IBM: One Year on for Information on Demand
IBM: One Year on for Information on Demand
February 14, 2007: One year ago, IBM announced its Information on Demand Initiative. Now, IBM says its commitment to accessible information alongside its acquisition strategy has leveraged its ability to achieve $US 18.2 billion in software revenues during 2006.
IBM’s acquisition strategy has seen billions of dollars change hands across multiple companies, with a climax reached in October 2006 when FileNet was purchased for $US1.6 billion. In 2007, the acquisition pace looks set to continue and IBM’s software business shows no signs of letting off steam.
For IBM and its software solutions, it’s a matter of addressing the hard facts of life – those being that we’re under increasing pressure to cope with endless amounts of electronic information. At the business level, challenges are faced around globalisation, merger and acquisitions and risk management and compliance. At the information level, challenges run rife with inaccessibility, duplicated messages and inaccurate, incomplete and untimely bouts of information ultimately making business life difficult.
“It’s a big challenge for people to be able to deal with this scattered information,” Hugh Sutherland IBM’s Asia Pacific executive for ECM told IDM this morning. “What do we do with it? We can’t just throw it away.”
According to IBM, a typical company has between 5 and 20 different content management repositories and systems. That’s a lot of different locations for content volumes that as cited by IBM, are estimated to grow at a rate of 80 percent annually. “The reason IBM purchased FileNet was because of this growth of content,” says Sutherland. “18 billion in revenue software is a growth business for IBM, driven by innovation and acquisitions.”
Through the Information on Demand initiative, IBM is fundamentally on a mission to ‘free up information’ by providing a range of software, hardware and services solutions. IBM is targeting the content found in databases, emails, webpages, blogs, RFID chips and content management systems and making it more centrally accessible for users.
Much of IBM’s growth over the last year can be attributed not only to its Information on Demand initiative, but its new license revenue performance. In the ECM space, such performance around FileNet looks set to extend IBM’s leadership and stretch its market reach. The release of IBM FileNet p8 V4.0 this week is the first major announcement since the acquisition. As a system offering 75 new enhancements and capabilities, this latest solution will provide an early taste of what more we can expect from content management in 2007.
"Taking a piece-part approach to managing, securing and storing critical business information prevents companies from gaining insights from their business information and using it for competitive advantage," says Steve Mills, senior vice president, IBM Software Group, on the announcement of the FileNet P8 V4.0 solution.
For customers who have made the investment in both FileNet and IBM content management platforms, the latest release should provide a vision of what their converged solutions will look like. “We’ve gone out to all our customers with the concept of preservation of technology,” says Sutherland. “We’ve gone to market with the vision of what the platform will be.”
With FileNet on board, IBM looks in fine form to retake the position from EMC as a market leader in the ECM space. “Difference in approach, difference in philosophy and how to go to market,” says Sutherland on why the FileNet acquisition so far appears to have been a successful move for IBM. “The FileNet and IBM approach is really an integrated platform and the platform approach is the key differentiator.”