IBM’s portfolio of analytics capabilities – including Cognos Business Intelligence, SPSS predictive analytics platforms, and the newly announced Watson Analytics – will be available through the IBM Cloud marketplace. IBM Cloud marketplace is a single online destination that serves to bring together IBM and business partner services.
By bringing its analytics portfolio into the cloud, the company aims to provide businesses, developers, and individuals with the ability to incorporate data-driven decision making into every business decision. Access to cloud-based analytics services such as Watson Analytics, states IBM, can put powerful analytics in the hands of individuals to help them see patterns, pursue ideas, and improve all types of decisions without needing to tap into a data scientist.
IBM also introduced several new cloud-based data services on the IBM Cloud that are designed to:
- Simplify and automate the ability to find, refine, and prepare data †
- Warehouse data in the cloud
- Curate unstructured data services to increase the confidence in analytics
- Enhance mobile and web applications with embedded analytics
The new services include:
- IBM DataWorks, a set of cloud-based data refinery services that shape, cleanse, match, and secure data. The new services enable business users to find, use, and contribute data for analysis; allows application developers to embed data services into new applications; and IT and data professionals to enable self-service data access. †
- IBM dashDB, a cloud-based data warehousing and analytics service with in-memory technology built-in to deliver answers faster. A new integration of dashDB with Cloudant, IBM’s NoSQL database as a service (DBaaS), allows Cloudant clients to embed analytics in their applications with a few clicks.
- Cloudant Local, an on-premise edition of the fully managed cloud database-as-a-service that enables a fluid hybrid cloud data layer that spans private data centers, mobile devices, and third-party cloud providers.
- Watson Curator, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that increases confidence in the delivery of quality content collections and governance for IBM Watson Solutions. For example, an individual insurance risk analyst can review and add context to documents so that many underwriters across the enterprise can get higher quality responses on risk assessments from Watson Engagement Advisor. IBM Watson Curator guides subject matter experts — in this case the risk expert — through the entire curation process in order to minimize the time and effort required. This capability improves the relevance and quality of the information used for analytics.
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence on Cloud is currently in beta and will be available in the first quarter of 2015. IBM SPSS Modeler will be available via IBM’s Cloud marketplace in November.
IBM DataWorks, dashDB, and Cloudant are available on IBM Bluemix. For more information on DataWorks, visit http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/make-data-work/. For more information, or to get started using dashDB, go to dashDB.com. IBM Cloudant Local is available on cloudant.com. IBM Watson Curator will be available later this year.
