IBM has unveiled new cloud services, ‘SmartCloud for Education’, which provides advanced software, computer lab resources and services to students and researchers at schools, colleges and universities, without the need for advanced IT expertise at those locations.
The company said that the new offering is designed to help education systems leverage predictive analytics to get real-time insights on student and institutional performance, enhance researcher effectiveness, and alleviate constrained lab resources for learning.
It added that educational institutions can address challenges such as student retention, graduation rates, grant funding, and demands for IT resources for learning and research.
The cloud service also allows schools to analyse their data using new SPSS data collection models and tools running in a cloud to identify at-risk students early.
IBM global education industry vice-president Michael King said cloud computing offers educational institutions the ability to transform learning processes to be more student-centered, as well as the potential to reduce costs through shared services.
"Our announcements today lay the groundwork for institutions, systems, and states to begin creating these integrated cloud services for their constituents," said King.
IBM said its Virtual Computing Lab Cloud offerings for Education provides services and tools to enable a cloud computing environment as an on-campus private cloud or a ‘hybrid’ cloud connected to the company’s SmartCloud.
IBM has also established a collaborative research with the University of Rhode Island to use cloud-based analytics and social networking tools to help researchers easily find funding opportunities, identify collaborators around the world, and locate the latest published research findings.
The company said that the Academic Research Collaboration and Analytics system relies on the Unstructured Information Management Architecture to analyse textual research data.
