IBM Releases Data Analytics Software to ‘Break Down’ Silos

ARMONK, New York — IBM’s latest analytics software offering is designed to help enterprises break down data and analytics silos to facilitate better and faster decision making and address unpredictable disruptions.

Known as IBM Business Analytics Enterprise, the suite covers business intelligence (BI) planning, budgeting, reporting, forecasting, and provides dashboards of data sources in use across the business, according to IBM last month.

IBM Business Analytics Enterprise

IBM Business Analytics Enterprise is designed to make sharing easier, avoid duplicate content, and protect information while offering a single point of entry to view the data, regardless of which BI or analytics system it resides in.

Take the case of the many sales, HR, and operations teams running inside one organization. Each requires access to data and insights from different business intelligence and planning tools. One department may wish to optimize sales goals while others want to create workforce forecasts or predict operational capacity. Problems and complexity can arise, though, when it’s necessary to share data and reporting across departments due to the use of multiple analytics solutions.

IBM Analytics Content Hub

In addition, this release incorporates a new IBM Analytics Content Hub that helps streamline how users discover and access analytics and planning tools from multiple vendors by presenting everything in a single view. Such capabilities are becoming increasingly essential due to skills shortages, tightening regulations, and the overall complexity of storing data across disparate silos, whether on prem or in the cloud. By arming themselves with this new tool, businesses can become more data driven as a way to differentiate themselves.

The content hub not only works with IBM Business Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson, and IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, it also operates across other common business intelligence tools. Dashboards can be tailored by the user to specific needs. Algorithms recommend role-based content and rapidly compile reports. The system is designed to learn from usage patterns to improve its recommendations.

Analytics Upgrades

IBM has also upgraded a couple of its existing analytics and AI tools. IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson now has integration capabilities and better forecasting that considers multiple factors and seasons in trend predictions.

IBM Planning Analytics with Watson is being made available as-a-service on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

“More complete picture”

“Businesses today are trying to become more data driven than ever as they navigate the unexpected in the face of supply chain disruptions, labor and skills shortages, and regulatory changes,” said Dinesh Nirmal, GM of data, AI, and automation, IBM.

“But to truly be data driven, organizations need to be able to provide different teams with comprehensive access to analytics tools and a more complete picture of their business data, without jeopardizing their compliance, security, or privacy programs. IBM Business Analytics Enterprise offers a way to bring together analytics tools in a single view, regardless of which vendor it comes from or where the data resides.”

IBM’s Recent Activity

IBM continues to develop Watson along with other analytics, BI, and AI tools.

Recent news includes a foray into the data observability market with the acquisition of Databand.ai. This technology helps enterprises catch bad data at the source. It gives IBM greater observability to the full stack of capabilities for IT across infrastructure, applications, data, and machine learning (ML).

In addition, the company has been spending big to enhance its data fabric. Forrester Research gives IBM high marks in its recent report on the data fabric market. The data fabric is used by IBM to dynamically and intelligently orchestrate governed data across a distributed landscape to provide a common data foundation for data consumers. This lies at the foundation of good analytics and AI.

Advanced Analytics Aid Growth

IBM has a long history in the analytics and AI markets. IBM has maintained a steady 5% to 10% market share of the overall business analytics market over the long term, according to IDC. The bulk of the market is now owned by lower-end services, such as Google Analytics.

IBM lives more in the high-end and is consolidating its position there. It wants to equip its customers with insights that make a major difference. Recent research from Forrester Research indicates the impact of this type of analytics.

“Firms with advanced insights-driven business (IDB) capabilities continue to outpace their competition and deliver better growth than less mature firms,” said Boris Evelson, an analyst at Forrester Research.

“What differentiates these firms is that they have consistently invested time, effort, and resources across the five IDB competencies: strategy, data, platforms, internal partners, and practices.”

Per Forrester, they are eight times more likely to grow by 20% or more, have a higher ability to use insights to discover new sources of revenue and create market differentiation, and can more frequently commercialize their data insights. These advanced insights-driven organizations are also 1.6x more likely to report using data, analytics, and insights to create experiences, products, and services that differentiate them within the market when compared to beginners.

See more: Top 5 Data Analytics Trends