IBM set to be big in IM?

The danger in any presentation from IBM, the IT blueblood of the corporate world, is the ever-present peril of being embroiled in a round of buzzword bingo. IBM is such a vast sales and marketing machine, sniffing out any bit of business it can find, that it has a tendency to talk a marketing language that seeks to suit all listeners.

There’s often a good helping of fear, uncertainty and doubt added to the sales mix as well. The company deploys the “FUD factor” to make clients understand they need IBM solutions to ease their business headaches ­ some of which they never knew they had.

February’s launch of IBM’s “Information as a Service” strategy in New York has now been rolled out in the UK. The headline figures are dramatic: $1bn global investment and 7.5% of workforce moved into information solutions roles, coming on top of a vast expenditure on technologies over the past few years (see below).

IWR went along to Big Blue’s HQ on London’s Southbank to hear the new mantras: delivering the business value in information; managing information in silos has become obsolete; information must become a strategic asset; early adopters are establishing a competitive advantage. It’s all designed to suggest that you are being left behind as your rivals race ahead.

But Tom Inman, vice-president for marketing in the information management solutions group, managed to bypass the generalisations and ditch the buzz phrases, concentrating instead on some of the hotspots where IBM is focusing its resources.“There’s an explosion of information sources, both structured and unstructured, in all organisations, and people want help delivering business value from all these separate sources,” he said. “For example, the ability to know your customer is hampered because customer information is all over the place. You need a targeted view of each customer to devise new opportunities.”

Two big buckets

For IBM, the banking and financial services sector is a key hotspot, because these key customers have a lot to gain from knowing their customer. “I see it as two big buckets,” said Inman. “One is preventing bad things from happening by using risk management, compliance, fraud detection, anti-money laundering procedures. The other is about making better things happen: how can they get better productivity, achieve better profitability, and sell better?”

The Information as a Service strategy is the latest in a long line of IBM initiatives that can be grouped under the business on demand heading. IBM sees information management as the key to unlocking business value from data and information stored on its technology platforms, and creating business processes that give competitive advantage. But while the benefits can be great, a collective mindset can still hold back organisations.

“Cultural barriers can be a stumbling block,” said Inman. “We’ve identified culture, governance, and ownership of data as big issues, but most importantly strategic considerations. To be successful, any information programme must be senior executive-led and from a strategic perspective. That’s where we need buy-in.”

IBM is initially focusing its resources on CRM, compliance, crime fighting, healthcare, retail, and professional case resolution. “We’ve only just got to the starting line with this, and we’re about to run a marathon,” said Inman. “There are over 700 events planned to take the message out to the market.” The big event will be a global conference at Anaheim, California, this October.

“The key is not just identifying opportunities, but converting ideas into business services that perform specific functions,” said Inman. “We will need to create value from the information that is there.”

Case Study: Norwich Union

One of IBM's biggest Business on Demand success stories was work it did with Norwich Union to implement an insurance product that was ahead of other players in the market. The Norwich Union "Pay As You Drive" insurance policy allows drivers to pay premiums based on their own usage levels, rather than paying by a fee schedule based on the general population.

IBM provides an in-car "black box" for Norwich Union's PAYD customers. The box uses a combination of wireless communications and global positioning satellite (GPS) technology to measure distances traveled and time of day and transmit data over the Orange mobile phone network. The customer's monthly bill is then calculated based on this individual driving data.

IBM's Tom Inman says: "That is an example where we enabled them to create a business proposition that put them ahead of the market by using real-time information. They recognized that this was a common request from their customers, by looking at the information they already held, and then moved on to develop a solution that answered those needs."

IBM Acquisitions: A base on which to build Information Solutions

IBM has made a series of strategic acquisitions in the past few years to give technological backbone to its information management consultancy services. The roster includes:

• iPhrase (November 2005): Technology that uncovers meaning behind a search query, even when key search terms are not employed, allowing relevant data to be delivered.
• Datapower (October 2005): Technology that speeds performance of business processes built of reusable, open-standards-based software components (XML).
• DWL (August 2005): Provides customer integration middleware that helps companies take a single integrated view of prospect and customer information across various applications and businesses.
• PureEdge Solutions (July 2005): Develops electronic forms to help companies customize the employee interface to business applications and enable the capture, process, and display of business data.
• Ascential (March 2005): Provides data integration software. This $1.1 billion acquisition provided IBM with the WebSphere technology that forms the core of its information management strategy.
• SRD (January 2005): A provider of identity resolution software that helps organisations increase business insight by delivering views into individuals and their relationships and associations with others in real time.
• Venetica (August 2004): Enterprise integration software.
• Alphablox (July 2004) Software enables customers and business partners to embed analytics - such as customer buying trends - into existing business processes, making information available to a wide spectrum of users and applications.
• Green Pasture (December 2003): Enterprise content management software.
• Tarian Software (November 2002): E-records management software.
• Access360 (October 2002): Identity management software.

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