IBM builds business analytics cloud for 200,000 employees; unveils client versions

IBM yesterday announced the world's largest private cloud computing environment for business analytics, which will provide IBM sales teams and developers new levels of insight to better meet the needs of clients worldwide. The cloud will launch initially with more than a petabyte of data, the equivalent of more than 300 billion ATM transactions.

IBM also announced a new solution, the IBM Smart Analytics Cloud, for clients to build their own private cloud environments based on the same Cloud infrastructure that IBM is using internally.

Internally called Blue Insight, IBM's cloud environment democratises information, providing access to a variety of client and market data regardless of where an employee sits in the company. It gathers information from nearly 100 different information warehouses and data stores, providing analytics on more than a petabyte (1,000 terabytes or 1,000,000 gigabytes) of data.

By turning that data into insight for IBM's sales force and development communities, IBM will be able to deliver more value in the solutions and services it offers to its clients.

More than 200,000 IBMers will have access to the new system.

"This new cloud and the insights that our analytics will provide are the next step in the continuous transformation of our business to better serve our clients," said Pat Toole, chief information officer of IBM. "I expect this first-of-its-kind approach will help drive both new growth opportunities as well as have a significant impact in cost savings, which is exactly the kind of client-focused value that businesses are asking of their IT organizations."