IBM Introduces New Offerings To Help Clients Optimize Their Business Processes To Fuel Growth

LAS VEGAS, May 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- At the IMPACT 2010 conference, IBM (NYSE: IBM) unveiled new offerings aimed at helping organizations achieve business agility by optimizing their processes to increase efficiencies, reduce costs and find ways to grow their businesses. The company also released results of a survey of senior executives that sheds new light on what organizations need to do to increase their ability to compete in the global marketplace.

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The new software expands IBM's leadership in the business process management (BPM) marketplace.  In the first-quarter of 2010, IBM reported double-digit revenue growth in its business process management and integration software portfolio.  Recognizing the increased demands from organizations to automate and integrate their businesses, IBM has built a base of over 20,000 practitioners, and is investing more than $1 billion annually through R&D in addition to strategic acquisitions over the past 18 months.

"We are living in a business environment that is seeing unprecedented changes in the way people work, but at the same time presents enormous opportunities to expand productivity and profitability," said Craig Hayman, general manager, application and integration middleware, IBM.  "Through better business process management, organizations can manage ad-hoc and automate time-intensive tasks, freeing employees to do higher value work and providing consistent, repeatable and more efficient outcomes."

Driving Efficiencies for Improved Business Outcomes

IBM is a leader in providing clients with higher-value capabilities that enables them to better integrate with their network of partners, suppliers and customers.  

For example, IBM worked with Globe Telecom to implement a solution based on IBM's Business Process Management Suite, to integrate their business operations.  As a result, they have been able to shorten time-to-market for new products from six months to 40 days. In addition, they have reduced product development costs up to 90 percent, allowing them to improve margins and significantly reduce financial risks of new product launches.  With greater information sharing, insight and collaboration, Globe Telecom has also been able to better identify customers for more targeted offers.

Global Organizations Validate the Need for Business Agility

According to a new study from the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV), entitled "A New Way of Working: Insights from Global Leaders," which surveyed 275 global executives, those companies that are significantly outperforming in their industries have focused on driving business agility, through work practices and business processes that help their organizations become more dynamic, collaborative, and connected.

The study also found that today's market leaders are twice as likely to have used modeling and automation to understand and improve their business processes and are three times more likely to use collaborative workspaces.  

These findings demonstrate that business processes are essential to enable the smooth and timely completion of everything from hospital admissions to product design and distribution, bill payment and claims processing.  

Accelerating Industry Solutions

IBM today announced enhancements to the joint Center of Excellence between its Software Group and Global Business Services to help clients achieve greater agility and business performance. The enhancements support the delivery of new industry solution accelerators that provide industry-specific templates to help clients in banking, insurance, healthcare, telecommunications, and industrial product lifecycle management accelerate their BPM projects. The offerings are based on industry standards and can be can be customized to meet an individual client's unique business needs.

IBM is also introducing more than 30 new products and services including:

• IBM Business Process Management Suite – expanded to include IBM WebSphere Lombardi Edition and enhancements to IBM WebSphere Dynamic Process Edition.
• IBM WebSphere Lombardi Edition -- provides visibility and real-time control to help process owners react and adjust quickly to market pressures, regulatory changes, or other external forces.  
• IBM WebSphere Dynamic Process Edition - new feature packs providing enhanced functionality and new capabilities to enable increased productivity and smarter insight.
• IBM BPM Blueprint -- a new web-based offering designed to help employees, partners and suppliers participate in communicating and improving business processes, ideas and initiatives.
• IBM ILOG Business Rules Management System -- includes easier and more comprehensive rule authoring for business users to automate the decision-making process.  Business rules govern everything from processes to decision-making and give companies analytics capabilities the help them react more quickly to changing circumstances.
• IBM WebSphere Commerce -- a customer interaction platform that allows retailers and shoppers to share information, events, wish lists, and more on social networking sites.  
• IBM Rational Automation Framework for WebSphere (RAFW) -- provides a customizable and extensible framework to automate environment administration for the WebSphere family of products.

In the first quarter of 2010, IBM WebSphere grew 13 percent, while its integration software grew by more than 20 percent. ILOG, which plays a key role in IBM's Smarter Planet initiative by providing business rules management, grew by more than 30 percent.  

This year's IMPACT conference features 6,000 attendees and hundreds of client testimonials, presentations, workshops and product demos, making IMPACT 2010 the largest worldwide conference created to meet the growing demand for an educational forum around business agility.

For more information on all of the new products and services or for details on how IBM is helping clients and Business Partners to make smarter, faster decisions by using BPM and SOA, visit: www.ibm.com/software/websphere.

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All other company, product or service names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of others. Statements concerning IBM's future development plans and schedules are made for planning purposes only, and are subject to change or withdrawal without notice. Reseller prices may vary.

SOURCE IBM