IBM has launched its New York-based Business Analytics Solution Center, part of a network of global analytics centres addressing the demand for the capabilities needed to build smarter cities and help clients optimise all manner of business processes and business decisions. The centre will be housed at IBM’s 590 Madison Avenue location.
IBM said that new centre will draw on expertise from across the company, including its Business Analytics and Optimization consulting organisation, IBM Research skills in mathematical modeling and optimisation, software engineering, and architecture. The new centre will be supported initially by up to 450 consultants, researchers, and experts in advanced software platforms with plans to retrain or hire an additional 100, as demand grows.
According to the company, the new centre is the first centre to open in the US, and is a part of its recently detailed business strategy to expand capabilities around business analytics and optimisation. IBM opened three other analytics centres in Berlin, Beijing and Tokyo this summer. The remaining centres will be located in London and Washington, DC. As part of this initiative, IBM expects to retrain or hire as many as 4,000 new analytics consultants and professionals globally.
The company said that New York City was chosen because of its status as a global centre of finance and its innovations in public safety, municipal government, and 21st century urban development. The IBM Advanced Business Analytics Center will initially focus on all aspects in the development of infrastructure for ‘smarter’ cities, including public safety, transportation and traffic, water, and energy optimisation.
The company claimed that through this centre it will leverage the IBM Smarter Cities Assessment Tool, which uses analytics to help cities benchmark their overall capabilities against peer locations, highlight relative strengths and weaknesses, and provide initial recommendations for improvement.
The centre also will focus on supporting IBM’s banking and financial markets clients in the development of systems to provide improved viability and tracking of their risk positions across all markets and asset classes.
IBM is working with Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries and Clarkson University on the application of analytics to the information gathered via the minute-to-minute monitoring systems both organisations installed on New York’s Hudson River.
The company is also partnering with New York-based Tumblr to launch the Smarter Cities Scan, a social media project in crowdsourced research and open knowledge exchange. The initiative is using advanced IBM analytics technology to scan participants’ input to build a public blueprint for smarter cities.
