Archive for October 2010
Freakonomics @ IOD: Examining Data Ain’t No Monkey Business
Apologies in advance if you had no incentive to show up at the Freakonomics keynote session earlier this morning at Information on Demand, because it was, without question, the highlight of my week here in Las Vegas (aside from the Bengal tiger I discovered hiding in my hotel bathroom).
Freakonomics co-authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner expound on sex, lies, economics and monkey business in their hilarious Information on Demand 2010 keynote session.
Just as with Malcolm Gladwell last year, author Stephen Dubner and economist Steven Levitt artfully integrated some of the themes of the event into their two-man show, and in the process perhaps nearly stole the whole show.
Dubner spoke first, asking the audience to “raise your hand if you’re a genius,” then recognizing the power of his own incentives, warned us away from stealing Levitt: “Find your own, he’s mine.”
Two best-selling books and a documentary movie later, I can’t say as I blame him. Dubner kicked the session off explaining how he and Levitt came into one another’s orbit, arguing that he was fascinated Levitt was using data to find out what was going on in “the real world.”
Levitt, on the other hand, explained how he eventually became the accidental economist who was abysmal at math and clueless when it came to different varieties of derivatives, but was still able to muscle through at the encouragement of his father, who had found his own niche as a medical researcher on “intestinal gas.”
“The king of farts,” went the GQ profile headline about his father, joked Levitt, before Dubner returned to the stage and kidded that that made Levitt “the prince of farts.”
All hot air aside, Levitt explained his niche became the study of the nichest, yet fascinating, realms of data, and the people who helped unravel them. Ultimately, though, Levitt was studying the power of incentives, and how they motivated — or didn’t — people across all walks of life.
Like the guy at the IRS who realized there weren’t really 7 million people named “Fluffy,” and how, almost overnight, 7 million people suddenly disappeared from U.S. tax rolls when the Social Security # started being required by filers in 1987 and they could no longer file their ghostly dependents!
Levitt went on to explain he wanted to become the kind of “real economist” who, when he made a mistake, could throw world markets “into convulsions.” But of course, to be a real economist, he’d have to be good at math, so instead focused on problem sets that nobody else was interested in.
Dubner returned to the fore to explain one of those scenarios, a Yale researcher named Keith Chen who wanted to understand the impact of money in a monkey economy.
That is to say, how capuchin monkeys would react to having money introduced into their milieu (in this case, a research cage at Yale).
The hilarity of the story that ensued couldn’t possibly be done total justice in my retelling here, but know that it had the makings of a great story which you can read more about here in a New York Times article by the authors.
The long and short of it is that monkeys don’t monkey around with money much, at least not how Chen the researcher thought they might, particularly when said money interferes with what the monkeys really wanted more of (food and sex), but they did find a novel way to fit money into their Yale cage monkey business.
As Dubner explained the lesson, economists are all about measuring preferences (revealed and declared), and that the monkeys started to buy more food when the prices of the things they liked to eat most went up, not unlike people.
Ultimately, it’s all about loss aversion, whether the loss be more food or sex.
Speaking of the latter, Levitt returned at this point to close out the session, using another anecdotal example that demonstrated the power of pricing in that most marginal of markets, prostitution.
Never one to shy away from the fringes, Levitt explained how he became acquainted with a high dollar escort in Chicago through a “mutual acquaintance” and who was interested in helping him with his research on the economics of street level escorts.
Turns out, the escort had a Palm Pilot filled with useful data for his investigation, but also came loaded with a background in computer programming and now street business savvy, and she was ultimately able to one-up Levitt when he asked her to lecture to one of his classes, charging a full $100 more per hour than her standard hourly rate, but apparently giving one of the best lectures at the University of Chicago that his students had had in their entire four year tenure.
Though it may not have said much about he and his colleagues’ teaching abilities, the story did reveal to the global IOD audience that Levitt and Dubner continue to unearth powerful data where seemingly none exist, and to relate the revealing insights behind that data in a way that gives testament to the truths and lies of the human condition.
Why The Big Data Chicken Crossed The Road
“The organizations that are going to be the most competitive are going to be the ones that make the most sense of what they learned as fast as they learn it.”
Does that line sound familiar?
That was the voice of Jeff Jonas, chief scientist with IBM’s Entity Analytics group. Perhaps you saw him in this IBM TV commercial:
As Jonas asks in the spot, how would you know when to cross the road if you had to use a picture of the intersection taken five minutes before?
In a blogger briefing this afternoon centering on the topic of “Big Data” here at Information on Demand, Jonas explained that organizations must increasingly make sense of data as it’s happening, while it’s happening.
Jonas and several other scientists, researchers, IBM staffers, and even a customer (from Visa) elaborated on this phenomenon during the subsequent hour.
Jonas went on to explain that “new physics is happening with big data. Errors in data actually turn out to be positive. I’m seeing how systems get faster with more data.”
Companies are using Hadoop, as well as IBM’s BigSheets/BigInsights add-ons, to scale their analytics investigations into the real-time stream to solve new problems as they happen.
Which, of course, when you’re trying to make sense of real-time information (think air traffic control, or even street traffic control), could be the thing that allows you to cross the road based on that 5 minute ago snapshot.
Does your head hurt yet?
IBM emerging technology evangelist, David Barnes, explained that he’s partnering with his colleagues in the Big Data realm to bring Hadoop to the line of business professional, driving Big Data analytics down into the lap of the small fry front line businessperson (another common theme of IOD 2010, driving analytical capability deeper into the organization where decisions can be acted on information by those most inclined to do so due to their proximity to the customer).
As a social media marketer, I salivate at the mere prospect: You mean I can hone in what people are saying as they say it, or even after the fact, amidst a data set of 1.2 million Tweets?
Uh, yeah. Bring it on!
And Barnes wasn’t all talk, he had the demo to prove it:
That’s one example of the power of big data.
IBM’s Tom Deutch explained there are other powerful use cases that are emerging, but that more organizations need to take Hadoop out of the lab and into production in order that they be able to put theory into practice and take Big Data for a test drive to address very real business problems.
So if you have to ask why the Big Data chicken crossed the road…well, the answer will likely only come with a few revolutions of your Big Data analysis, but I’m confident that ultimately the answer is he wanted to get to the other side.
Now, and not five minutes ago. : )
Steve Mills Keynote: Big Data, Big Picture
In this morning’s first general session keynote at IBM Information on Demand, IBM Senior VP and Group Executive, Systems and Software, Steve Mills, got right to the bottom line on how organizations can go about implementing a smart information agenda and use business analytics to help them make better decisions.
IBM senior VP Steve Mills addresses the challenges of Big Data in his 2010 Information on Demand keynote.
As always, Mills painted in broad brushstrokes to help his audience see what has become something of a George Seurat “pointillist” painting, a sea of data, a mosaic of million and billions of bits and pixels of information that is piling up around us.
It’s increasingly daunting, both in terms of size and volume and velocity, and yet is an enormous business and knowledge insight opportunity as well.
So, you can either run for the hills, or you can buck up and dive into that sea, finding ways to organize it and make sense of it all…and maybe even learn something valuable for your organization.
The world is becoming more instrumed, interconnected, and more intelligent, but by leveraging this massive amount of new information, you can create a new kind of intelligence for your business, suggested Mills.
But it won’t come without some pain, trials, and tribulations.
Mills joked about the explosion in data and real world events, nodding his head to the ever-growing (but meaningless) Twitter and Facebook stream.
What Happens In Vegas…
“Remember,” he seemed to be warning the parents of teenagers in the audience, “what happens in Vegas…will stay on the Internet for a hundred or more years.”
Of course, with 44X as much data and content being generated over the coming decade, and with 80% of world’s data being unstructured (much of it that flow from the Internet, as my friend Ron ironically observed via Twitter), there’s a huge need for a structured approach to managing all this data.
Customers are clearly wrestling with this issue: 35% of customers will look to replace their current warehouse with a pre-integrated warehouse solution in the next 3 years, and only 14% have today.
And yet 83% of CIOs cited “Business intelligence and analytics” as part of their visionary plans to enhance competitiveness.
So, the IBM approach to mastering information for the purpose of optimizing business results is to build a flexible platform for managing, integrating, analyzing, and governing information.
This is not a random path, but rather a structured, well thought through approach that takes an holistic look at information management. Mills acknowledged we’re living in a federated world, one with a disparate set of information sources.
That’s why the Big Data challenge requires a Big Data approach, one that can help organizations deal with and benefit from massive and growing amounts of data, that can handle uncertainty around format variability and velocity of data, that can handle all that unstructured data, and one that can exploit big data in a timely and cost effective fashion.
IBM is offering a comprehensive set of solutions for Big Data, one in which interoperability will be key to addressing the unique challenges of the big data ecosystem.
Mills concluded with a big picture statement about all this Big Data: “We’re at an inflection point where IT is going to change the world in the next decade in ways even greater than that which we witnessed over the last 50 years.”
Dr. Atul Gawande: Use Your Knowledge
I had very much looked forward to this morning’s keynote from Dr. Atul Gawande, and he certainly didn’t disappoint.
Dr. Gawande is a Harvard-trained surgeon and writer, having been a National Book Award finalist for his book Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes On An Imperfect Science, as well as climbing up the New York Times bestseller list for The Checklist Manifesto.
Dr. Atul Gawande speaks about effective knowledge management and use during his keynote session at Information on Demand 2010.
Gawande started his keynote on a solemn note, highlighting the percentage of war injuries to death from the Revolutionary War (42%) through the First Gulf War (24%).
Only in the most recent Iraq and Afghan Wars has that number begun to drop dramatically, to 10% in these latest conflicts.
What brought about this change?
Well, simply put, it’s not unlike the same relationship between data and progress that has been so pervasive in our conversations this year at Information on Demand 2010.
Gawande explained that as our technology for killing in war progressed over history, so, too, has our technology for healing, and even preventing, traumatic injuries.
It was a curious U.S. military colonel (and surgeon) who, after sifting through historical data from our more recent conflicts, discovered the antidote.
One, rank and file troops had finally taken to actually wearing their Kevlar in the field, which they had been resisting for years.
But also, medicine was moving closer to the troops, and we were able to, through these mobile surgical field units, able to reach soldiers inside the window of that critical “golden hour” which can often decide the fate of a patient after traumatic injury.
Furthermore, those surgical units had deconstructed surgery down to its most critical elements, whereby surgeons did only those most critical path procedures in the field, then “packaged” the patient up for further surgery or procedures in Baghdad or even at a base in Germany, where they had more equipment, personnel, etc.
The field surgeon would essentially put a sign on the patient explaining to the next surgeon: “Here’s what I did. Please finish.”
Finally, the military introduced the use of checklists to ensure that patients were receiving ample supplies of blood, checking for medical allergies, etc. — common, mundane tasks but which could be lifesavers under specific circumstances.
Those few things were all it took to drive the rate of death from 24% to 10% — so much so, that in fact, the military now speaks to the survival rate, as opposed to the death count we often heard in earlier wars.
That is truly data that matters.
As Gawande more bluntly put it, “The metrics of war are now measured in the wounded, not the dead…The whole picture has changed.”
It’s that bigger picture which was the underlying moral lesson of Gawande’s talk. What does such a change, he asked, tell us about what we’re doing and where we’re going when it comes to data?
As humans, we lived through milennia in a world of ignorance, where we didn’t understand our physical world, our environment, and the like. Though that has changed dramatically in the last half century, where, with reference to the Iraq and Afghan wars, we can save more and more lives in war, we still often don’t know how to execute on the knowledge (read: data) we already have.
Or, we often have the knowledge to solve major problems, but that knowledge doesn’t always reach the people who need it most and who can most act on it.
Having knowledge is not the same as using it, and using it effectively.
Gawande’s message was quite simple: Our challenge in the 21st century will be to learn how to cope with an increasing amount of complexity, data, and even knowledge, and then to find the right data and act on it and use it to human advantage.
To do anything less would be to leave untreated an open and scathing wound defined by ineptitude and ignorance, and we’ve come far too far for that.
Unleash Your Intelligence With Cognos 10
At this afternoon’s Business Analytics session, IBM Software Business Analytics’ general manager Rob Ashe introduced Cognos 10, new software that combines the most sophisticated business analytics and optimization capabilities for today’s evolving workforce.
For the first time, the new offerings combine social networking and collaboration capabilities for the burgeoning mobile workforce, expected to reach more than 1.19 billion by 2013, bringing informed decision-making to people on the front lines.
Call it the democratization of informed decision making.
With this news, IBM is bringing business analytics capabilities to the masses with a new look and feel that more closely mirrors people’s every day use of technology including support for new mobile devices and integrated social networking capabilities for faster, more collaborative decision-making.
The new software takes analytics out of the traditional format of reports and charts to a more interactive design and broader analysis and insight making it easier by providing built-in images and videos to guide business users.
They can now gain instant insight with analytics in an easy to use format anytime, anywhere on their mobile devices. These new capabilities will have a profound impact on the way all business users interact with their teams, partners, managers and customers around the globe.
Rob Ashe and his team demonstrated some of these new capabilities in the afternoon Business Analytics keynote, providing some very cool demos and an explosive (literally) introduction of the long awaited Cognos 10.
Rob Ashe, General Manager, Business Analytics, IBM Software, prepares to "unbox" the long-awaited Cognos 10 onstage at Information on Demand 2010.
Goin’ Mobile: New Analytics Software Brings Speed to Insight with Social Collaboration and Mobile
Spurred by the growth of mobile transactions, expected to grow by 40 times by 2015, the increase in the rate and pace of data is accelerating the IT opportunity around business analytics and optimization. When combined with the unprecedented growth of the mobile workforce, this presents an opportunity for businesses to embrace the borderless office and extract intelligence to better interact with customers.
A recent IBM study with 1,900 CFOs globally revealed analytics-driven organizations had 33% more revenue growth with 32% more return on capital invested.
To address these changing market dynamics, IBM announced a set of new business analytics capabilities in the form of Cognos 10.
Cognos 10 is a new version of Cognos software that brings together the power of social collaboration and analytics for business users to gain real-time intelligence in a single, user-friendly interface — online or through mobile devices such as iPad, iPhones and BlackBerries.
Today, with the launch of Cognos 10, IBM is delivering the most significant analytics offering since the acquisition of Cognos, one of the largest acquisitions in IBM history.
For the first time, this new software brings together the power of social collaboration with Lotus Connections software and business analytics with Cognos in one unified experience with intuitive navigation capabilities and simplified user experience.
This removes the frustration of having to interrupt user train of thought resulting from the need to switch between views to get the right information. The software supports the natural path of seamless views from browsing to investigation to decision making.
End-User Driven Analytics
This new software provides business users with an integrated view of historical information with real-time updates to give users a complete picture of their business.
Now, business users can benefit from accessing information with a range of views from simple real-time information to advanced predictive “what if” analysis.
The integrated social networking capabilities with analytics allow the employees to interact with each other in real time in communities, wikis and blogs.
This combination fuels the exchange of ideas and knowledge that naturally occurs in the decision-making process, but is typically lost in meeting notes, manual processes and emails. Users can now initiate activities, engage others with their expertise, post messages, files, links, and discuss or review opinions – all in real time for faster, more accurate decision making.
The new Cognos 10 dashboard empowers the end user decision maker to manipulate their reports and make informed business decisions. No visit to the IT back office required (unless you just like making those visits.)
For example, a regional sales manager can spot a spike in sales in a popular pair of shoes with the store manager and marketing team in real time to identify the cause and brainstorm to resolve the issues around managing supply and demand.
Another scenario: Doctors can spot trends for patient treatment of certain diseases, share insight with other doctors, and agree on a preventative course of action and treatment with a team of doctors, all without having to change a single view with this in-depth information.
And yet another: A brand manager sees product sales declining and needs to discuss the issue with the store manager, production department, and marketing team – all at the same time. The manager can instantly set up a decision network to connect the right people and information to share insights and capture annotations.
Rob Ashe explained in his keynote that this was most exhaustive overhaul of the Cognos platform ever, and, appropriately enough, was driven largely by customer feedback and insight.
IBM continues to expand its multi-billion dollar investment in the business analytics and optimization market.
Over the past five years, IBM has invested more than $14 billion in 24 analytics acquisitions. Today, more than 7,000 IBM business consultants are dedicated to analytics.
Hertz and IBM: Catching The Voice Of The Customer
At the Information on Demand event here in Las Vegas today, IBM announced that the Hertz Corporation and Mindshare Technologies, a leading provider of enterprise feedback solutions, are using IBM analytics software to examine customer survey data including text messages to better identify car and equipment rental performance levels for pinpointing and making the necessary adjustments to improve customer satisfaction levels.
That, and no more running through airports.
Hertz has partnered with IBM to use "Voice of the Customer" data, gathered from social media data, to gain new insights and improve the car rental customer experience.
As the world’s largest airport car rental brand with more than 8,300 locations in 146 countries, Hertz continually receives feedback from customers. To retain its competitive edge, the feedback is analyzed so that real-time identification of issues and rapid problem solving solutions can be deployed.
Using IBM Content Analytics software together with a sentiment-based tagging solution from IBM business partner, Mindshare Technologies, Hertz introduced a “Voice of the Customer” analytics systems that automatically captures customer experiences in real-time, transforming the information into actionable intelligence.
Hertz: Putting Front Line Employees Into The Decision-Making Driver’s Seat
Using a series of linguistic rules, Hertz’s “Voice of the Customer” system categorizes comments received via email and online with descriptive terms such as “Vehicle Cleanliness,” “Staff Courtesy,” and “Mechanical Issues.”
The system also flags customers who request a callback from a manager or those who mention #1 Club Gold, Hertz’s customer loyalty program (and of which I am a longtime member).
In the ultra-competitive world of vehicle and equipment rental, Hertz recognizes that understanding customer feedback and adapting the business accordingly is what drives market share and success.
But, most of this information is trapped inside free-form customer feedback surveys. Prior to working with IBM and Mindshare Technologies, Hertz location managers read each customer comment submitted online via email or by phone and then manually categorized it for basic reporting and analysis.
This approach proved to be labor-intensive and inconsistent, as comments were categorized based on a manager’s personal interpretation.
IBM content analytics software has improved the accuracy and speed of the tagging and analyzing process, almost double what had been achieved manually, and setting the stage for more reliable analytics.
Free from manually tagging comments, Hertz field managers can now focus their attention on performing deep-dive analysis on the information, and allowing them to quickly identify trends or issues and adjusting operational service levels accordingly.
For you social media advocates, you know the Internet and new social media technologies have made consumers more connected, empowered, and yes, even demanding.
Like it or not, the average user is three times more likely to trust peer opinions over retailer advertising, underlining the importance for retailers to tap new technologies that pay close attention to what customers are saying.
This effort with Hertz reflects IBM’s focus on helping new customers get the most out of their information using analytics.
IBM recently created a new Business Analytics & Optimization services organization, with 7,000 consultants who can help clients get up and running with deep analytics capabilities.
IBM has invested more than $14 billion in the analytics space in the last four years with more than 24 acquisitions.
Blogger’s Addendum: The following video provides an excellent overview of the IBM and Mindshare “Voice of the Customer” solution they partnered on with Hertz:
Breaking News: New IBM Analytics Software To Help Organizations Gain Faster Insight For Smarter Business Outcomes
At the Information on Demand 2010 event today here in Las Vegas, IBM introduced new software that combines the most sophisticated business analytics and optimization capabilities for today’s evolving workforce.
For the first time, the new offerings combine social networking and collaboration capabilities for the burgeoning mobile workforce, expected to reach more than 1.19 billion by 2013.
With this news, IBM is bringing business analytics capabilities to the masses with a new look and feel that more closely mirrors people’s every day use of technology including support for new mobile devices and integrated social networking capabilities for faster, more collaborative decision-making.
The new software takes analytics out of the traditional format of reports and charts to a more interactive design and broader analysis and insight making it easier by providing built-in images and videos to guide business users, and it also reflects the democratization of information we’ve witnessed in recent years through what many have called the “consumerization” of IT.
Business users can now gain instant insight with analytics in an easy to use format anytime, anywhere on their mobile devices. These new capabilities will have a substantial impact on the way all business users interact with information teams, partners, managers and customers around the globe.
Making Decisions Mobile
Spurred by the growth of mobile transactions, expected to grow by 40 times by 2015, the increase in the rate and pace of data is accelerating the IT opportunity around business analytics and optimization.
When combined with the unprecedented growth of the mobile workforce, this presents an opportunity for businesses to embrace the borderless office and extract intelligence to better interact with customers.
A recent IBM study with 1,900 CFOs globally revealed analytics-driven organizations had 33% more revenue growth with 32% more return on capital invested.
To address these changing market dynamics, IBM is announcing a set of new business analytics and information management offerings:
- Cognos 10: New software that brings together the power of social collaboration and analytics for business users to gain real-time intelligence in a single, user-friendly interface — online or through mobile devices such as ipad, iphones and blackberries.
- DB2 10: New database software that helps businesses combine data – from past, present and future, delivering 40% performance improvements.
- IBM InfoSphere Server: New software that redefines how an organization handles data behind the scenes with faster and more accurate integration of diverse forms of data, and the ability to see the quality of data before it’s used.
A technology preview of Hadoop-based big data analytics software running on premise and the IBM Test Development cloud.
New Analytics Software: Bringing Speed to Insight with Social Collaboration and Mobile
Today, with the launch of Cognos 10, IBM is delivering the most significant analytics offering since the acquisition of Cognos, one of the largest acquisitions in IBM history.
For the first time, this new software brings together the power of social collaboration with Lotus Connections software and business analytics with Cognos in one unified experience with intuitive navigation capabilities and simplified user experience.
This removes the frustration of having to interrupt user train of thought resulting from the need to switch between views to get the right information. The software supports the natural path of seamless views from browsing to investigation to decision making.
This new software provides business users with an integrated view of historical information with real-time updates to give users a complete picture of their business. Now, business users can benefit from accessing information with a range of views from simple real-time information to advanced predictive “what if” analysis.
The integrated social networking capabilities with analytics allow the employees to interact with each other in real time in communities, wikis and blogs. This combination fuels the exchange of ideas and knowledge that naturally occurs in the decision-making process, but is typically lost in meeting notes, manual processes and emails.
Users can now initiate activities, engage others with their expertise, post messages, files, links, and discuss or review opinions – all in real time for faster, more accurate decision making.
New Database Software Brings Simplicity of Analyzing Past, Present, Future
Developed out of IBM’s Silicon Valley Lab, IBM is introducing new DB2 database software for System z, that simplifies analyzing past, present and future data for 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, new DB2 Time Travel Query 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 for System z servers, including the recently introduced zEnterprise System. .
As one of the world’s most successful car manufacturers, the BMW Group is at the forefront of automotive innovation. DB2 for z/OS plays a key role in managing the company’s global supply chain from manufacturing to managing third party suppliers and producing custom-ordered parts.
BMW has been evaluating DB2 10 on System z and is already seeing significant performance improvements of many of these critical production workloads. According to BMW, they have measured an almost 40% 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.
Fueling the Analytics Engine With Trusted Data
The new version of InfoSphere Information Server 8.5 acts as the data backbone for organizations, 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. In addition, new quality capabilities improve how data is standardized 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.
As part of today’s news, 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 organizations analyze and visualize petabyte sized 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 organization 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 multi-billion dollar investment in the business analytics and optimization market. Over the past five years, IBM has invested more than $14 billion in 24 analytics acquisitions. And there are more than 7,000 IBM business consultants dedicated to analytics.
Information on Demand 2010, Opening Session Keynote: Gain Insight, Optimize Results
At this morning’s opening keynote session of the IBM Information on Agenda 2010 event, Robert Leblanc immediately got down to the business at hand: Telling organizations everywhere the basic rules of the road on how to work towards establishing their own effective Information Agenda.
With Blue Man Group-ish performance troup Cobu first setting the agenda for the conference with a beat all its own, Leblanc answered in turn and explained the conference theme: “Gain Insight, Optimize Results.”
Robert Leblanc, IBM VP Middleware for IBM Software, expounds on the opportunities of an information agenda at Information on Demand 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Leblanc is the Senior Vice President, Middleware Software, for the IBM Software business, and opened his comments by citing from the IBM 2010 Global CEO Study, which had three key findings in terms of what CEOs are looking for these days: 1) Embody creative leadership; 2) Reinvent customer relationships; and 3) Build operating dexterity.
Leblanc posed a few key questions to set the stage: How do I share information in more of a two-way manner with my clients? How can I modify my products and services to better serve clients? How can I draw insight from the organization that is specialized to the client set I’m going after?
In other words, information management professionals, CEOs need your help!
A quick sound byte, related Leblanc: There will be 44X as much data and content over the coming decade, from 800K petabytes in 2009, to 35 zettabytes in 2020.
Yet people are starved for the right info and insight. More sound bytes:
- 1 in 3 make critical decisions without the information they need.
- 1 in 2 don’t have access to the information they need to do their jobs.
Clearly, there’s a gap between information and outcomes.
That’s partially due to the Information Explosion, wherein organizations haven’t aligned their information needs with their business processes, or determined how to make the right information available when and wherever it’s needed throughout the organization.
In short, how to get to one version of the truth.
After being joined by customers CenterPoint Energy and Visa, who explained how their own organizations are using an IBM Information Agenda to get the right information to the right people when and wherever they need it, Leblanc summarized the roadmap for establishing your own Information Agenda.
First, he said, you need to plan an information agenda that aligns with your business decisions. Second, you need to master your information to ensure it is accurate, relevant, and governed (and with a nod to increasing governance and regulatory requirements around the globe).
And finally, you must work to apply business analytics to anticipate and shape business outcomes, because increasingly, information is going to come from everywhere, requiring a response characteristic of radical flexibility and extreme scalability.
Leblanc summarized that no matter where in the organization you sit — C-Suite, Business Analystcs, Executive — you can take the lead on mapping out and setting your own information agenda.
Rodeo Clowning At IOD 2010
Well, I arrived in Viva Las Vegas, Nevada, yesterday afternoon for this year’s IBM Information on Demand event, which I can say with some comfort is looking to be the most well attended ever.
Rumor has it that the last couple of weeks floods of new registrants came streaming in (that’s a technical term typically referring to data streaming, but in this case referring to streams of new IOD registrants), but word also has it we’ll be able to accommodate all the latecomers.
As fate would have it, I arrived in Vegas only to discover that the Professional Bull Riders World Finals were being held this past few days, and being from Texas, I’m all about the rodeo. I even went to rodeo school once upon a time.
But I came to my senses and learned how to make computers work, and, well, here I am.
Consider me your IOD 2010 rodeo clown. I won’t be wearing any lipstick or rubber noses, and I won’t be hiding out in any barrels.
But it is the rodeo clown’s job to keep the cowboys on the right track and out of harm’s way, so I will do my level best to keep you on the straight and narrow. Meanwhile, if you’ve never had the opportunity to see a lone mortal ride one of these massive beasts, here’s some video highlights from the PBR finals.
As for today’s schedule, well, let’s get the most important details out there first: Other than the PBR finals starting at 11:30 at the Thomas and Mack Center, IOD lunch is being served at noon.
Our Business Partner forum got underway at 8:30 this morning, and this evening, we’ll be hosting the Business Partner Awards Reception from 7:00-9:30 PM.
For those not in the Partner camp, know that the EXPO Grand Opening is from 6:00-8:00PM, and various Community Receptions from 8:00-10:00PM. Check your pocket calendar for locations, and keep an eye on the video screens throughout the Mandalay Bay for location and scheduling updates.
Finally, if you want to hang on for the full eight seconds (which is how long the bull rider has to hang on for his ride to be scored), keep an eye on Twitter ID @iodgc2010, where you’ll see the official latest and greatest from the event.
And of course, don’t forget our own IOD Social Media buzz booster, where voices from across the conference will be streamed (there’s that word again) into a single queue you can make some sense out of.
Enjoy your Sunday in Vegas and get plenty of rest tonight — the full IOD and Business Analytic 2010 rodeo kicks off early Monday morning.
PS Scott Laningham and I will be livecasting from the EXPO floor later today from 7-8 PM PST, speaking with IBM customers and partners alike (including IBM VP and CTO Anant Jhingran). Tune in to www.livestream/ibmsoftware
turbotodd
Turbotodd 