IBM Consolidates Its Analytics Services Stack

A decade since IBM first set up its strategy and analytics groups, the service provider is still witnessing double-digit growth in big data and analytics. IBM has invested $7B in organic research and development, another $17B on inorganic growth, and is still sticking to its pledge of creating a $20B business out of this category by 2015. The company is leading efforts on visionary projects today, including bringing cognitive services and apps (Watson group) into mainstream usage.

At the same time, it has buckled down and put its arms around the analytics services stack by bringing the strategy and analytics group together in 2014. HfS analysts recently attended IBM’s Big Data & Analytics Analyst Summit held in New York. The service provider took the opportunity to brief the audience on numerous initiatives it is undertaking in the big data and analytics domain. Of particular interest were the discussions around bringing business relevance and creating a services infrastructure to complement software and systems investments. We believe this is supportive of the company’s focus on its newly integrated strategy and analytics services group. We discuss the approach and implications for this practice in this PoV.