IBM Embraces Big Data

According to Bernie Spang, director of marketing for IBM data management software, support for Apache Hadoop gives customers access to an approach to analyze large amounts of data, which is now generally referred to as “Big Data.” This approach to managing large-scale sets of data is quickly emerging as an alternative to traditional databases that can’t typically handle the massive sets of data.

Spang said that with its new suite of predictive analytics applications built on top of its core SPSS analytics engine, IBM is trying to make these types of applications more accessible to business users as part of an effort to “democratize analytics.”

IBM will also preview Big Sheets, an application designed to make it easier to visually discover the relationships between large sets of data.

In addition to the new applications and Hadoop support, IBM is also rolling out new application frameworks for managing social services, healthcare enrollment and insurance claims that are intended to promote more collaboration across end users accessing those application frameworks, said Spang.