For the past couple of years, IBM has made it unmistakably clear that it intends to be a world leader in advanced analytics and predictive analytics because it believes the related technologies that it has developed or acquired and assimilated can be harnessed by customers to provide unprecedented levels of foresight into future behaviors, probabilities, and outcomes, which thereby let those IBM customers make better business decisions about that not-so-unknown future.

By moving aggressively into that technology space with its huge commitment to advanced analytics and predictive analytics, and by moving subtly into that interrelated business space with Michael Haydock's retail-sales forecasting, IBM has elegantly extended its considerable market position from the vital business of technology products and services to the unfolding world of helping customers understand—and take full advantage of—the future.

You can learn more about Michael Haydock's work here (press release: IBM Forecasts Bump in U.S. Retail Electronics and Appliance Sales) and IBM's broader work with the retail industry here.

Related:  An interesting article in Retail Industry News (Meeting the Demands of the Smarter Consumer) by Patricia Vekich Waldron, worldwide distribution executive, business analytics at IBM.

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http://www.adamgartenberg.com/gartenberg/agartenberg.nsf/dx/eweek-analytics-as-ibms-brilliant-trojan-horse-strategy-technology
Aug 25, 2010
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