IBM Sets up Analytics Competency Center in Bangalore

In what is a clear indication of its focus on the growing analytics
business, IBM today announced the setting up of specialized Business
Analytics Center of Competency in Bangalore. This is the latest in a
spate of an steps aimed at tapping the growing analytics and
optimization (IDC estimates worldwide market for business analytics to
grow to $25 billion during 2009-2010) This full fledged foray of IBM
into analytics space can be traced to April 2009 when the company
announced the setting up of Business Analytics & Optimization
Services as a new business division. This division comes under IBM's
Global Business Services headed by Frank Kern. This was followed by
IBM's acquisition of SPSS (July 2009) a leader in the predictive
analytics space. Going further back, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Consulting's acquisition was a step in the direction of its increased
focus on business consulting focus. Some of the other players in the
business analytics space as per IDC report are Oracle, SAP, SAS and
Microsoft,Teradata, Fair Isaac, Informatica, Infor and MicroStrategy,



The Bangalore center will have 200 employees with deep subject matter
knowledge and will be skilled to support all analytics customers across
the world. The center will have experts and leverage IBM's patented
analytics capabilities and assets. Advanced Customer analytics,apart
from Web 2.0, risk and fraud and social media are some of the areas
IBM's center in Bangalore would be working on. These will primary
address customers in the telecom, retail, financial services vertical.
According to, Fred Balboni Global Leader, IBM Analytics and
Optimization, "The launch of Analytics service arm is the biggest new
line of business from IBM after CRM. Through our extensive experience
we have built the broadest and most sophisticated analytics services
and solutions in the industry to address customers' critical business
issues."



In fact, according to Fred Balboni, "We intend to extend our portfolio
to medium business as well, who are willing to capture data to get
competitive advantage." He also believes that organizations will move
from reactive analytics to predictive analytics. According to IBM's
Global CIO Study, enterprises surveyed saw business intelligence and
analytics as the top priority to maintain their competitive advantage.



The Bangalore center will be supporting IBM's recently announced
business analytics solutions centers in Berlin, Beijing, New York,
Tokyo. It is also in the process of announcing the setting up of such
centers in Washington. IBM also has plans to partner with Indian
universities to ensure that analytics becomes an important part of
their curriculum.



Sudesh
Prasad in Armonk, New York