LAS VEGAS – IBM is helping companies leverage on the new opportunity from business analytics, the next mega trend and which is growing twice as fast as the rest of the information technology industry.

Much of the demand for business analytics, IBM researchers gathered, is being created by new stimulus investments in initiatives such as electronic medical records, fraud detection, need for accountability and transparency for government stimulus funds, smart grids, etc.

IBM is well positioned to deliver the right technologies needed as part of the new stimulus investments. The company has invested more than $12 billion to create an unmatched business analytics portfolio drawing on technologies and expertise from across the company. These expertise are in vertical industries, research, mathematics, and information management.

“We are trying to get every customer to systematically use information as a strategic asset,” remarked Ambuj Goyal, General Manager, Business Analytics & Process Optimization Customer Panel, IBM.

Speaking at the grand opening session on information-led transformation, he emphasized, “The time has come to create value in the information space. Information is a strategic asset that needs to be maximize.”

He added, “We are focus not just on innovation, but on business outcome.”

Specifically, as part of its ongoing focus on helping customers use their information as a strategic  asset through Business Analytics and Optimization. IBM recently created a new Business Analytics & Optimization services organization, with 4,000 consultants who can help clients get up and running with deep analytics capabilities and made significant acquisitions in the analytics space such as the recent $1.2 billion acquisition of SPSS.

At its annual Information on Demand Global Conference held here last October 25, IBM announced a broad expansion of its business analytics portfolio with new capabilities that enable clients to drive business analytics and optimization using trusted information for faster, more accurate and smarter business decisions.

“IBM is very serious in helping clients meet challenges. We are at the beginning of a journey. This is what’s exciting,” said Frank Kern, Senior Vice President, IBM Global Business Services.

In the recent IBM Global CIO Study, 83 percent of respondents identified business intelligence and analytics -- the ability to see patterns in vast amounts of data and extract actionable insights – as the way they will enhance their organizations' competitiveness.

To help clients use business analytics, IBM is aggressively expanding its multi-billion dollar investment in this area. The offerings include: New analytics software for sales, talent management and procurement.

These pre-configured applications help organizations improve business performance by providing ready-made reporting and analysis capabilities so they can gain faster insight from information more cost effectively than if they were to build it themselves.

New Content Analytics software that will help employees more easily access and analyze structured and unstructured data, such as e-mail and blogs, to drive smarter decicions based on external and internal insights.

Enhanced stream computing technology that enables organizations to make sense of structured and unstructured information stored in data warehouses and process it in real time.

New Master Information Hub software that makes it easy for clients to go beyond the pre-configured data categories offered by traditional master data management products.

IBM also announced new offerings that support IBM's Smart Archive strategy that enables clients to effectively manage structured and unstructured information. Businesses can apply analytics to stored information, extracting key content as business needs arise, regardless of the storage location.

Last year, IBM introduced 18 industry-specific workshops and services to help clients establish a cross-enterprise strategy called Information Agenda for using information as a strategic asset.

To achieve better business outcomes, organizations must have access to a single version of truth among the data spread across their systems.

IBM is introducing Master Information Hub, an optional component of the newly released InfoSphere Master Data Management Server 9.0.

Master Information Hub was created for clients seeking to build a master data management system that includes custom-built data domains instead of or along with prebuilt domains for customer, product and account. These clients can use Master Information Hub to customize their MDM Server to establish a trusted view of any type information – including reference data such as state and country abbreviations.

For example, a retailer could add a calendar of store events and relate it to participating suppliers; a food manufacturer could use a list of GPS locations to track the provenance of the ingredients it buys; or a hospital could see government codes for infectious diseases together with patient records.