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Information Led Transformation – Will IBM’s New Strategy Be A Success?

So here I am in Las Vegas at IBM Information On-Demand – IBM’s global information management conference. The up-coming theme that will be launched here is IBM’s new Information Led Transformation (ILT) initiative which opens up IBM’s major play in the Business Optimization market.  IBM is pouring enormous amounts of money into this space, stating that this market is growing twice as fast as any other initiative including Business Automation. Their estimation on market size is $105Bn.  The objective of Information Led Transformation is micro-optimisation whereby every business optimization is carried out in real-time (or should I say right time) at all points of impact. That means optimising all decisions and process activities based on the current situation as it happens by leveraging event processing, predictive analytics, rules engines for automated action management based on a base of trusted information delivered on-demand and in-context where it is needed and when it is needed. IBM ILT will leverage:

• IBM’s InfoSphere Information Server platform
• InfoSphere Streams event processing
• Change data capture
• In-memory data in SolidDB and Cognos TM1
• Cognos Performance Management and Analytics
• SPSS Predictive Analytics
• Automated decisions via iLog rules engine and other technologies such as WebSphere Business Events and Cognos Now!
• Collaborative decision making via Lotus Connections
• Process Optimisation using the WebSphere BPM technologies and ESB/message Broker

On top of this IBM will deliver solutions (both cross industry and vertical. We are entering an era of business automation to get business optimisation whereby BI is integrated into processes and event driven automated decision making and action taking keep the business running optimally at all points of operation.

In addition, ILT has 4000 IBM consultants already in place to chase business. Time will tell how successful this initiative is. It is very ambitious but real-time use of intelligence and predictive analytics on an event-driven and on-demand basis is definitely the right direction. The challenge here is bringing all these technologies together and getting IT groups to play ball. In addition many businesses need to learn how to optimise their business. Trusted data (via Enterprise Data Governance and MDM) will be fundamental to that as will the need for companies to make an inventory of their business events. Unless companies learn what to look for in different parts of their business they will not be able to maximise the benefits of business optimisation.

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