IBM Analyses Risk With OpenPages Acquisition

IBM has agreed to acquire OpenPages whose products identify and administer risk and compliance activities via a single management system. The acquisition will increase IBM’s business analytics portfolio and allow it to support compliance and risk management processes. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

IBM has made no secret of its attempt to transform business analytics into a mainstream corporate process. It already has a variety of products designed to give executives and decision makers the ability to analyse information in a streamlined and more user-friendly manner.

Holistic View Of Exposures

OpenPages software offers executives and other decision makers an holistic view of their enterprises’ exposures and vulnerabilities, providing an insight into how those risks can affect the organisation in the future. The software covers domains such as operational risk, financial controls management, IT risk, compliance and internal audits.

“Unforeseen risk can hurt a company’s bottom line as well as its brand reputation,” Rob Ashe, general manager of business analytics for IBM, wrote in a statement. “Integrating risk management systems across once-divided units and functions is essential to seeing the bigger picture. The combination of IBM and OpenPages will provide an holistic and consistent approach to risk management helping companies combine that insight with performance management to drive better decision making.”

IBM and OpenPages have already collaborated on at least one initiative, a core data system for the Operational Riskdata eXchange Association (ORX), a group of 55 major banks.

“Every day we hear firsthand about the risk and compliance management issues that businesses face and it’s clear that a new information architecture is needed to deliver valuable risk intelligence that empowers risk-based decision making,” explained Michael Duffy, president and CEO of OpenPages. “The combination of IBM and OpenPages software, business products insights and industry expertise will address this need, helping businesses tackle their complex risk challenges.”

IBM views analytics as a strategic directive for the company, with a team of 6,000 industry consultants and a network of analytics solution centres; to further support that mission, the company has spent $11 billion on 19 acquisitions over the past five years. IBM executives estimate that businessanalytics will grow to be a $16 billion business by 2015.

IBM’s initiatives include real-time streaming analytics, which continuously analyse and integrate any type of data input in real time. With that infrastructure in place, businesses would receive instant evaluations about current and future behaviour and then translate that information into a viable strategy.

The OpenPages acquisition, it seems, will add yet another layer of capability to both that and other IBM analytics.