Posts Tagged ‘ibm’
IBM and MIT to Pursue Joint Research in Artificial Intelligence
IBM and MIT today announced that IBM plans to make a 10-year, $240 million investment to create the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab in partnership with MIT. The lab will carry out fundamental artificial intelligence (AI) research and seek to propel scientific breakthroughs that unlock the potential of AI.
The collaboration aims to advance AI hardware, software and algorithms related to deep learning and other areas, increase AI’s impact on industries, such as health care and cybersecurity, and explore the economic and ethical implications of AI on society. IBM’s $240 million investment in the lab will support research by IBM and MIT scientists.
The new lab will be one of the largest long-term university-industry AI collaborations to date, mobilizing the talent of more than 100 AI scientists, professors, and students to pursue joint research at IBM’s Research Lab in Cambridge — co-located with the IBM Watson Health and IBM Security headquarters in Kendall Square, in Cambridge, Massachusetts — and on the neighboring MIT campus.
The lab will be co-chaired by IBM Research VP of AI and IBM Q, Dario Gil, and Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of MIT’s School of Engineering. IBM and MIT plan to issue a call for proposals to MIT researchers and IBM scientists to submit their ideas for joint research to push the boundaries in AI science and technology in several areas, including:
- AI algorithms: Developing advanced algorithms to expand capabilities in machine learning and reasoning. Researchers will create AI systems that move beyond specialized tasks to tackle more complex problems, and benefit from robust, continuous learning. Researchers will invent new algorithms that can not only leverage big data when available, but also learn from limited data to augment human intelligence.
- Physics of AI: Investigating new AI hardware materials, devices, and architectures that will support future analog computational approaches to AI model training and deployment, as well as the intersection of quantum computing and machine learning. The latter involves using AI to help characterize and improve quantum devices, and also researching the use of quantum computing to optimize and speed up machine-learning algorithms and other AI applications.
- Application of AI to industries: Given its location in IBM Watson Health and IBM Security headquarters and Kendall Square, a global hub of biomedical innovation, the lab will develop new applications of AI for professional use, including fields such as health care and cybersecurity. The collaboration will explore the use of AI in areas such as the security and privacy of medical data, personalization of healthcare, image analysis, and the optimum treatment paths for specific patients.
- Advancing shared prosperity through AI: The MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab will explore how AI can deliver economic and societal benefits to a broader range of people, nations, and enterprises. The lab will study the economic implications of AI and investigate how AI can improve prosperity and help individuals achieve more in their lives.
In addition to IBM’s plan to produce innovations that advance the frontiers of AI, a distinct objective of the new lab is to encourage MIT faculty and students to launch companies that will focus on commercializing AI inventions and technologies that are developed at the lab. The lab’s scientists also will publish their work, contribute to the release of open source material, and foster an adherence to the ethical application of AI.
Both MIT and IBM have been pioneers in artificial intelligence research, and the new AI lab builds on a decades-long research relationship between the two. In 2016, IBM Research announced a multi-year collaboration with MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences to advance the scientific field of machine vision, a core aspect of artificial intelligence.
The collaboration has brought together leading brain, cognitive, and computer scientists to conduct research in the field of unsupervised machine understanding of audio-visual streams of data, using insights from next-generation models of the brain to inform advances in machine vision. In addition, IBM and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have established a five-year, $50 million research collaboration on AI and Genomics.
For more information, visit MITIBMWatsonAILab.mit.edu.
IBM Partners To Study Body Bacteria and Autoimmune Diseases
The general public’s help is being enlisted in what’s thought to be the biggest study of the human microbiome—the bacteria that live in and on the human body – and is believed to affect health.
The Microbiome Immunity Project is a new, IBM-facilitated (NYSE: IBM) citizen science project by scientists from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, University of California San Diego, and the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute.
It will use the surplus processing power on volunteers’ computers to conduct millions of virtual experiments on behalf of the researchers. These experiments aim to map the three million bacterial genes found in the human microbiome and predict the structure of their associated proteins. The project will begin with the analysis of the microbiome in the digestive system.
This study aims to help scientists better understand the microbiome’s interaction with human biochemistry and determine how that interaction may contribute to autoimmune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes, Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis—illnesses that affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide, and that are being diagnosed with increasing frequency. With better understanding, scientists might be able to more easily prevent and treat these diseases.
Because studying the entire human microbiome would be almost impossible with traditional methods, massive supercomputing processing power is being crowdsourced via IBM’s World Community Grid.
Anyone in the world can help by simply volunteering to provide compute power. Here’s how it works: People download a secure software program that automatically detects when a computer can offer spare processing power, then taps it to run virtual experiments on behalf of researchers.
The resulting data from millions of these experiments will be analyzed by the project’s research team. The researchers will make that data publicly available to other scientists, accelerating the advancement of scientific knowledge –and ultimately improved treatments –of autoimmune diseases.
Anyone with a computer and an internet connection can join World Community Grid and sign up to support the Microbiome Immunity Project.
Since its founding in 2004, World Community Grid has supported 29 research projects in areas such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, Zika, clean water, renewable energy and other humanitarian challenges.
To date, World Community Grid, hosted by IBM Cloud, has connected researchers to $500 million U.S. dollars’ worth of free supercomputing power. More than 730,000 individuals and 430 institutions from 80 countries have donated more than one million years of computing time from more than three million computers and Android devices.
Volunteer participation has helped researchers to identify potential treatments for childhood cancer, more efficient solar cells, and more efficient water filtration.
To learn more about World Community Grid and volunteer to contribute your unused computing power, please visit https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/
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Todd "Turbo" Watson
Twitter:@turbotodd
Blog: www.turbotodd.com
Email: toddhttp://about.me/toddwatson
JDRF and IBM Collaborate to Research Risk Factors for Type 1 Diabetes in Children
IBM and JDRF, the leading global organization funding type 1 diabetes (T1D) research, today announced a new collaboration to develop and apply machine learning methods to analyze years of global T1D research data and identify factors leading to the onset of T1D in children.
T1D affects approximately 1.25 million Americans, and it currently does not have a cure. This research collaboration is expected to create an entry point for T1D in the field of precision medicine, by combining JDRF’s connections to research teams around the globe and its subject matter expertise in T1D research with the technical capability and computing power of IBM.
“At JDRF, we are absolutely committed to seeing a world without type 1 diabetes, and with this partnership, we’re adding some of the most advanced computing power in the world to our mission,” said Derek Rapp, JDRF President and CEO.
“JDRF supports researchers all over the world, but never before have we been able to analyze their data comprehensively, in a way that can tell us why some children who are at risk get T1D and others do not. IBM’s analysis of the existing data could open the door to understanding the risk factors of T1D in a whole new way, and to one day finding a way to prevent T1D altogether.”
IBM scientists will look across at least three different data sets and apply machine learning algorithms to help find patterns and factors at play, with the goal of identifying ways that could delay or prevent T1D in children. In order to match variables and data formats and compare the differing data sets, the scientists plan to leverage previously collected data from global research projects.
Data analysis will explore the inclusion of genetic, familial, autoantibody and other variables to create a foundational set of features that is common to all data sets. The models that will be produced will quantify the risk for T1D from the combined dataset using this foundational set of features. As a result, JDRF will be in a better position to identify top predictive risk factors for T1D, cluster patients based on top risk factors, and explore a number of data-driven models for predicting onset.
“Nearly 40,000 new cases of type 1 diabetes will be diagnosed in the U.S. this year. And each new patient creates new records and new data points that, if leveraged, could provide additional understanding of the disease,” says Jianying Hu, Senior Manager and Program Director, Center for Computational Health at IBM Research. “The deep expertise our team has in artificial intelligence applied to healthcare data makes us uniquely positioned to help JDRF unlock the insights hidden in this massive data set and advance the field of precision medicine towards the prevention and management of diabetes.”
Future phases of the collaboration may consist of furthering the analysis of big data toward the goal of better understanding causes of T1D. They may also consist of analyzing more complex datasets, such as microbiome and genomics or transcriptomics data. Finally, but no less importantly, the knowledge gained through these efforts could also help JDRF in its pursuit of a cure for people with T1D.
Chase the Total Solar Eclipse
Millions of consumers depend on The Weather Channel and weather.com for their daily forecasts, breaking weather news, and the latest in health and travel. And, on August 21, they will be able to experience a solar eclipse like never before.
The Weather Channel digital properties and Twitter have teamed up for a live stream of this once-in-a lifetime celestial event, which will allow consumers to chase the total solar eclipse in real time as it moves from coast-to-coast.
“This eclipse is a once-in-a-hundred-year event, and we’re going to party like it’s New Year’s Eve,’” said Neil Katz, head of global content and editor-in-chief, The Weather Company, an IBM Business. “This eclipse is a celestial phenomenon and cultural moment that can’t be missed, and we couldn’t imagine a better partner than Twitter to celebrate this with.”
“Chasing Eclipse 2017” Live Stream
The interactive live coverage for “Chasing Eclipse 2017” kicks off at noon ET on August 21. The Weather Channel digital coverage will immerse viewers in totalities from 10 locations along the eclipse path – from the ground and from space – and join the fun celebrations taking place across the country.
Live locations include: Stanley, ID; Carbondale, IL; St. Joseph’s, MO; Alliance, NE; Hopkinsville, KY; McMinnville, OR; Belton, SC; Nashville, TN; and Casper, WY.
Hosted in-studio by meteorologists Ari Sarsalari and Domenica Davis, “Chasing Eclipse 2017” will feature:
- High-resolution and aerial drone footage from Weather’s network of storm trackers as the eclipse moves along the path of totality
- User-generated content from Twitter
- Live updates from eclipse viewing parties with weather.com field reporters
- Special hyperlocal eclipse footage from TEGNA partner stations in Portland, OR; Boise, ID; Denver, CO; St. Louis, MO; Knoxville, TN; and Columbia, SC
- Red Bull Cliff Diving event featuring athletes diving under the shadows of the eclipse. Surface mirrors will reflect stunning images of the divers and the eclipse.
- Real-time eclipse footage from NASA
- “Fact Off” game show featuring the hosts from “Part-Time Genius” podcast
- Interactive social segments
- Live coverage of an #Eclipse2017 joint wedding
- IP-based broadcast production technology and support supplied by NewTek
“We are thrilled to partner with The Weather Channel and their award-winning digital editorial team for coverage of this momentous occasion,” Anthony Noto, COO, Twitter. “The ‘Chasing Eclipse 2017’ live stream allows people around the world to watch and join the #Eclipse2017 conversation as it unfolds live on Twitter.”
“Chasing Eclipse 2017” will be available via The Weather Channel app, weather.com, and Twitter. The live stream will be available for free to logged-in and logged-out users on Twitter as well as connected devices globally.
Viewers will be able to access the live stream at http://eclipse2017.twitter.com or via @weatherchannel. To join the conversation and submit content for “Chasing Eclipse 2017,” tweet with #Eclipse2017.
For more information, visit http://features.weather.com/eclipse. The Weather Channel (weather.com) is part of The Weather Company, an IBM Business.
The Weather Company, an IBM Business
The Weather Company helps people take action in the face of weather. As part of IBM’s Watson Content & IoT Platform, it powers new possibilities of decision making, informed by billions of data inputs and enabled by leading cognitive technology.
The company offers personalized insights and the most accurate forecasts globally to millions of consumers and thousands of marketers and businesses through its business solutions division and its own digital products from The Weather Channel and Weather Underground.
The company delivers around 25 billion forecasts daily. Its products include the world’s most downloaded weather app, a network of 250,000 personal weather stations, a top-20 U.S. website, one of the world’s largest IoT data platforms, and industry-leading business solutions. Weather Means Business — the world’s biggest brands in aviation, energy, insurance, media and government rely on The Weather Company for data, technology platforms and services to help improve decision-making and respond to weather’s impact on business. For more, visit theweathercompany.com.
The Weather Company Extends Access to WEATHERfx Platform
The Weather Company, an IBM Business, announced today it is expanding off-property access to its proprietary automated ad targeting platform, WEATHERfx, and further extending the capability beyond The Weather Channel and Weather Underground web and mobile properties.
As part of this WEATHERfx expansion, Weather has collaborated with The Trade Desk, a global self-service technology platform for buyers of advertising, and Vistar Media, the industry’s first and only solution for programmatic out-of-home advertising.
Through The Trade Desk and Vistar Media, marketers will be able to leverage WEATHERfx targeting across a variety of programmatic campaigns. Both programmatic and digital OOH advertising are promising growth markets, with programmatic ad spending expected to grow at double-digit rates for the next several years, and digital placements forecasted to account for more than half of OOH ad spending by 2018.
WEATHERfx is an automated targeting platform that helps power more informed marketing decisions by leveraging weather’s potential impact on emotion and delivering messaging designed to inform consumer action. Using weather-based triggers that identify conditions when weather is most likely to drive consumer behavior, the automated WEATHERfx platform eliminates media waste and activates a brand’s media to run when the optimal mix of conditions occur.
“Collaborating with The Weather Channel to extend WEATHERfx data targeting to out-of-home was a natural fit,” said Michael Provenzano, CEO & Co-Founder at Vistar Media. “Vistar’s platform is uniquely built to respond to data sets involving location and time – like weather conditions – to help marketers connect with on-the-go consumers at the right place and right time with relevant messaging.”
In addition to improving the relevancy of programmatic advertising campaigns via The Trade Desk and Vistar Media, WEATHERfx can also be used off-platform to help marketers better target messaging across social media, email marketing, and on marketers’ owned and operated websites or mobile apps.
IBM 1Q 2013 Earnings
I was sitting here at JFK waitin’ on a plane and IBM’s 1Q 2013 earnings came across the wire, so here goes:
- Diluted EPS: GAAP: $2.70, up 3 percent; Operating (non-GAAP): $3.00, up 8 percent
- Net income: GAAP: $3.0 billion, down 1 percent; Operating (non-GAAP): $3.4 billion, up 3 percent
- Gross profit margin: GAAP: 45.6 percent, up 0.6 points; Operating (non-GAAP): 46.7 percent, up 1.0 points
- Revenue: $23.4 billion, down 5 percent, down 3 percent adjusting for currency
- Free cash flow of $1.7 billion, down $0.2 billion
- Software revenue flat, up 1 percent adjusting for currency; Pre-tax: income up 4 percent; margin up 1.2 points
- Services revenue down 4 percent, down 1 percent adjusting for currency; Pre-tax: income up 10 percent; margin up 2.0 points
- Services backlog of $141 billion, up 1 percent, up 5 percent adjusting for currency; Closed 22 deals of more than $100 million in the quarter
- Systems and Technology revenue down 17 percent, down 16 percent adjusting for currency
- Growth markets revenue down 1 percent, up 1 percent adjusting for currency
- Business analytics revenue up 7 percent; Smarter Planet revenue up more than 25 percent; Cloud revenue up more than 70 percent
- Reiterating full-year 2013 operating (non-GAAP) EPS expectation of at least $16.70.
IBM announced first-quarter 2013 diluted earnings of $2.70 per share, a year-to-year increase of 3 percent. Operating (non-GAAP) diluted earnings were $3.00 per share, compared with operating diluted earnings of $2.78 per share in the first quarter of 2012, an increase of 8 percent.
First-quarter net income was $3.0 billion, down 1 percent year-to-year. Operating (non-GAAP) net income was $3.4 billion compared with $3.3 billion in the first quarter of 2012, an increase of 3 percent. Total revenues for the first quarter of 2013 of $23.4 billion were down 5 percent (down 3 percent, adjusting for currency) from the first quarter of 2012.
“In the first quarter, we grew operating net income, earnings per share and expanded operating margins but we did not achieve all of our goals in the period. Despite a solid start and good client demand we did not close a number of software and mainframe transactions that have moved into the second quarter. The services business performed as expected with strong profit growth and significant new business in the quarter,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer.
“Looking ahead, in addition to closing those transactions, we expect to benefit from investments we are making in our growth initiatives and from the actions we are taking to improve under-performing parts of the business. We remain confident in this model of continuous transformation and in our ability to deliver our full-year 2013 operating earnings per share expectation of at least $16.70.”
Pre-tax income decreased 6 percent to $3.6 billion. Pre-tax margin decreased 0.1 points to 15.4 percent. Operating (non-GAAP) pre-tax income decreased 1 percent to $4.1 billion and pre-tax margin was 17.4 percent, up 0.8 points.
IBM’s tax rate was 15.9 percent, down 4.1 points year over year; operating (non-GAAP) tax rate was 17.3 percent, down 3.2 points compared to the year-ago period. The lower tax rate is primarily due to benefits recorded to reflect changes in tax laws enacted during the quarter, including the reinstatement of the U.S. Research and Development Tax Credit.
Net income margin increased 0.5 points to 13.0 percent. Total operating (non-GAAP) net income margin increased 1.2 points to 14.4 percent.
The weighted-average number of diluted common shares outstanding in the first-quarter 2013 was 1.12 billion compared with 1.17 billion shares in the same period of 2012. As of March 31, 2013, there were 1.11 billion basic common shares outstanding.
Debt, including Global Financing, totaled $33.4 billion, compared with $33.3 billion at year-end 2012. From a management segment view, Global Financing debt totaled $25.2 billion versus $24.5 billion at year-end 2012, resulting in a debt-to-equity ratio of 7.2 to 1. Non-global financing debt totaled $8.2 billion, a decrease of $0.6 billion since year-end 2012, resulting in a debt-to-capitalization ratio of 34.3 percent from 36.1 percent.
IBM ended the first-quarter 2013 with $12.0 billion of cash on hand and generated free cash flow of $1.7 billion, excluding Global Financing receivables, down approximately $0.2 billion year over year. The company returned $3.5 billion to shareholders through $0.9 billion in dividends and $2.6 billion of gross share repurchases. The balance sheet remains strong, and the company is well positioned to support the business over the long term.
The Masters Leaderboard Is Live!
This year’s Masters iPad application not only nicely mimics the real deal in Augusta…it also has a sort feature where you can look at leaders according to several categories, including “active players,” “past champions,” “amateur players,” and even “first time participants.”
That’s it, today’s the day.
The first players have already teed off at the Masters in Augusta.
Yesterday, I discussed the virtual means by which you could experience playing at Augusta National.
Today I’m going to focus on the various means by which you can follow this year’s action on and off the course.
First, and most importantly, the leaderboard.
On the Masters web site, for which IBM is the longtime technology sponsor, you can go to the virtual equivalent of the traditional Masters leaderboard.
You can also find the leaderboard on this year’s revamped iPad app, which I’m quickly leaning on as my 19th hole for following all the action from Augusta.
This year it includes live video from a number of the holes, including Amen Corner, 15, 16, as well as two “featured groups,” a Masters “in-depth” feature channel, and for those warm-ups, the driving range, and over the weekend a live simulcast of CBS’ TV coverage.
You’ll be able to access live radio, news features, and pictures from the grounds (including new 360 panoramic images that I suspect will be suitable for framing!).
As for TV coverage itself, that doesn’t start in the U.S. until 3:00 PM EST ESPN. However, live video coverage begins on Amen Corner starting at 10:45 AM on the Website and via the mobile applications, so if you’re hankering to get out to the action, that’s going to be your fastest way in.
This year, IBM is leaning heavily on its SmartCloud technology to help drive quality and continuous operations, along with the flexibility and scalability required by the Masters.
As players peak on the course, we typically see a resultant workload increase in our technology systems.
This helped lead to have the need to provision a new Presentation Services “instance,” for example, in less than 3 minutes using Tivoli Provisioning Manager, as it helps us get new virtual machine instances up and running quickly.
We are also able to move one workload to another on our POWER systems powering the Masters using our Live LPAR mobility in four minutes without service interruption.
Can you say pressure putt???
So as the tournament begins, who will I be keeping a close eye on?
Tiger, for sure. Phil. Brandt. Rory. Graeme. Garrigus. Schwartzel. Colsaerts. Poulter. Oosthuizen. Guan (the 14 year-old Chinese kid).
It’s just an incredibly talented field, as, of course, it always is. Length and shot shaping are always helpful at Augusta, especially right to left, but as Zach Johnson proved several years ago, shorter hitters can score (and win) if they play the right angles.
As for me, I went back and played another virtual round at Augusta last night in my Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 and shot 2 under.
There’s hope for me yet. That means I would currently be tied with Jim Furyk for second place in my Walter Mitty golf fantasy. But it’s only Thursday…
Winning In Europe And Oklahoma
IBM announced a couple of nice wins these past few days.
One, a partnership agreement between IBM and Itella, a leading provider of business services in Europe and Russia.
It’s a seven-year cloud computing agreement to help Itella streamline its business operations and improve its flexibility and time-to-market, and allowing them to focus on their core business and develop new services for their clients.
Itella provides postal, logistics and financial transaction process services in Northern and Central Europe, as well as Russia.
Specifically, IBM will build a private cloud to provide hosting as well as application management and development services to Itella. With the cloud, IBM will automate basic production of technology services as well as improve the quality and management of those services.
“Through this operating model renewal, we can adopt a flexible service delivery to increase automation and introduce best practices, utilizing IBM’s world-class competence,” said Jukka Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, Itella Mail Communications. “Through the partnership, we can make our operations more efficient and cut costs, without compromising our high-quality service.”
And nearly halfway around the globe and just north of here, the great state of Oklahoma is partnering with IBM to save $15 million over the next five years and to help improve services to state residents there.
As governments institute structural changes in the way agencies measure performance and deliver services, data analytics and new delivery models can help lead the way for transformations that realize a measurable return on investment and improved quality of life.
By analyzing business processes and consolidating IT projects, IBM will help the state gain significant savings in software licensing and technology maintenance costs— resulting in an expected IT budget recovery of 30 percent.
“At a time when we all have to learn to do more with less money, IBM has been instrumental in identifying and prioritizing IT consolidation projects for the state of Oklahoma, at the same time allowing us to invest in new services for our residents,” said Alex Pettit, chief information officer, state of Oklahoma.
“IBM brought not only its extensive public sector services experience to help create the initial business case for this project, but also worked with participating agencies to verify that the new technology environment would improve mainframe service and reduce costs.”
IBM helped the state to understand the challenges of providing IT services to various agencies with diverse requirements for data management and federal reporting.
The new IT infrastructure established a model for IT compliance with federal guidelines on program data and processes, using an IBM System z mainframe. IBM also helped the state meet project funding requirements—bridging the financial gap between the initiation of the project and the cost savings.
The agreement helps ensure that the delivery of technology services is more effective and more consistent. In addition, the new infrastructure gives each agency more control over the quality, performance, and support of their technology environment.
Ultimately, the consolidation of five mainframe platforms also yielded significant savings in costs and lower lease costs. The recommended options projected an 18-30 month payback period that would save 25–30 percent of the state’s combined annual IT budget.
IBM worked with the state on a detailed analysis of the IT infrastructure and opportunities to consolidate computing capacity, storage, network, backup and disaster recovery capabilities.
The plan included development of a target architecture, establishment of a high-level roadmap, and development of a services delivery schedule between the Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES), responsible for operating the consolidated environments, and each state agency.
You can learn more about other of IBM’s smarter government initiatives here, and about IBM’s cloud computing offerings the likes of which it’s building for Itella here.
Big Moves In Big Data: IBM New Data Acceleration, Hadoop Capabilities
Click to enlarge. IBM just announced new technologies designed to help companies and governments tackle Big Data by making it simpler, faster and more economical to analyze massive amounts of data. New data acceleration innovation results in as much as 25 times faster reporting and analytics.
IBM made a significant announcement earlier today concerning new technologies designed to help companies and governments tackle Big Data by making it simpler, faster and more economical to analyze massive amounts of data. The new data acceleration innovation results in as much as 25 times faster reporting and analytics.
Today’s announcement, which represents the work of hundreds of IBM developers and researchers in labs around the world, includes an industry-first innovation called “BLU Acceleration,” which combines a number of techniques to dramatically improve analytical performance and simplify administration.
Also announced was the new IBM PureData System for Hadoop, designed to make it easier and faster to deploy Hadoop in the enterprise. Hadoop is the game-changing open-source software used to organize and analyze vast amounts of structured and unstructured data, such as posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, online transaction records, and cell phone location data.
The new system can reduce from weeks to minutes the ramp-up time organizations need to adopt enterprise-class Hadoop technology with powerful, easy-to-use analytic tools and visualization for both business analysts and data scientists.
In addition, it provides enhanced Big Data tools for monitoring, development and integration with many more enterprise systems.
IBM Big Data Innovations: More Accessible, Enterprise-ready
As organizations grapple with a flood of structured and unstructured data generated by computers, mobile devices, sensors and social networks, they’re under unprecedented pressure to analyze much more data at faster speeds and at lower costs to help deepen customer relationships, prevent threat and fraud, and identify new revenue opportunities.
BLU Acceleration enables users to have much faster access to key information, leading to better decision-making. The software extends the capabilities of traditional in-memory systems — which allows data to be loaded into Random Access Memory instead of hard disks for faster performance — by providing in-memory performance even when data sets exceed the size of the memory.
During testing, some queries in a typical analytics workload were more than 1000 times faster when using the combined innovations of BLU Acceleration.
Innovations in BLU Acceleration include “data skipping,” which allows the ability to skip over data that doesn’t need to be analyzed, such as duplicate information; the ability to analyze data in parallel across different processors; and greater ability to analyze data transparently to the application, without the need to develop a separate layer of data modeling.
Another industry-first advance in BLU Acceleration is called “actionable compression,” where data no longer has to be decompressed to be analyzed.
Not IBM’s First Big Data Rodeo
The new offerings expand what is already the industry’s deepest portfolio of Big Data technologies and solutions, spanning software, services, research and hardware. The IBM Big Data platform combines traditional data warehouse technologies with new Big Data techniques, such as Hadoop, stream computing, data exploration, analytics and enterprise integration, to create an integrated solution to address these critical needs.
IBM PureData System for Hadoop is the next step forward in IBM’s overall strategy to deliver a family of systems with built-in expertise that leverages its decades of experience reducing the cost and complexity associated with information technology.
This new system integrates IBM InfoSphere BigInsights, which allows companies of all sizes to cost-effectively manage and analyze data and add administrative, workflow, provisioning and security features, along with best-in-class analytical capabilities from IBM Research.
Today’s announcement also includes the following new versions of IBMs Big Data solutions:
- A new version of InfoSphere BigInsights, IBM’s enterprise-ready Hadoop offering, which makes it simpler to develop applications using existing SQL skills, compliance security and high availability features vital for enterprise applications. BigInsights offers three entry points: free download, enterprise software and now an expert integrated system, IBM PureData System for Hadoop.
- A new version of InfoSphere Streams, unique “stream computing” software that enables massive amounts of data in motion to be analyzed in real-time, with performance improvements, and simplified application development and deployment.
- A new version of Informix including TimeSeries Acceleration for operational reporting and analytics on smart meter and sensor data.
Pricing and Availability
All offerings are available in Q2, except the PureData System for Hadoop, which will start shipping to customers in the second half 2013. Credit-qualified clients can take advantage of simple, flexible lease and loan packages with no up-front payments for the software and systems that deliver a new generation of data analytics.
IBM Global Financing offers attractive leasing programs with 90-day payment deferrals for the PureData System for Hadoop, as well as zero percent loans for the broader portfolio of IBM big data solutions.
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