Adam Gartenberg’s Blog

New IBM Ads: Why Information Matters

Adam Gartenberg — Mon, 8 Mar 2010 10:35:41 -0400

Our advertising group just posted five new Smarter Planet ads, focused on the way data, information and analytics can reshape the way companies operate today and the ways in which we can make our world a better place for everyone.

My personal favorite is the one featuring IBMer Jeff Jonas. The analogy he makes in the ad to crossing the road based on what the road looked like 5 minutes ago is the best I've seen to date as to why organizations need to keep pushing as close as possible to working off real-time information, not historical data:

If you were to stand at a road, and the cars are whipping by, and all you can do is take a snapshot of the way the road looked five minutes ago. How would you know when to cross the road? 9 out of 10 organizations still make decisions this way every day using out-of-date information. The organizations that are most competitive are going to be the ones that can make sense of what they learn as fast as they learn it. That's what I'm working on. I'm an IBMer. Let's build a smarter planet.

I also found the remarks from John Cohn closing out the end of the 2 min piece to be very insightful: "The more we instrument the world, the more sensors we put out, the more data we collect, you might think that we'd get inundated, but it's actually the opposite. The more data you collect, the clearer you see."

Links:

How SPSS is helping mobile carriers apply deeper customer insight

Adam Gartenberg — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:12:49 -0400

At the Mobile World Congress today, IBM shared how SPSS's business analytics capabilities are helping telco providers such as Digital +, UPC Broadband and Tesco Mobile gain deeper insight into customer behavior, which in turn is helping them improve customer retention, optimize call center interaction, and run more effective marketing campaigns.

In the extremely competitive world that the mobile carriers operate in, anything that can be done to improve marketing effectiveness, retain customers, and improve customer service can pay off in big dividends, and as highlighted in the press release (IBM Business Analytics Reduces Customer Churn and Drives Revenue for Communications Service Providers), these providers are already seeing the results (emphasis mine):

Digital + reduces customer churn
Digital +, part of Sogecable in Spain, is using IBM SPSS predictive analytics to optimize its call center by predicting individual customer behaviors and proactively directing call center agents to provide real-time recommendations while engaged with customers.
"'Digital + improved its customer satisfaction with customized offers, reduced churn by 20 percent and increased cross-sell campaigns by 5 to 10 percent over outbound campaigns,' said Omar Rois, customer analysis manager at Digital +."

UPC Broadband develops more focused marketing campaigns
UPC Broadband, headquartered in the Netherlands, wanted to reduce customer churn and increase earnings. Its goal is to apply thorough insight into customer behavior by analyzing its customer data.

According to the press release, "UPC selected IBM SPSS predictive analytics for its ability to easily analyze customer behavior, socio-demographic data and product purchases, and leverage this insight to undertake more targeted marketing campaigns.

"'Using IBM SPSS predictive analytics, we can now build predictive models for each specific segmentation group and the response is up to four times higher compared to previous campaigns,' said Jim Jenkins, director of database marketing at UPC. 'In addition, thanks to the ability to identify customer churn early and proactively take targeted actions in this area, UPC is reducing its customer turnover substantially, saving considerable revenues per annum.'"

Tesco Mobile Targets Most Profitable Customers
"Tesco Mobile, one of the UK's fastest growing mobile networks with a reputation of outstanding customer satisfaction, sought to maintain its position and competitive edge in the telecommunications industry. The organization selected IBM SPSS predictive analytics to improve customer loyalty by better understanding motivation, opinions and preferences."

See here for more information on SPSS and on IBM's other solutions for the telecommunications industry. The full press release can be found here.

Watch IBM’s Information Governance Launch live (today, 12:30 ET)

Adam Gartenberg — Wed, 3 Feb 2010 11:44:29 -0400

IBM will be making some significant announcements later today regarding Information Governance, and you're welcome to watch the launch keynote and panel discussion live today at 12:30pm ET.

Link: IBM Information Governance Launch Live Feed

If you can't make it, check back on my blog later in the day for an updated post on the announcements and its significance, or you can follow along on Twitter with #ibminfogov

IBM fosters healthcare information sharing with Initiate Systems acquisition

Adam Gartenberg — Wed, 3 Feb 2010 11:18:15 -0400

IBM today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Initiate Systems, a privately held company that helps healthcare providers and governments overcome the challenge of integrating and sharing accurate information.

This is a significant challenge for these organizations, as they struggle with inconsistent, inaccurate or incomplete data spread across hundreds of sources spanning hospitals, doctors' offices, insurance providers, and government organizations.

From the press release:

In healthcare, hospitals, integrated delivery networks, insurers and governments are seeking to create systems that share a consistent view of all critical information as a means of improving both patient health and efficiency. Bringing together data from separate systems managed by hospitals, doctors' offices and payers is a daunting task. Initiate has helped clients meet this challenge at more than 2,400 healthcare sites, over 40 health information exchanges and multiple government health systems around the world.

The software speeds the adoption and exchange of electronic medical records. With easier access to accurate information, medical professionals can recognize patients at any facility within a health network with access to complete medical histories of patients, resulting in more timely and better informed patient care. Like IBM, Initiate is committed to industry standards and its technologies support relevant healthcare regulations and standards including HL7 and HIPAA.

One of Initiate's clients is the North Dakota Department of Human Services (DHS), which helps residents of all ages with critical services such as Medicaid and child welfare programs. Like many other government agencies, DHS's information was dispersed across several disconnected data repositories. DHS is now using Initiate's technology to access a single view of all its clients, allowing the agency to share information across its programs and enabling them to increase citizen enrollment, speed the process of determining eligibility and more accurately measure program effectiveness.

Healthcare and life sciences are a multi-billion dollar business for IBM, which has worked on more than 3,000 healthcare transformation initiatives ranging from small hospitals to national healthcare projects. IBM has more than 4,000 employees dedicated to healthcare and a network of more than 1,800 business partners.

Initiate's employees will be joining IBM's Information Management software organization, and I'd like to join my colleagues in welcoming them to IBM!

Links:

Why the iPad just looks like a supersized iTouch

Adam Gartenberg — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:00:40 -0400

Let me get it out of the way... Yes, I'd like an iPad. Not yet, though... I'll wait for a built-in camera, background apps, the memory to double or triple and the price to go down. But it is the surf-from-the-couch, catch-up-on-news-at-breakfast device I've been waiting for.

That said, like a lot of people, my first reaction on seeing pictures is that it looks a lot more like an oversized iTouch than I was expecting.

And I think the reason behind that is that it looks like they enlarged the buttons on the home page and spread them out so that the sense of perspective of the size of the device is lost.
*** Update - I think a better description for the iPad would be a large-print edition of the iTouch. This is very different than a multi-window, PC-like UI that people were expecting from a tablet "computer" ***

Compare the actual iPad...

...to one of the fake rumor pictures, showing a more conventional Mac UI:

It makes it look a lot more like a handheld computer, and less like a mobile device.

(The other thing that immediately struck me is the oft-commented on bezel, which I'll agree is ugly, but in looking at videos of hands-on use may be necessary to keep from accidentally selecting things with your thumbs, although my guess is they'll build intelligence in to prevent that in the future).

(photos via and via)

Register Today: Breaking Away with Business Analytics Virtual Leadership Exchange

Adam Gartenberg — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:17:56 -0400

If you haven't already registered for this Thursday's virtual leadership exchange, please do head over and do so today. The event (Breaking Away with Business Analytics: A Virtual Leadership Exchange) will highlight how leading companies are growing their business faster than their competitors through a focus on information management and business analytics.

This is a unique opportunity to hear first-hand from IBM experts on these topics and dive into details from companies that have been successful with these techniques already, all without having to leave your office.

Click through for agenda and speaker details, and register today!

Mayo Clinic and IBM Advance Early Detection of Brain Aneurysms

Adam Gartenberg — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:11:12 -0400

IBM issued a press release today (Mayo Clinic and IBM Advance Early Detection of Brain Aneurysms) on collaboration with the Mayo Clinic around new analytics technology that has proven a 95 percent accuracy rate in detecting aneurysms, compared with 70 percent for manual interpretation.

Already saving patients’ lives, the project has examined more than 15 million images from thousands of patients since the project began in early July. It uses technology that combines advanced imaging with analytics to highlight likely aneurysms for faster detection. This helps radiologists identify them before they result in brain hemorrhage or neurological damage. In the future, Mayo Clinic expects to use the same approach for other radiology detection tests such as the diagnosis of cancer or vessel anomalies in other parts of the body.

The aneurysm detection system uses an algorithm developed by Mayo researchers that is executed on IBM WebSphere Process Server to model and orchestrate the automated workflow. Images are stored on IBM DB2 for Linux and Windows data service and workflow logic is run on IBM System x servers and IBM storage.

Link: Mayo Clinic and IBM Advance Early Detection of Brain Aneurysms

ReadWriteWeb: IBM CEO on Lessons & Opportunities in Internet of Things

Adam Gartenberg — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:55:31 -0400

ReadWriteWeb has been focusing a fair bit lately on the Internet of Things, which is also one of the underlying factors that we have been highlighting in our Smarter Planet agenda contributing to (and resulting from) a world that is increasingly instrumented, interconnected and intelligent.

Today Richard MacManus writes about IBM's perspective on the subject (IBM CEO on Lessons & Opportunities in Internet of Things):

Palmisano noted one of the key points about Internet of Things early in his speech (link) - it puts computational power into "things no one would recognize as computers." Things like "cars, appliances, roadways and rail lines, power grids, clothes." He also mentioned processes and global supply chains, non-sexy markets that have proven to be early commercial successes for the company in Internet of Things. Finally, Palmisano pointed to implementation in "natural systems, such as agriculture and waterways."

He explained that "intelligence" can be gleaned off all of this data, "because we now have the processing power and advanced analytics to make sense of it all"
...
Another key thing to note about Internet of Things is the sheer volume of data that will flow through the Internet in the coming years. Palmisano remarked that "we are amassing an unimaginable amount of data in the world." He claimed that in three years time, IP traffic "is expected to total more than half a zettabyte" (which equals a trillion gigabytes).

He also said that "all this data is far more real-time than ever before" - which of course is another trend that ReadWriteWeb has been tracking closely.

Full Article: IBM CEO on Lessons & Opportunities in Internet of Things

A free book for a free database

Adam Gartenberg — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:38:37 -0400

Last week I blogged about the free Getting Started with DB2 Express-C 9.7 book that was being given away at the Lotusphere ped this week. Apparently it was so popular that the team on site ran out! (And thank you to the loyal reader who mentioned learning about it on my blog.)

Of course, it really shouldn't be a surprise that it was so popular; over 100,000 copies of the 300+ page book have been distributed.

For all of you who weren't in attendance (or didn't get there soon enough), my colleagues over at the FreeDB2.com blog have posted details on where you can download a soft copy of the latest edition of the book (as well as 2nd edition versions translated into Simplified Chinese, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish, Thai and Vietnamese.

Please head on over and check it out.

InfoSphere Streams drives ground-breaking covert (shhhh!) sensor intelligence

Adam Gartenberg — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:15:48 -0400

This looks like it might be shaping up to be national security week on the blog this week. A colleague just pointed me to an article (Adelos Offers Ground-Breaking Sensor Intelligence) detailing how the unique, highly parallel processing capabilities of IBM InfoSphere Streams are providing the analytical power behind a new method of covert intelligence and surveillance gathering.

I'm not going to pretend to understand half of the science behind this system, but from what I can gather, by "detecting, classifying and localizing signals from disturbances along a single strand of commercial-grade fiber-optic cable" (leveraging a novel use of "the electro-optical properties of Rayleigh's Backscatter for a continuous phased array," naturally) it is possible to detect and find meaning for geospatial detection and measurement. (Note: Any of you more well versed in geospatial detection/measurement and/or covert intelligence and surveillance gathering should feel free to jump in with a intel-to-english translation.)

Needless to say, to find software to interpret the data and "manage sensor alert messages from the Adelos digital signal processor and... convert User Datagram Protocol data into standardized XML-based messages for distributed situational awareness in a network environment," you can't just head over to your local Best Buy.

The article describes what they needed, and what they found in InfoSphere Streams:

Adelos would need an architecture capable of embarrassingly* parallel calculations and visualization, a variety of analytical and pattern-recognition utilities, and machine learning for advanced classification of remotely sensed events. The process needed to consume additional sensor streams from other sensor platforms for near real-time classification with higher probability rates based on sensor fusion techniques.

After an extensive review, TerraEchos chose Infosphere Streams, a relatively new product developed by IBM for the U.S. government. Infosphere Streams is a paradigm-shifting computational architecture developed to manage and co-mingle massive data streams of varying spatial, temporal and ontological characteristics. The product has an embarrassingly* parallel flexibility designed to scale to the real-time data challenges inherent to Adelos S4™ and can process specific energy phenomena in difficult pattern-recognition problems that concern commercial and government customers. Using the IBM SPADE programming language, Infosphere Streams users can associate a variety of analytical functions with the product's core and achieve unparalleled performance results....

With all the strategic force protection challenges the Navy faces, S4 provides a world-class application of electro-optical MASINT with advanced computational scalability for managing real-time, mission-critical sensor arrays. Combined with IBM network-aware, high-performance computing classified clouds, Adelos delivers covert surveillance and intelligence necessary to face land, air, water, "man-inside" and cyber-physical threats that define the asymmetric terrorism landscape. As the program continues, TerraEchos and IBM seek to move from a posture of harvesting sensor data to achieving insight through sensor intelligence.

(*Note: The article keeps using the phrase "embarrassingly parallel," which I am taking to mean "incredibly, ridiculously, highly parallel." I am also not going to comment on the publishing of an article on "covert intelligence and surveillance" in a public journal.)

Link: Adelos Offers Ground-Breaking Sensor Intelligence

IBM to Acquire National Interest Security Company

Adam Gartenberg — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:07:11 -0400

IBM announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire National Interest Security Company, LLC (NISC), a security and analytics consultancy based in Fairfax, Virginia that delivers advanced analytics and IT solutions to the public sector (national defense and security agencies in particular). Upon closing of the deal, NISC will join IBM GBS's Business Analytics and Optimization business unit.

From the press release:

NISC’s expertise includes systems engineering, biometrics, document and media exploitation, systems integration, software development, enterprise architecture, security, information assurance, analysis support and critical infrastructure protection....

“NISC’s high-end, differentiated approach combined with IBM’s Analytics Center will help federal agencies improve current mission effectiveness and create new capabilities,” said Andrew Maner, Chief Executive Officer of NISC. “We look forward to contributing to its BAO services unit and believe IBM’s world-class technology resources will significantly enhance our ability to dramatically impact the performance of our customers.”

PC Week, in covering the announcement, highlights a bit more about NISC:

NISC itself has grown through acquisition. In 2008, it bought consultancy Multi-Threaded, which specialized in helping intelligence officials process data gathered during operations.

NISC appears to have deep ties in the U.S. defense and security community. Jose Rodriguez, a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency's national clandestine service, joined the company in 2008, and its board members include former CIA director Michael Hayden, a retired U.S. Air Force general.

Links:

IOD EMEA Conference 2010 and SPSS Directions European Conference 2010

Adam Gartenberg — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:43:48 -0400

There are two upcoming events that should be on your radar - the IOD EMEA Conference 2010 and the SPSS Directions European Conference 2010. Both are taking place in Rome, Italy, in mid-May, and we would love for you to join us. Please see below for additional details - note the early bird registration discounts and speaker submission deadlines.

IOD EMEA Conference 2010 --- 19-21 May, Rome Italy
Registration now open
Early Bird Registration - register by 26 February and save up to € 610
Call for Speakers open until 29 January - IBM customers who are selected receive a free conference pass (one per organization)

SPSS Directions European Conference 2010 --- 17-18 May, Rome Italy
Registration open shortly
The SPSS Directions European Conference will be co-located with the IOD EMEA conference at the Rome Marriott Park hotel on 17 and 18 May 2010. This gives IBM customers and Business Partners the ability to attend both SPSS Directions and IOD EMEA and to experience the latest trends and best practices in predictive analytics.

There are also plenty of ways of staying in touch and current on the latest updates regarding the IOD Conference:

	Follow @IOD2010. Get useful links, up-to-the-minute industry news and start networking before, during and after the IOD EMEA 2010 event.
	Fan us! We promise to keep you at the cutting edge of information and get useful tips for your visit to Rome, Italy
	Join IBM IOD EMEA 2010 group: Check out new ideas being discussed by the community. Share your experiences with others through posting ideas or answering questions See who is attending and comment on the event page.
	Watch IBM executives, discover our playlist, podcasts and information videos. Feel the IOD EMEA 2010 energy!

IBM Information and Analytics Solutions in the News

Adam Gartenberg — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:58:11 -0400

IBM's Information and Analytics software have been in the news a bit lately; I think I may have missed these when they were first published last month:

Financial Times: IBM in $200m Brazil software tie-up
"IBM on Monday announced a $200m software deal with a technology partner in Brazil, the biggest software deal of its kind this year, in the latest sign that emerging markets remain a notable bright spot for the technology industry....
"In the Brazilian deal, IBM said that Consist Software Solutions, a local software company that supplies applications to large and medium-sized companies throughout Latin America, had agreed to standardise all of its products to run on IBM technology, including its DB2 database and Websphere family of “middleware” products."

Financial Express: Konkan Railway ropes in IBM for train management
"The Konkan Railway is leveraging IBM software to extract fresh insight to improve its train management system, ensure commuter safety and reduce costs by 20%....
"IBM Informix Dynamic Server has developed 'Railway Application Package' (RAP) system which helps to manage, analyse and maintain train running information, schedules and reduce the passenger delays. Real-time data is fed into the management system that uses smart analytics to respond to information in real time — whether it is scheduling delays, abnormalities or passenger queries....
"IBM software provides Konkan Railway with cost-effective performance, availability, requiring only two database administrators managing 66 database server instances."

A Prescription for Prediction

Adam Gartenberg — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:26:52 -0400

I've written several times (New Intelligence in Action: Predicting changes in the tiniest patients, IOD2009 - InfoSphere Streams) about the innovative use of IBM InfoSphere Streams to prevent infection in premature newborns up to 24 hours earlier than they could have been detected with conventional methods. It's hard to think of a better example to demonstrate just how game-changing (and life-saving) the application of information and analytics can be.

The video below, created by IBM's Chris Luongo, is the first episode of a series that will highlight "first of a kind" projects out of IBM Research, and gives an excellent overview of the work IBM is doing with University of Ontario Institute of Technology to help health care professionals better treat premature infants.

True stories from IBM's First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) program, which pairs IBM researchers with clients to bring incredible discoveries and possibilities into view. This first episode brings you the wonderful tale about how IBM researchers and clients came together to create an innovative solution for a hospital based on clever stream computing software.

Background:

DB2 for Lotus Foundations at Lotusphere 2010

Adam Gartenberg — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:58:19 -0400

My colleagues over on the DB2 team have shared some information about their presence at Lotusphere next week. If you're interested in learning more about the free DB2 Express-C - and especially if you're a business partner - please do stop by the booth and session.

We have a pedestal (IBM34) and a session on Tuesday noon (Europe 10) where we will be demonstrating the value of the DB2 for Lotus Foundations. Our demos will include single-click, no-questions-asked install, single point user management and integrated backup and restore capability as well as integrated PHP enablement. We will also demonstrate how business partners can deliver complete web presence for their customers using Content Management System (RadiantCMS) or build a Wikepedia-like wiki using mediawiki (the software that runs Wikepedia).

Welcome to the decade of smart

Adam Gartenberg — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:11:06 -0400

Earlier today, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano introduced the evolution of IBM's Smarter Planet initiative, heralding in "The Decade of Smart."

IBM - and the companies and governments we've worked with already in building a smarter planet - have learned a lot in the past year. Our clients have learned just how game changing it can be. To quote just a few examples from today's speech that are close to heart for me - ones that touch in particular on information and analytics:

Eight hospitals and 470 primary care clinics in Spain implemented smarter healthcare systems across their facilities—by making information available at the point of care to healthcare practitioners and applying insights into organizational performance. They improved clinical results and operational efficiency by up to 10 percent....

Four leading retailers have reduced supply chain costs by up to 30 percent, reduced inventory levels by up to 25 percent, and increased sales up to 10 percent. They've done so by analyzing customer buying behaviors, aligning merchandising assortments with demand and building end-to-end visibility across their entire supply chain.

As for what we at IBM have learned, I think Sam Palmisano summed it up best: "We've learned that there is enormous hunger to learn how."

This is the same statement that you may have heard Arvind Krishna talk about in an interview recorded at IOD: The questions that he kept getting over and over again were: "How can we get started, and what help are you going to give me to succeed?" Not once - in over 50 meetings - was he asked "Why should I do this?"

It's a message we're hearing from all corners:

"Where to start?" Consider Don Spencer, associate director of medical informatics for the University of North Carolina. He decided that the place to begin was with the thorniest problem in his hospital system: the volume and disconnectedness of their data. The smart hospital solution Don built now enables doctors and administrators to see not just their individual patients but the whole practice.

You'll be hearing a lot more from IBM in the coming days and months about the decade of smart, and how you can get started. In the mean time, let me leave you with this closing thought:

You may be thinking that the last thing we need is more information raining down on us, more noise. But we now have the capability, with advanced software analytic tools, to extract value from data—to see the patterns, the correlations and the outliers. Sophisticated mathematical models are helping us begin to anticipate, forecast and even predict changes in our systems. That's the promise of a smarter planet.

Learn more about today's announcement:

New IBM Service Speeds Facts to Executives (1933 edition)

Adam Gartenberg — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 12:55:59 -0400

Seth Godin posted a link to my new favorite site of the day: The Vintage Ad Browser.

Naturally, my first search was for IBM, where one of the first headlines returned was one that could just as easily come from a press release from the IOD Conference:

Isn't it funny how some needs still hold true 70 years later?

(By the way, apparently Lotus - at least as we think of it - isn't quite vintage enough.)

We’re listening! Seeking YOUR feedback on IBM Software consumability

Adam Gartenberg — Mon, 4 Jan 2010 04:00:00 -0400

I'd like to pass along a request for assistance from my colleagues in the software consumability group, but you're all really the ones who would benefit from it.

Several years ago, Steve Mills launched a challenge to find a way to make our many products and solutions across IBM's Software Group more cohesive, consistent and easily to integrate together in your (our clients') environment. Since we started tracking this effort in January 2007, there have been over 1,400 such improvements targeted across the Software Group product portfolio, with more than 900 of them already available in shipping products.

To help us continue this effort, we are asking for help in completing a survey on your personal first hand experiences trying to select, acquire, prototype, integrate, operate, manage and upgrade a specific IBM product (of your choice); we want to understand your specific issues and priorities.

The survey, which due to the level of feedback necessary for meaningful change can take 20-30 minutes to complete, is available in 10 languages, including English, Brasilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Japanese, German, Spanish, French, and Italian, and we would appreciate in particular responses from those of you outside of the United States.

To complete the survey, please visit here.

Video: Bharti Airtel Turns to IBM for an Information-Led Transformation

Adam Gartenberg — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 10:58:29 -0400

Bharti Airtel is one of the best showcases of what's possible when you put information and analytics to work to drive business processes and decisions.

In this video, originally shown during the IOD 2009 general session, Dr. Jai Menon, Bharti's CIO, explains how transforming their business through information is essential to continuing to grow at a rate of a mind-boggling 3 million mobile subscribers a month (and doing so by extending its reach not just to cities and towns, but out to over 400,000 villages - to date),

Bharti Airtel, India's leading mobile, broadband and entertainment service provider, is growing faster than perhaps any company in history. Bharti Airtel turned to IBM software and industry know-how to help create a comprehensive Business/IT roadmap. It includes an Information-Led Transformation to leverage trusted information and real-time analytics to optimize its business.

Breaking Away with Business Analytics: A Virtual Leadership Exchange

Adam Gartenberg — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:21:50 -0400

At the IOD 2009 conference this year, a number of senior leaders joined IBM executives for a business analytics leadership exchange. Now the same opportunity to hear first hand and interact with those leading IBM's information management and business analytics and optimization service line will be much more broadly available.

Join us at the "Breaking Away with Business Analytics: A Virtual Leadership Exchange" on Thursday, January 28, 2010 from the convenience of your desk.

Learn how leading companies are developing information strategies to operationalize decisions and optimize business performance across the enterprise. You will gain insight into building and maintaining flexible platforms for trusted information and applying business analytics to make better decisions. This is a unique opportunity to interact with IBM experts and your peers. Register today!

	Agenda: Thursday, Jan 28, 2010 (All dates/times in EST/GMT-5)
	11:00a-11:45a Introduction & Keynote Address "Breaking Away with Business Analytics" Fred Balboni, Business Analytics and Optimization Global Leader, Global Business Services, IBM
	Ambuj Goyal, General Manager, Business Analytics and Process Optimization, IBM
	11:45a-01:15p Breakaway Case Studies with live Q&A:
	"Leveraging Structured and Unstructured Data" with Christer Johnson, North America Advanced Analytics Leader, Global Business Services, IBM
	"Analytics Simplification" with Glenn Finch, Business Analytics and Optimization North America Leader, Global Business Services, IBM
	"Fact-based Marketing through Customer Insight" with Dr. Michael Haydock, Partner, Business Analytics and Optimization, Global Business Services, IBM
	01:15p-01:45p Didn’t get your question answered? Chat with our distinguished speakers and your peers.
	At Your Convenience On demand webcasts: • Driving Adoption and Change • Business Analytics and Sales Force Productivity • Marketing Optimization through New Intelligence