IBM, last week, announced the creation of the Services Innovation Lab (SIL), a new global lab of 200 technology experts from IBM, that aim to accelerate the expansion of real-time analytics and software automation.
The SIL significantly expands IBM's nearly 10-year-old services research program. IBM invests more than $6 billion annually on research and development and employs about 3,000 researchers worldwide, with about a third of them focused on services and analytics.
The central mission of these elite researchers and developers is to turn the intellectual property created during client engagements into software -- thereby making it easier and faster to replicate a solution to thousands of engagements around the globe, the company said.
"The Services Innovation Lab is creating a research environment that leverages advances in services science, analytics and cloud computing to create innovation that matters for our clients anywhere in the world," said Mahmoud Naghshineh, vice president and director, IBM Services Innovation Lab. "Our efforts are focused on understanding the problems of service organizations from the perspectives of people, practices, information and technology to provide them new opportunities for revenue, cost savings and to foster innovation."
The SIL will operate out of IBM Research's Labs worldwide, including New York, California, China, Israel, India, Japan, Switzerland and Brazil. The initial focus of the SIL projects includes:
- Cloud Computing -- The SIL will create both new Cloud services and devise new methods for moving traditional computing environments to a Cloud-based model. For example, one of the initial projects will be the creation of so-called dashboards that will enable an information technology (IT) professionals more effectively learn what is happening inside a datacenter, where to apply resources and improve productivity.
- Advanced Analytics -- The SIL will invent new ways to tightly integrate analytic services with business processes to create new types of services and applications that can be injected into client accounts more quickly.
- Service Delivery Automation -- The SIL will use data mining and real-time analytics software to create new delivery capabilities that will dramatically improve the operation of a data center by enabling IT management to become predictive and proactive. For example, one project will more accurately predict if a data center will lose power. The new technologies will enable better monitoring and maintenance of data centers that will improve quality and reduce costs.
- Enterprise Mobilization and Smarter Planet -- Focused on helping our services clients capitalize on mobile technologies, the SIL will develop new ways to access enterprise applications and infrastructure regardless of the device being used. For example, the SIL will design a way to enable a mobile device to more easily access with enterprise customer reference systems or expense reporting applications.
