In yet another move to use analytics to transform business, IBM has rolled predictive analytics into its global technology-services portfolio — including IT and strategic outsourcing services. This time it’s all about helping CIOs make better decisions about IT operations.
The predictive analytics aim to empower CIOs to construct specific, fact-based financial and business models using tools that help interpret and model data. Practically speaking, that means better planning for data-center capacity or emerging technologies such as cloud computing.
“Until now, CIOs have been unable to access many of the predictive, analytics-driven tools that CEOs or CFOs have used for years,” said Steven Sams, vice president of IBM Site and Facilities Services. “In essence, this broad array of new analytical capabilities take data generated from IT operations and turns it into a set of facts that clients can then use to make smarter business decisions.”
Analytics in Action
One example is IBM’s Alternate Cash Flow Analysis. The tool can help determine which alternatives in data-center or IT infrastructure operations can cost-effectively meet business goals. This analysis calculates the “do-nothing strategy” — for example, what would happen to investments if left in their current state — as a baseline for other financial comparisons.
IBM’s Physical Threshold Capacity Analysis can help forecast data-center capacity requirements many years into the future, allowing clients to know how long their data centers will remain viable and when they will need to be upgraded. Based on a client’s input on expected application growth, IT strategy, and current data-center capabilities, the tool provides objective analysis on the data-center capacity thresholds to predict energy and space requirements.
IBM’s Resiliency Rationalization Analysis works to help clients correctly gauge resiliency within their data-center infrastructure. IBM said current metrics for understanding reliability typically focus on the capital costs and don’t facilitate the business decision of understanding the…