfoSphere Information Server, which acts as the data backbone for organisations, integrating all relevant data resources and governing the quality and completeness of information. For instance, new pop-up menus integrate data quality and lineage information directly into business applications so users can monitor the quality of their data before they use it, IBM said. In addition, new quality capabilities improve how data is standardised and combined, making it easier to integrate diverse sources of information into a single view. For example, a business with operations in multiple countries can now easily integrate customer data across systems in multiple languages and ensure it adheres to consistent name and address standards.

And IBM is showcasing a technology preview of its InfoSphere BigInsights portfolio running on IBM’s commercial Development & Test Cloud and launching the beta program for the same software in on-premise deployments. Invented by IBM researchers and software developers and powered by Apache Hadoop, an open-source technology designed for analysis of big volumes of data, IBM’s Big Insights portfolio helps organisations analyse and visualise petabyte-size quantities of structured and unstructured data.

The preview highlights the benefits of a test cloud development model including simplicity of set up, straight forward cost structure and lack of infrastructure changes. Having this software on the IBM Cloud environment makes it simple for an organisation to get started with Big Data analytics and determine how they can best use big data before bringing the actual deployment in house for operations on sensitive data. By simply adding their test data to the cloud they can get started with Big Data analytics and show the long term benefits of enterprise Hadoop deployments.

IBM continues to expand its multibillion dollar investment in the business analytics and optimisation market. Over the past five years, IBM has invested more than $14 billion in 24 analytic-related acquisitions. Today, more than 7,000 IBM industry consultants are dedicated to analytics.