IBM Delivers New Analytics Offerings for the Mainframe 

Building on client demand to integrate real-time analytics with consumer transactions, IBM today announced new capabilities for its System z mainframe. The integration of analytics with transactional data can provide businesses with real-time, actionable insights on commercial transactions as they occur to take advantage of new opportunities to increase sales and help minimize loss through fraud prevention.

Today's announcement combines the traditional transactional power of System z with Big Data analytic capabilities into a single, streamlined, end-to-end data system. This real-time integration of analytics and transaction processing can allow businesses to increase the value of a customer information profile with every interaction the customer makes.

"Off-loading operational data in order to perform analytics increases cost and complexity while limiting the ability of businesses to use the insights in a timely manner," said Ross Mauri, General Manager, System z, IBM Systems & Technology Group.  "Now there is an end-to-end solution that makes analytics a part of the flow of transactions and allows our clients to gain real time insights while improving their business performance with every transaction."

The combination of massive amounts of data and consumers who are empowered with mobile access is creating a difficult challenge for businesses. Consumers now expect an immediate response to any interaction, at any time, and through their own preferred channel of communication. Unfortunately, many businesses are trying to meet this challenge and deliver instantaneous, on-demand customer service with outdated IT systems that can only provide after-the-fact intelligence.

In contrast, by applying analytic tools to business transactions as they are occurring, the mainframe systems can allow clients to have true "real-time" insights.  This capability is critical because so many of the world's transactions occur on the mainframe.  In fact, with nearly 55 percent of all enterprise applications requiring the mainframe to complete transactions, global commerce depends on the mainframe. Because of this dependence, businesses can significantly reduce losses by analyzing real time transactions and preventing fraud as it is happening rather than just detecting the fraud and reacting to it after the fact.

Additionally, with the analytics on the System z platform clients can incorporate social media into their real time analytic analysis to gain an indication of how their business is performing "in the moment" and how they stack up to their competitors.

New Offerings for Linux, Cloud, Storage and Analytic Environments

Today's announcements are the culmination of more than five year's worth of technology development and delivery by IBM to build a portfolio that delivers a clear vision and strategy around real-time analytics integrated with transactions.  With today's announcement, IBM adds new analytics capabilities to the mainframe platform helping enable better data security and providing clients with the ability to integrate Hadoop big data.  These offerings include:

• IBM InfoSphere BigInsights for Linux on System z – Combines open-source Apache Hadoop with IBM innovations to deliver enterprise grade Hadoop for System z clients;
• IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator – Enhances data security while delivering 2000 times the response time for complex data queries.

Additionally, IBM unveiled new capabilities in Linux and the cloud for system z. These include:

• IBM Elastic Storage for Linux on System z – Extends the benefits of Elastic Storage to the Linux environment on IBM System z servers;
• IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack for System z – Provides heterogeneous cloud management across System z, Power and x86 environments.