IBM India integrates separate data repositories
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(InfoWorld) - IBM's India Research Laboratory has developed technology for retrieval and integration of information from both structured and unstructured data. The new technology integrates data that is currently stored in separate silos, Mukesh Mohania, lead researcher on the project, said on Wednesday. "We are leveraging the structured data by extracting the information from the unstructured repositories, and then providing rich business intelligence on this consolidated information," Mohania said. A research prototype of the technology has been deployed in the customer support operations of HDFC Bank, a large private bank in Mumbai. The prototype application integrates customer data from a structured database and business intelligence sources, with incoming information on customers from multiple sources, including e-mails and phone calls. The lab decided to use the new technology at HDFC Bank to validate it in a real, operational environment, Mohania said. IBM announced Wednesday it will offer the technology early next year. The middleware software developed on Java technology currently runs on Linux, but can be ported on to any Java compliant operating system, Mohania said. The technology can be used in other areas of an enterprise, besides customer relationship management, where there is both structured and unstructured data to be integrated and analyzed, he said. ByÂ  automaticallyÂ  combiningÂ  structured and unstructured information, HDFC BankÂ canÂ provideÂ callÂ center agents with a more complete history of all customerÂ activityÂ soÂ they are aware of information that has already been shared through previous interactions, IBM said. The technology also enables HDFC Bank to generate newÂ contextual and actionable insights that can be used to automate tasks, enhanceÂ up-sellingÂ andÂ cross-sellingÂ opportunities,Â andÂ improve agent performance, it added. EROCS (Entity Recognition in the Context of Structured data) is a key component of the technology developed by the lab. EROCS addresses the problem of linking a document with related structured data in an external relational database. Partial information provided, for example, in e-mails from customers do not often allow identification of the entity, such as the customer, in the structured data, Mohania said. EROCS views the structured data in the relational database as a set of predefined entities, and identifies the entities from this set that best match the given document, he added. A highlight of EROCS is that it identifies an entity even if it is not explicitly mentioned in the document, according to Mohania. It exploits the context information present in the document to match and identify the entities, Mohania added. Another technology, called SCORE (Symbiotic Content Oriented information Retrieval) addresses the problem of consolidated querying of structured and unstructured data, using a type of contextual search. The application specifies its information needs using a SQL query on the structured data, and this query is automatically "translated" into a set of keywords that can be used to retrieve relevant unstructured data. At the core of this technology lies a technique for obtaining these keywords from not only the query result, but also from additional "neighborhood" related information in the underlying database, Mohania said.
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New functions of IBM's virtualization platform allow Linux applications to run on IBM's Unix servers.
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Saying customers have been asking for such a tool, IBM and SAP are building an application that would make it easier for customers to bring their SAP data into their Lotus Notes collaboration systems.
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Many organizations allocate large resources to implement and deploy packaged ERP, CRM and SCM applications. Now these organizations need to move away from operational efficiency gains achieved and into leveraging their data for performance management and business intelligence.
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As part of its ongoing effort to foster third-party application development for its hardware and software businesses, IBM on Monday unveiled resources in its Virtual Innovation Center aimed
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InfoWorld - IBM wants to encourage more of its business partners to use its open-source, low-end application server and free entry-level database by giving those companies access to IBM sales, marketing and technical expertise at no charge.
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Leveraging its acquisition of Trego, an ISV with a product information management system, IBM unveiled additional middleware components to work with the Trego technology to ensure product data synchronization between retailers and suppliers.
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(InfoWorld) - IBM wants to encourage more of its business partners to use its open-source, low-end application server and free entry-level database by giving those companies access to IBM sales, marketing and technical expertise at no charge. Partners who use IBM'sÂ WebSphere Application Server Community EditionÂ (WAS CE) or the vendor's DB2 Express-C database will be able to directly tap IBM staff for advice on integration, scalability, testing, and support issues and won't have to pay for the privilege, IBM said Wednesday. Such IBM feedback should help business partners bring their software based on WAS CE or DB2 Express-C more quickly to market, according to Rado Nikolov, director of strategy and emerging business, independent software vendor (ISV) and developer relations at IBM. The company will also help some partners create more buzz for their products in different geographies through free ongoing telemarketing campaigns and discounted advertising. Partners can also call on IBM sales staff for assistance in closing deals, he said. Such help can be accessed virtually or in person at IBM's 30-plus Innovation Centers worldwide where IBM provides training, testing and support for its hardware, software and services to partners and customers The new reach out to partners builds on the WAS CE partner initiative that IBM ran last year and offers wider benefits than the previous program, Nikolov said. The new initiative also includes DB2 Express-C. In 2006, through the help of the WAS CE program, more than 300 ISVs and systems integrators built applications based on the IBM application server, he added. Although IBM doesn't release specific figures, Nikolov claimed that WAS CE is being downloaded in as great a quantity as the more established rival application server from Red Hat's JBoss division. IBM acquired what became WAS CE through the May 2005 purchase of open-source startup Gluecode. WAS CE is based on the open-source Apache Geronimo project steered by the nonprofit Apache Software Foundation. DB2 Express-C first appeared just over a year ago, rubbing shoulders in an already crowded market with open-source offerings from MySQL and Ingres, as well asÂ free databases from OracleÂ and Microsoft. Would IBM consider releasing DB2 Express-C as open-source software? "At this point in time, it's not a consideration," Nikolov said. For the most part, users of the database don't appear to be interested in viewing the source code or having the ability to modify that code, he added. Both products provide low-end entry points to IBM's paid enterprise offerings, its WebSphere middleware and its DB2 enterprise database, respectively. The vendor is seeing partners and users start off with the free products and then ramp up to its paid software, Nikolov said. WAS CE continues to include IBM's embedded Cloudscape database. IBM positions Cloudscape as more of a repository than a database, while the larger size DB2 Express-C has much more functionality. However, it's up to users which database they choose to use, Nikolov said.
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(InfoWorld) - It may be too early to talk plug-and-play but IBMÂ believes it can help businesses of all sizes easily cluster their servers to handle intensive computing workloads. Leveraging its expertise in high-end computing and vertical industry applications, IBM has launched several initiatives to allow small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) and the departments of large enterprises to integrate their servers -- from as few as two to many thousands -- into computing clusters designed for high-performance computing tasks, the company said Wednesday. Initially targeted at the businesses in the life sciences, computer-aided engineering, and finance sectors, IBM will offer preconfigured "snap-together" cluster systems for customers using the company's computers and storage devices. The systems are designed to run on Linux and Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 operating systems and will include networking technology from companies such as Cisco Systems. The collaboration with Microsoft will allow businesses to use parallel processing on clusters to free up client machines from long-running applications. ISVs (independent software vendors) and business partners will receive tools to help them introduce IBM's cluster systems. These include sizing guides with predefined cluster configurations for simple ordering and installation. IBM business partners have access to the company's Cluster Enablement Team for technical questions and advice. For customers, software vendors and business partners running Microsoft cluster servers, IBM has four new benchmarking facilities in Poughkeepsie, New York, Raleigh, North Carolina, Beaverton, Oregon and Montpelier, France. These centers join a network of global Linux benchmark centers. To attract businesses interested in computing clusters, IBM's Deep Computing Capacity on Demand centers will give them access to more than 20,000 processors to test the technology for themselves. IBM offers a range of products that support computing clusters, including its System x, System p and BladeCenter servers, as well as the IBM System Storage and IBM System Cluster 1350.
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InfoWorld - It's been a bit more than two years since Ambuj Goyal launched IBM's Information on Demand strategy, an effort by the company to bring together a virtual menagerie of data management, access, and analysis software under a single heading.
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SAN FRANCISCO - IBM Corp. has become the latest company to join the Liberty Alliance, a global consortium aimed at developing standards for managing user identities. IBM joins Oracle Corp. and Intel Corp. as a backer of the effort, which Sun Microsystems Inc. leads.
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SUBANG JAYA: IBM (www.ibm.com) has released the beta version of its latest enterprise-grade integration software to Malaysian customers.
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Big Blue plans to integrate the storage technology provider into its Storage and Data Services unit.
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IBM Corp has launched the successor to its venerable mainframe 3494 virtual tape library, which features built-in long-distance data replication, and operating code rewritten from the ground up.
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The IBM project at EPA, being performed jointly with prime contractor Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), includes the Grid Toolbox, a collection of open standards-based Grid software from IBM, Red Hat Linux Enterprise 2.1 and Avaki Enterprise
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Partners who use IBM's WebSphere Application Server Community Edition or the vendor's DB2 Express-C database will be able to directly tap IBM staff for advice on integration, scalability, testing and support issues and won't have to pay for the privilege.
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Data hubs â also called data repositories or master data records â are the next evolutionary step in solving the problem of data integration.ADVERTISEMENTWhite paper: Solutions to Address IT Control RequirementsLearn how BMC Software Solutions address requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 in this 20 page whitepaper!