The driving power of big data for social business

  • Social business technologies profoundly impacting front-office functions
  • Organizations will move from systems of record to systems of engagement

The driving power of big data for social businessFOLLOWING yesterday’s main theme of how organizations are leveraging upon the benefits of implementing a social business strategy, the second day of IBM Connect in Orlando, Florida shifted its focus to the underlying technologies and trends which enable a social enterprise.
 
In his opening speech, Bob Picciano (pic), general manager of IBM information management software, told conference attendees that “we have to discuss what other important industry trends and movements are necessary to support this.”
 
“How do we leverage all these interactions, all those data and business processes? It’s about finding ways to effectively harness this information to help put the business on the faster path of success,” he said.
 
Adam Klaber, managing partner of New Markets, IBM Global Business Services, said that there are many technologies that are moving organizations towards social.
 
“This technology is profoundly affecting the front-office space as organizations move from systems of record to systems of engagement, and is changing our attention as technologists,” he said.
 
The driving power of big data for social businessKlaber (pic) added that customers are now leading the conversation about how they look at brands or organizations, with business partners also “absolutely paramount to this social transformation.”
 
Picciano emphasized the role of big data analytics in aiding organizations in not only managing the explosion of data but also in gleaning intelligence from the diversity of content sources.
 
“It’s important to recognize that we’re really at the perfect storm of confluences when it comes to the increasing content that’s generated through social sites and social capabilities, along with the explosion of information that we traditionally have,” he said.
 
Picciano added that data is typically managed within traditionally structured content systems but new types of content being introduced into these systems – such as machine-to-machine interactions, log files and social sources – have necessitated a shift.

He highlighted IBM’s Big Data platform and its capability to gain insight from not just “data in rest” by also “data in motion” or information that is moving through a network, as a key differentiator.
 
“Data is the new gold, and the process of its mining and how one can extract those important trends and sentiments that one would normally not be able to easily access is where the true power of big data analytics lies ,” he said.
 
Helping the move to the cloud
 
IBM has also announced the global availability of its cloud service on five continents – plus a new center opening in Spain –based on its sourcing business to host SAP applications and other core operations.
 
Called IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+ (SCE+), the service combines the best features of sourcing – high service level agreements, security and reliability – with the best features of the cloud – elasticity and subscription-based pricing.
 
SCE+ is offered from IBM’s cloud centers in Japan, Brazil, Canada, France, Australia, the United States and Germany. The company’s first cloud center in Spain, located in Barcelona, will be operating by mid-2013.
 
“This is a logical evolution of IBM’s sourcing business that gives us an advantage both in our services relationships and the cloud market as we define a new enterprise-grade cloud today,” said Jim Comfort, general manager of IBM SmartCloud Services.
 
IBM’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud is built on decades of hosting experience gained by being the world’s largest provider of IT sourcing services with more than 1,000 clients.
 
The SCE+ environment offers service levels that guarantee availability for each single OS-instance from 98.5% up to 99.%.
 
Another new offering is IBM Migration Services for SmartCloud Enterprise+, which helps clients migrate to the cloud quickly and cost effectively by determining which workloads are best suited to the SmartCloud Enterprise+ environment, the company claimed.
 
Standardized and automation-assisted, IBM Migration Services are economically priced, aiming to deliver ROI (return on investment) in six to18 months.
 
Gabey Goh reports from IBM Connect 2013 in Orlando, Florida, at the invitation of IBM.

IBM Connect 2013:
 
IBM Connect 2013: Day 1 round-up
 
IBM confident Connections can vie against nimble start-ups

IBM boosts Connections portfolio

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Social media and business: It’s about people, people   
 
 
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