News

IBM Targets Enterprise Mobile Workforce with Big Data Analytics Service

Cloud-based marketplace service also offers social collaboration.

• By David Ramel
• 05/23/2014

IBM unveiled its new IBM Concert software, designed to give more enterprise staffers access to data analytics wherever they might be working, from whatever device they might be using.

At its Vision 2014 conference in Orlando, IBM said the new analytics software "can manage the increasing volume and complexity of processes and tasks, support an increasingly mobile workforce, and emphasize social collaboration as an integral part of decision making.

"By accessing this technology in the cloud, business users can now easily view, understand and interact with specific performance insights to more easily determine what actions to take and when," the company continued. "Remote employees can also contribute and update data immediately via mobile devices, improving accuracy and providing real-time planning and forecasting."

The new marketplace item features guided business processes, customized, personalized task lists and other services that users access through a GUI. Users can get data such as critical metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) over the Web and from a range of mobile devices.

For example, personalized task lists let users see highlighted priorities and step through projects, be alerted to important, time-sensitive tasks and see in-context performance metrics and KPIs with accompanying charts, graphs and tables.

IBM also previewed another upcoming analytic solution, Project Catalyst Insight, also designed to give data analysis capabilities to more users. The project -- deemed a "pretty amazing data scientist in a box" by one Twitter user -- seeks a more automated approach.

"Catalyst Insight automatically builds predictive models and presents those results as interactive visuals with plain-language descriptions," the company said. "Using Catalyst Insight, a marketing manager could use advanced analytics to better understand the drivers of marketing campaign effectiveness without having to wait for a data scientist to prepare the information, develop predictive models and interpret the results."

In yet another announcement, IBM said its OpenPages enterprise software family for risk and compliance management is available on its SoftLayer cloud infrastructure as a managed service.

"OpenPages allows businesses to develop a comprehensive compliance and risk management strategy across a variety of domains including operational risk, financial controls management, IT risk, compliance and internal audits," the company said.

Both Catalyst Insight and OpenPages will be featured among more than 100 other Software-as-a-Service products supported by SoftLayer, the company's cloud foundation.

IBM said interested users can request a price quote for the IBM Concert offering.