IBM
simplifies management and integration of business information with
new software
Posted: 9 March 2003
Dubai — IBM Middle East announced new software
designed to help its customers in the region access, integrate and
analyse all forms of information across and beyond the enterprise.
As a result, these organisations can slash development time when
building next generation applications, increase efficiencies and
reach customers and suppliers at record speed.
Recognising that many companies in this region are faced with complex
IT environments — including a number of different data sources
residing in various computer systems in different locations and
of multiple data types — IBM Middle East is extending its
data management portfolio by delivering DB2 Information Integrator
software.
The new software is in support of IBM's e-business On Demand initiatives,
enabling organisations to build on their existing IT infrastructure
and reduce the time and costs associated with integrating their
diverse data environments.
“Our new software offering will help ease the data integration
challenges plaguing many Middle East businesses today. IBM is setting
its sights on our customers evolving data management needs —
manage, access and integrate all forms of information across the
enterprise in an effort to respond faster to market demands, tap
into new markets and ultimately increase profits — all of
which are key attributes of IBM's On Demand efforts,” said
Bashar Kilani, software group manager, IBM Middle East and North/West
Africa.
“The explosion of new applications and the sheer volume of
data throughout the enterprise, has brought on new challenges for
organisations today. And while most of the buzz right now is around
application integration, data integration technology is really the
missing piece that will take customers into the next phase of distributed
computing.”
The new integration software offers the broadest support for open
standards that allows businesses to access and integrate both structured
and unstructured information, as if it were stored in one place,
including XML, email, multi-media, Web Services, Life Sciences and
competitive data sources such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server
databases. Companies spend as much as 40 percent of their annual
IT budgets on integration, analysts say. They need an infrastructure
that connects an explosion of new applications and data sources,
coupled with the sheer volume of data throughout the enterprise,
with its business partners, suppliers and customers.
Today's news builds upon IBM's Business Integration efforts, a
$10 billion market opportunity by 2006, according to Dataquest.
The new software offerings, the DB2 Information Integrator and DB2
Information Integrator for Content, are the first products available
in this region based on IBM's Xperanto project -- an IBM Research
and Development effort that is focused on addressing evolving data
management needs. The new open standards software helps businesses
leverage their IT investments and access and integrate diverse and
distributed data in all formats. The new software introduces:
- Increased productivity enabling developers to slash hand-coding
requirements in half when integrating two or more relational databases.
- The ability to access and support real-time information across
all platforms including Linux, Unix and Windows and mainframe
environments.
- Advanced cost-based optimisation enabling businesses to slash
unnecessary run time on searches.
In an effort to support the broadest range of development requirements,
DB2 Information Integrator software supports two different programming
models. The DB2 Information Integrator is tailored to the SQL-based
developer community and the DB2 Information Integrator for Content
supports a content management-programming model.
While both offerings provide federated access across both structured
and unstructured data, each has tailored features that support the
programming model of the developer community they support.
The new software is ideal for applications such as Customer Relationship
Management (CRM), where call centre operators need to pull together
information about customers residing in multiple databases, unstructured
sources such as e-mail messages, flat files, and other sources.
Financial services organisations can tie together in-house customer
bank records with investment information from the Internet. Companies
in the Life Sciences industry can accelerate drug discovery and
time-to-market with an infrastructure that allows them to test hypotheses
across data stored in relational databases, genomic and proteomic
data stores, spreadsheets, and more.
In addition, businesses can increase the value of their existing
data warehouse investments by augmenting analysis with real time
information to gain faster insight on their business performance.
About IBM
IBM is the world’s largest information technology company,
with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM
offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that
enable telecommunications service providers and equipment suppliers
to take full advantage of the new era of e-business. IBM Global
Services is the world’s largest information technology services
provider, with 2001 revenues of more than $35 billion. Services
is the fastest growing part of IBM, with nearly 150,000 professionals
serving customers in 160 countries. IBM Global Services has about
150 data centres around the world keeping thousands of businesses
running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
For more information on IBM, visit www.ibm.com. |
