IBM’s Info Management Plan

Reporter’s Notebook: As part of my daily coverage, I’ve watched IBM
make a lot of purchases on the software side of their broad business over
the last few years.

Viewed as one-offs, the buys didn’t seem to come together.

IBM nabbed Endeca
and iPhrase
for enterprise search technologies.


The Ascential Software buy was one of the biggest. It had to do with IBM’s desire to
transform, integrate and “cleanse” data.


Sounds like an arcane computer science. Data cleansing involves purging data
of garbled code that can impede the creation of accurate, relevant
information.


The do-it-all vendor even picked up SRD, which made its name selling software to help casinos and
government law enforcers net crooks.


The buys seemed off the beaten path of the company’s fare of traditional
computer software building blocks: IBM had the look of a dentist filling
software cavities with companies.


I didn’t know what to think of this strategy, except that perhaps IBM’s
older software products were going soft, rotten and weak. Had WebSphere,
DB2, Tivoli, Lotus and Rational decayed?


Had IBM resigned itself to filling the cavities of its software division?

A Big Blue event in New York City last week provided
the Novocain that altered my perspective.


IBM executives addressed the challenge of rendering information management
on demand. The idea is that, with data flowing from myriad devices connected
to the Web, businesses are struggling to manage this data and turn it into
usable information.


In explaining how “information can be used as a strategic asset,” IBM
Senior Vice President Steve Mills said information management
could be a $69 billion market by 2009.


He also illustrated how the company’s search and
integration technologies can contribute to fighting crime and helping financial
institutions.


Mills said IBM’s software can be used to help city police fight crime in
real time. In one scenario, put together by the New York Police Department, which culled information from several real crime cases, he said a police call reported that someone had been shot.


The only available information the wounded victim could provide was that there were
two male perpetrators. One of the perpetrators had a tattoo of a grim reaper
and the other called him “Shorty.”


The tattoo and the nickname were entered into a computer database, where
IBM’s software was used to scroll through millions of files to
produce a list of suspects associated with the criteria.


In one real case, Wachovia used IBM’s integration
technologies to merge millions of customer files from different pieces of
software to deliver effective information on loans and mortgages.

The data was federated to get a common view, and IBM’s search technologies were used to ferret out specific files.


Mills then announced a $1 billion investment to improve these technologies,
along with a couple of new search-oriented information management products.


“If you have to sift millions of records very, very fast, you have to come
up with performance capabilities in real time that deal with enormous
quantities of information,” Mills said.


Then came the selling point: “You need IBM technology for tagging data,
understanding data, organizing it and putting it in a form where you
determine the relationships in that information, what’s relevant and how do
you sift out the noise to get an answer.”


Ginni Rometty, head of IBM business consulting services, discussed how her services team is
working with Mills’ software team in this endeavor. A customer panel of administrators from a handful of industries praised IBM’s progress in
managing information.


Gartner analyst David Cearley, who moderated the panel, told me that IBM
pulled a lot of different technologies together from acquisitions in 2005 to
form a coherent strategy and an integrated set of assets.


“Whereas most of the other vendors, including SAP and Oracle, were still
focusing on individual pieces of the information puzzle, like master data
management, IBM began to think about information as a broader concept and a
strategic asset,” Cearley said.


“The key differentiation for IBM is they have more of the individual pieces,
plus the heavy service arm, so it’s the breadth across a number of areas,
partnered with the number of acquisitions of software leaders in sub-sectors
that we’re looking at.”


Cearley said the challenge lies in taking independent, disparate
technologies and breaking down the technical barriers between those to find
common approaches.


Hearing that, my consensus is that it’s too early to tell how IBM will fare
with its latest approach. Failure can come from the usual variety of angles
that arise from multiple integrations of disparate products.


But IBM has integrated myriad purchases before to create attractive offerings for customers. Just look at the Rational Software purchase or PricewaterhouseCoopers.


So I’m beginning to be more of a believer, even as IBM continues to add more
fillings to strengthen its software teeth.

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