IBM Unveils New Predictive Analytics Lab in China

XI'AN, China, March 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today launched a new predictive analytics software lab in Xi'an China. The lab will help IBM's clients see patterns in vast amounts of data and forecast trends before they occur for improved decision making and competitive advantage.  

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The new lab will serve as a global hub for analytics development helping clients adopt predictive analytics capabilities tailored for their industry-specific requirements including banking, telecommunications, power grid, railroads, health care and urban management. The lab will include a dedicated team of more than 200 software engineers and IT architects focused on helping clients bring new predictive analytics solutions to market.

With today's news, IBM is expanding its focus on business analytics to meet growing client needs to cut costs, reduce risk, combat fraud and increase profitability through predictive analytics capabilities. These capabilities help organizations analyze trends and patterns found in historical and current data to drive new forms of competitive advantage by predicting potential future outcomes and transforming all elements of their business, including product and service offerings for customers.

IBM's 2010 Global CFO Study of 1,900 CFOs and senior finance leaders worldwide – attests to the need for gaining better insight within their organizations. The majority of respondents indicated that they plan to use sophisticated analytics to uncover correlations among seemingly unrelated pieces of information and find patterns nearly impossible to detect manually.

According to IDC's China Business Analytics Software Market Forecast, the market opportunity for business analytics in China is expected to grow 10% annually from 2009-2013, faster than the average IT market growth of 8%.  The demand is driven by risk management, compliance mandates, and the desire to adopt business analytics into their operations.  

Xi'an City Commercial Bank is the first foreign invested commercial bank in western China, and with 113 branches with 2,000 employees, it is becoming one of the most profitable domestic commercial banks in the region. To continue its growth the bank is working with experts at IBM's new predictive analytics lab in Xi'an to explore how it can transform its operations through improved insight on their business information and predict new outcomes for improved customer service.

"We appreciate and welcome that IBM is enhancing investment in Xi'an. We hope more vendors will come to Xi'an to help make our city better and the western region more developed," said Mr. Jing Junhai, Vice Governor of Shaanxi Province.

"IBM is focused on helping clients gain faster intelligence on their information to improve their businesses operations and predict trends before they occur," said Steve Mills, senior vice present and group executive of IBM Software Group. "IBM is uniquely positioned with an unmatched portfolio to help organizations not only cope with the data deluge, but gain actionable insight into their most strategic asset - their business information."

The new lab will become part of IBM's China Development Laboratory (CDL), IBM's largest network of labs with more than 5,000 software engineers.  In addition, IBM recently announced an Energy & Utilities Solution Lab in Beijing that brings together analytics skills, industry-specific offering and best practices to make energy and utility networks safer, more efficient and smarter.

IBM has invested more than $12 billion to build an analytics portfolio which includes organic innovation and acquisitions. In addition, IBM has assembled 4,000 analytics consultants with industry expertise, and opened a network of seven analytics centers of excellence.  Today, IBM is working with more than 250,000 clients worldwide on predictive analytics, including 22 of the top 24 global commercial banks, 18 of the world's top 22 telecommunication carriers and 11 of the top 12 U.S. specialty retailers

For more information on IBM Analytics:  http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/presskit/27163.wss

How it Works Video: Analytics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HbjsNaUJ2A

SOURCE IBM