IBM has so many analytics potions that it sometimes seems  like they pour from a faucet. But let’s face it.  You can serve a lot of drink when you have 9,000 consultants stirring the cauldron.

That’s just the consultants. IBM now employs the most PhD mathematicians in the world.  The company has 400 researchers dedicated to helping implement its solutions.  It has global analytics solution centers in Berlin, Beijing, Dallas, London, New York, Tokyo, Washington and Zurich. In the past ten years the company has bought 28 companies with a specialty in analytics.

So the news today that IBM has a new analytics package seems almost pro forma. I expect this kind of news from the company. But its noteworthy in this respect. It’s rare to see  IBM gives so much credit to the consultants for help in developing analytics technology.

The analytics packages come in three flavors:

Anti-Fraud: A predictive analytics solution to detect fraud before it happens. Advanced algorithms get embedded into business processes with the ability to detect fraud in real time – before funds are paid out.

Next Best Action: Provides a comprehensive view of the customer by looking at enterprise data, customer interactions, logged customer service interactions and web click stream data.

CFO Performance Insight: IBM cites the new data that finance executives have to juggle. That may include analyst reports, market data, spreadsheets and news reports. The IBM solution uses predictive analytics as the promise to” uncover relationships among performance metrics, anticipate performance gaps and assess alternatives with scenario planning.”

Services Angle

The technologies these consultants and partners implement reads like a big data smorgasbord. It must look tasty to C-suite executives but there’s a problem with this, too, that Klint Finley wrote about recently. IBM sure understands the technology but what about the customer? Do they need to understand the tech or just accept the goodies doled out by the IBM services pro?

The consultants are getting center stage with this news. It shows their growing importance with customers and the larger role they play at IBM. Few people know how to make the magic potions that come from big data.  The ones that do have immense value to vendors and consumers alike. This is as true for IBM as it is for competitors such as EMC and HP.