Having first announced support for Apache Spark at the Spark Summit this summer, IBM has followed up with the launch of IBM Analytics on Apache Spark, a new Spark-as-a-Service offering available on its Bluemix Cloud.

IBM Analytics on Apache Spark, which will be unveiled at the IBM Insight 2015 conference in Las Vegas today, is released following a 13-week beta program in which more than 3,000 developers used the platform to build intelligent consumer and enterprise data-fueled applications. By combining Spark with Bluemix, IBM will be able to integrate the popular data processing engine with well-known cloud-based data and analytics services, including its dashDB cloud data warehouse and Cloudant NoSQL database offering. In addition, IBM Analytics on Apache Spark also supports using Python-based code notebooks to work with Spark, a welcome move considering that most people see Bluemix as an application development cloud first and foremost.

Besides Spark, Big Blue is also introducing a new service called Insight Cloud Services that integrates external data like “people, events, geospatial and businesses” from sources like The Weather Company and Twitter, to company data. The feeling is that IBM is trying to provide a comprehensive analytics suite complete with external data feeds, which can then be analyzed to the extreme using Spark. The company said in a statement the idea behind Insight Cloud Services is to help organizations gain more clarity about their business, find new demand signals and act more confidently. More importantly perhaps, IBM insists companies don’t need deep knowledge to deploy the new services, which can be embedded directly into enterprise applications and business processes.

Finally, IBM is all set to unveil a third new service – IBM Datacap Insight Services – a new cognitive service that’s able to automatically classify and understand a document’s format and structure, not to mention the words and numeric data held within it, and take appropriate action based on this.

“By embracing the insights-as-a-service model, you’re not buying raw data or analytics tools. You’re purchasing solutions to the problems and challenges you face every day,” said Rob Thomas, vice president of IBM Analytics, in a statement to eWeek. “There is no need for you to make and manage separate arrangements with numerous data providers, to stay on top of the latest analytics technologies, or to recruit and retain the most expensive professionals in the insights economy–data scientists. IBM handles all of that for you.”

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