I'm in the "nachos and news" program being put on for those of us participating in the inaugural IOD blogging program, and Anant Jhingran, CTO of Information Management, just shared exclusive news on the new version of IBM Mashup Center and unveiled the new IBM Cognos 8 Mashup Service. The press release won't cross the wire until tomorrow morning (I'll link back to it when it does) but you can find the details below and on a few of the other blogs, like Todd "Turbo" Watson. (Check back in for additional links).
I've written about mashups before. For those of you that might not have prior exposure to them, Anant described them as enabling the last mile of getting data to users by enabling end user to mix and match information themselves.
There are three key pieces to what's new with v2.0 of IBM Mashup Center: 1. Mashups only as good as data that have access to. Tremendously expanding data sources can natively connect to. 2. Only as good as interaction paradigm - expanding interaction and ability to create widgets. 3. Customers are saying this is great, but I own data, and will I let some random LOB guy come in and access my data? Am I really going to open it up? So adding controls.
The new IBM Cognos 8 Mashup Services exposes Cognos content so that it can be surfaced in mashups (IBM's or others) or other places/processes (while still ensuring that the appropriate controls on access, masking data, blocking IPs, etc. are in place.)
The result is to greatly extend the reach of Cognos. One of the key themes of the conference is on the importance of deliver information and insight to the point of impact, and combining Cognos reports with mashups allows for the information to be presented in the format most relevant to end user who needs to access that data.
Anant stressed that this was not just vision - mashups are actually being deployed by many of the clients. (I'll have details on one such client below.)
Jennifer Hanniman gave a demo of how use BI content in mashup to address business situation. For example, a sales team is being asked to increase their sales goals for the third quarter by 10%. They can look and see that sales were growing in Q1 and that there's a better picture in Q2. But if they're going to sign up for that increase, they'll want to look at more than just past trends. They need to understand where opportunities will come from and who will meet it. They also need to drill into the specific sales reps in Seattle branch, for example, and can look at opportunities from CRM system, but all the necessary information is not in one place. They also need to see what conditions are like - market data - for the accounts whose sales they might want to accelerate (e.g., if they just announced a bad quarter, the chances of getting a quick sale might be a lot lower).
By creating a mashup, they can bring in a Cognos report on BI, showing plan vs. actual sales data, broken down sales rep. Clicking on a sales rep name shows the plan target and how they are doing against that target. It can also show the top accounts for the selected rep, and bring up Google search information for each of those companies. The result is that they have the information they need to see whether it makes sense to plan on closing that account earlier in the year.
There are many companies using IBM Mashups today, and the press release highlights the stories of Kent County, UK, Wells Fargo, and AMEC Paragon. I'll write more about those tomorrow; we were joined at the session by Anton Langeler from O'Neill, the groundbreaking maker of wetsuits and much more, and he told a very passionate and compelling story about the value mashups are bringing to the company.
The company that literally started out of a surf shack has now grown to 225 product groups, with many distributors and 60,000 retailers, It's important that O'Neill have a view into the complete supply chain, not only to get data out of supply chain but also to share data back out to distributors and retailers.
They started with Cognos, and built data warehouse, and reporting above it. They are now using mashups to frame how they collaborate with retailers. They built a web interface - a widget - in which they can start a return process with a licensee. The result is they can read data on what was sold by the distributor, using data across the complete supply chain, in addition to using it locally within the company.
The advantage of doing this as a mashup instead of traditional programming is that they need 25 diff. places from which to get the data, and it's hard to get data from all those places, bring together, add some inforamtion. Now, with XML, can also update all the systems behind it. In the past, could build application, but were ending up with hundreds of different local applications. Instead, now have just one source where make changes, and distribute them out through the mashups..
Anton explained how strong the widgets are. For example, the stores have a lot of sales data, and they wanted to be able to combine it with weather data, as weather can have a big impact on understanding their sales. Now, read weather data, combined with retail sales, and bring everything together on the surface. Traditionally, would have had to bring all the data into the warehouse to do the reporting, blowing up the amount of data in the warehouse. Now they can can just combine it and materialize it on the fly as needed (with the added benefit of allowing them to be much more spontaneous.)
As another example, Anton cited many processes that involved downloading data from the warehouse, transferring it to Excel, making manual annotations on printouts, and passing the paper around. It used to take weeks to identify returns, for example, a process that's now done online and pretty much in real time.
One more benefit O'Neill has found is the savings of over 2 million Euro in modifications that otherwise would have been needed in their underlying data sources. Because reports can be assembled via mashups, there is a lot less customization needed to the underlying data sources, making upgrades "10 times easier," and also providing a lot more knowledge about the environment to the BI team.
The current version of the IBM Mashup Center is available for demos in the Lotus Greenhouse.
eWeek: Analytics as IBM’s Brilliant Trojan-Horse Strategy Technology
Wed, Aug 25th 2010 4:37p Adam Gartenberg Bob Evans at eWeek has posted an article (Global CIO: IBM's Brilliant Trojan-Horse Strategy Transcends Technology) that brings to light work that IBM is doing around analytics that extends far beyond what the stereotypical notion of IBM might be. He's referring to retail sales forecasts provided by IBM, and in this case reported so nonchalantly by the Wall Street Journal that Evans did a double-take when seeing just who was providing the analysis. "What also struck me about the very short ar [read] Keywords: ibm
42
eWeek: IBM Business Analytics: 20 Ways Big Blue Rules
Tue, Aug 24th 2010 2:26p Adam Gartenberg eWeek has posted a slideshow titled "IBM Business Analytics: 20 Ways Big Blue Rules." Head on over to the site for highlights of IBM's innovation, capabilities, and the successes organizations are seeing with our solutions. IBM has become a major proponent of business analytics. The emergence of smarter systems that are interconnected and streaming real-time information is presenting enterprises with a unique opportunity to transform decision making. New opportunities to use this data to pre [read] Keywords: ibm
network
36
Free predictive analytics seminars - cities and dates
Wed, Aug 11th 2010 1:30p Adam Gartenberg If you're interested in learning more about predictive analytics (or are already using SPSS and want in-depth information), there's a free event series kicking off next week that you should take a look at. The roadshow will be visiting 7 major US and Canadian cities over the next 30 days, and will offer tracks for those new to predictive analytics or IBM SPSS, those already using SPSS, and those using Cognos software who may be interested in learning more about the value that can be added by in [read] Keywords: ibm
25
IBM Helps NC State University Bring Innovative Technologies to Market by Harnessing Big Data
Wed, Aug 11th 2010 10:26a Adam Gartenberg In analytics news from my backyard, IBM and North Carolina State University today announced a new project that will take advantage of Big Data analytics technology to match academic research with potential investors. The biggest challenge in this process today is being able to quickly and easily comb through a large amount of data to uncover potential investors and partnerships. From the press release: To address this challenge, NC State will use IBM's advanced analytics technology to stre [read] Keywords: ibm
applications
enterprise
wiki
35
IBM SPSS Predictive Analytics Helps City of Memphis Reduce Serious Crime by More Than 30%
Thu, Jul 22nd 2010 10:25a Adam Gartenberg Along with yesterday's report about the benefits Sun World is getting from predictive analytics comes another case study with very impressive results. IBM has been worked with the Memphis Police Department (MPD) to enhance its crime fighting techniques through the use of IBM predictive analytics software. As a result of these efforts, the City of Memphis is reporting a 30% reduction in serious crime, including a 15% reduction in violent crimes since 2006. These gains come from the ability [read] Keywords: ibm
34
Smarter Farming: California’s Sun World Transforms Produce Business with IBM Analytics Technology
Wed, Jul 21st 2010 12:23p Adam Gartenberg In a press release issued this morning (Smarter Farming: California's Sun World Transforms Produce Business with IBM Technology), IBM shared how Sun World LLC is using IBM Cognos TM1 BI and analytics technology from IBM Business Partner Applied Analytix to "improve crop yields, reduce waste and expand its customer base, while providing more cost effective and energy efficient harvesting practices." Sun World's Director of Budgets and Reporting describes how the use of analytics has allowed t [read] Keywords: ibm
application
33
New Analytics YouTube Channel and Profile of DC Water
Mon, Jul 12th 2010 12:25p Adam Gartenberg Today marks the launch of a new YouTube Channel for IBM analytics. Along with serving as a one-stop-shop for all things related to IBM analytics, the site will feature a series of videos focused on client stories. First up is a profile of DC Water, the water and sewer authority for Washington, DC. DC Water is using IBM predictive analytics software integrated with a mapping application to better manage the city's aging water and sewer systems, which serves 1.6 million people and involves [read] Keywords: administration
ibm
application
profile
41
InfoSphere Streams Receives Top 100 Innovative Products Award from RD Magazine
Fri, Jul 9th 2010 4:24p Adam Gartenberg Congratulations to my colleagues (and our customers) working with InfoSphere Streams, which was named one of the top 100 innovative products by R&D Magazine. InfoSphere Streams is unique in its ability to process incredibly high volumes of data in real-time from multitudes of data sources, utilizing a new streaming architecture and breakthrough mathematical algorithms. The result is real-time analysis of everything from stock trades to traffic patterns to medical monitoring equipment, at r [read] Keywords: ibm
development
53
Inheriting a Complex World
Wed, Jul 7th 2010 4:25p Adam Gartenberg At IOD EMEA we highlighted some of the results from the recent CEO study IBM conducted (specifically zeroing in on the implications of more than 60% of CEOs surveyed citing industry transformation and the information explosion as the most significant factors facing their organizations over the next 5 years. ) This year we didn't only survey CEOs, but for the first time IBM reached out to 3,600 college and graduate students to see how the views of tomorrow's leaders might differ from today's [read] Keywords: ibm
46
Mark Smith: IBM Advances Business Analytics and Optimization in First Year
Wed, Jul 7th 2010 12:25p Adam Gartenberg Mark Smith, CEO & Executive Vice President of Research for Ventana Research, posted a summary on his Information Management blog (IBM Advances Business Analytics and Optimization in First Year) of the Business Analytics and Optimization analyst summit IBM held recently in Washington, DC. In his post, he summarizes the topics touched on by the speakers at the event, which included Rob Ashe, who spoke about IBM's software solutions for business analytics, and Michael Schroeck, who spoke on [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
notes
consulting
