Turbotodd

The Information on Demand Conference has finally kicked off this morning, and just in time, too.

I had a nice chat over breakfast with a Filenet guru from God’s Country (Montana).  It was just she and about 6,000 other folks (check the IOD group on Flickr, surely somebody took a picture of that).

Now, we’re situated in the main Mandalay Arena, where earlier things were kicked off by four ladies playing upbeat string music, and then the Black-Eyed Peas Wannabes.

Then, singing ventriloquist (You heard me…No, really, that was me!) Terry Fator brought out Winston the Turtle to share a few strolls down memory lane, including Roy Orbison’s “Crying.”

Then, IBM Information Management general manager Ambuj Goyal sauntered in to the Bee Gees’ “Staying Alive,” and explained that just a few short years ago we were gathered talking about data and content management, but that much had changed since.

For instance, $8B in acquisitions, including Filenet, Cognos, and SPSS (in that order, I do believe).  The economic climate.  Continued data and information proliferation.

And as IBM engaged in thousands of customer engagements, we kept hearing over and over from line of business execs: If I only had the right information at the right time, I could make better decisions.

And so many IT executives exclaiming, if only I could work better with IT.

IBM Global Business Services senior VP Frank Kern joined Ambuj to say the vision was compelling: What would it take to create a predictive capability for business decision makers?

Which is why IBM is investing in deep analytics, to help companies reduce risk and put greater certainty around the decisions they have to make

To answer one simple question: What if?