IBM launches private business analytics cloud; Eyes 'easily consumable' BI for the masses
IBM on Monday will unveil Blue Insight, a massive business analytics cloud that will hold more than a petabyte of data. This internal cloud computing environment will be the basis for future external services.
Internally, IBM’s effort is dubbed Blue Insight, a business analytics cloud that will give 200,000 employees access to key corporate data around the world. Blue Insight will suck in data from 100 different data stores and warehouses. The data will then be dished out to salespeople and developers.
According to IBM, Blue Insight is a showcase of the “eat your own dogfood” mantra. The system is built using Cognos, IBM’s business intelligence software, and hardware systems such as System Z, the company’s mainframe (right).
Going forward, IBM said it will add structured and unstructured data to Blue Insight. Some of this data will include revenue forecasts and sales quotas, product breakdowns, queries from real-time data and inventory levels and defects.
Increasingly, companies like IBM and HP are revamping their internal operations and then using those learnings to sell to customers. In IBM’s case, the architecture behind Blue Insight will be used to form the Smart Analytics Cloud for customers.
The Smart Analytics Cloud aims to provide “easily consumable business intelligence services, systems and software.” The bundle will include business intelligence services, Cognos and mainframes.
IBM added that it plans on focusing on the easily consumable part. To make business intelligence easier to digest, IBM said it will use Web 2.0-ish dashboards. In a backgrounder, IBM writes:
A key focus area of the Smart Analytics Cloud is rapid service deployment and end user acceptance. With agile Web 2.0 toolkits, user registration applications are easily created. Corporate processes are automated using IBM freeware and guidance documentation.
