IBM Big Data Success Stories

A note from Rob Thomas

Big data. By now you have heard the term and it’s easy to grasp what it means as the world continues to create 2.5
quintillion bytes daily. Or, maybe not; can you fathom one quintillion bytes? I can’t. But I can relate to Vestas Wind
Systems, a leader in the development of wind energy that uses their IBM big data solution and one of the world’s
largest supercomputers to analyze weather information and provide location site data in minutes instead of weeks,
even while its wind library is increasing from 2.8 petabytes to as much as 24 petabytes of data - the equivalent of
1420 times the books in America’s Library of Congress.

In your business, you have your own big data challenges. You have to turn mountains of data about your
customers, products, incidents, etc., into actionable information. While the volume, variety and velocity of big data
seem overwhelming, big data technology solutions hold great promise. The way I see it, we are on the mountain
top with a vista of opportunity ahead. We have the capacity to understand; to see patterns unfolding in real time
across multiple complex systems; to model possible outcomes; and to take actions that produce greater economic
growth and societal progress. IBM is marshaling its resources to bring smarter computing to big data. With the
IBM big data platform, we are enabling our clients to manage data in ways that were never thought possible before.

In this collection of Big Data Success Stories, we share a sample of our customers’ successes including:

• [x+1], an end-to-end digital marketing platform provider for advertisers and agencies, is helping their clients
realize a 20% growth in digital sales by analyzing massive volumes of advertising data in real-time using
IBM Netezza

• KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, which uses streaming data in their congestion management
system, is already reducing traffic in the Swedish capital by 20 percent, lowering average travel times by almost
50 percent and decreasing the amount of emissions by 10 percent

• Researchers at the University of Ontario-Institute of Technology who are using streaming analytics to help
neonatal care hospitals predict the onset of potentially fatal infections in premature babies

We are humbled at “miracles” our clients are achieving and are very proud of the role we are playing in making
cities, commerce, healthcare and a full spectrum of additional industries smarter.

I hope you will enjoy reading these Big Data Success Stories and consider IBM when you take on big data
challenges in your enterprise.

Sincerely,

Rob Thomas
Vice President, Business Development
IBM

Contents

Bringing smarter computing to big data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
IBM Unveils Breakthrough Software and New Services to Exploit Big Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Customer Success Stories
Beacon Institute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Hertz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
KTH – Royal Institute of Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Marine Institute Ireland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Technovated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
TerraEchos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
University of Ontario Institute of Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Uppsala University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Vestas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Watson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
[x+1] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
IBM Business Partner Ecosystem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Featured Business Partners
Datameer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Digital Reasoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Jaspersoft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Karmasphere. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
MEPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Smarter computing builds a Smarter Planet

Bringing smarter computing to big data.
To build a smarter planet, we need smarter computing— CFO Study by the IBM Institute for Business Value showed
computing that is tuned to the task, managed through the that companies that excel at fi nance effi ciency and have
cloud and, importantly, designed for big data. more mature business analytics and optimization outperform
their peers, with 49% higher revenue growth, 20 times more
How big? We’re now creating 2.5 quintillion bytes daily— profit growth, and 30% higher return on invested capital.
so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been
created in the last two years alone. With continuously analyzed data, organizations can be what
they want to be, at all times. Consider the Memphis Police
This data is also big in another way—in its promise. We now Department, which compiles volumes of crime records from
have the capacity to understand, with greater precision than a variety of sources and systems, and has reduced serious
ever before, how our world actually works—to see patterns crime by more than 30%. Fresh food grower Sun World
unfolding in real time across multiple complex systems; to International is leveraging insights from their data to cut
model possible outcomes; and to take actions that produce natural resource use by 20%. Research at the University
greater economic growth and societal progress. of Ontario Institute of Technology is developing streaming
We can do more than manage information—we can manage analytics to help neonatal care hospitals. By analyzing 43
vast information supply chains. They’re made up of not million streaming data points per patient, per day, they can
only the ones and zeros of structured data that traditional improve patient outcomes by using all of the data available.
computers love, but streams of unstructured text, images, This list could go on. And at the leading edge of smarter
sounds, sensor-generated impulses and more. computing, IBM’s Watson—the computer that bested the two
We can parse the real languages of commerce, processes all-time champions on the television quiz show Jeopardy!—
and natural systems—as well as conversations from the demonstrates the power of analytics to provide meaningful
growing universe of tweets, blogs and social media. We insights from an ever-increasing volume and variety of data,
can also draw on advanced technologies such as stream enabling correct answers and winning actions, in real time.
computing, which fi lters gigabytes of data per second, As our world gets smaller, our data keeps getting bigger—
analyzes these while still in motion and decides on the which is good news. Information that was once merely
appropriate action for the data, such as a real-time alert or overload now lets us see our planet in entirely new ways
storing an insight in a data warehouse for later analysis. and intervene to make it work better. Because computing
But we can only do all of this if our computing systems are systems designed for big data are systems designed for good
smart enough to keep up. According to the IBM Business decision making. Which is, after all, what being smarter is
Analytics and Optimization for the Intelligent Enterprise study, all about.
one in three business leaders frequently make decisions Let’s build a smarter planet. Join us and see what others are
without the information they need. Half don’t have access doing at ibm.com/smarterplanet
to the information they need to do their jobs. And that has
significant competitive implications. The 2010 IBM Global

1

IBM Unveils Breakthrough Software and New Services to Exploit Big Data
Commits $100 Million to Massive Scale Analytics Research

ARMONK, N.Y., - 20 May 2011: As companies seek to “The volume and velocity of information is generated at
gain real-time insight from diverse types of data, IBM a record pace. This is magnified by new forms of data
(NYSE: IBM) today unveiled new software and services coming from social networking and the explosion of mobile
to help clients more effectively gain competitive insight, devices,” said Steve Mills, Senior Vice President and Group
optimize infrastructure and better manage resources to Executive, IBM Software & Systems. “Through our extensive
address Internet-scale data. For the first time, organizations capabilities in business and technology expertise, IBM is
can integrate and analyze tens-of-petabytes of data in its best positioned to help clients not only extract meaningful
native format and gain critical intelligence in sub-second insight, but enable them respond at the same rate at which
response times. the data arrives.”
IBM also announced a $100 million investment for New Services Address Analytics for IT
continued research on technologies and services that will Infrastructure
enable clients to manage and exploit data as it continues
to grow in diversity, speed and volume. The initiative will Leveraging years of intellectual capital in managing data
focus on research to drive the future of massive scale centers and IT departments, as well as over 30 patented
analytics, through advancing software, systems and technologies from IBM Research, the new IT services
services capabilities. feature dozens of analytical tools to help IT professionals
use server, storage and networking technologies more
The news comes on the heels of the 2011 IBM Global efficiently, improving security and insight into planning major
CIO Study where 83 percent of 3,000 CIOs surveyed said IT investments. Examples of services that help clients with
applying analytics and business intelligence to their IT analytics include:
operations is the most important element of their strategic
growth plans over the next three to five years. • Cloud Workload Analysis -- The new analysis tool maps
your IT workload characteristics and current capabilities
Today’s news further enables Smarter Computing innovations to prioritize cloud deployment and migrations plans. This
realized by designing systems that incorporate Big Data for allows IT managers to identify cloud opportunities 90
better decision making, and optimized systems tuned to the percent faster to reduce costs.
task and managed in a cloud.
• Server and Storage -- New server optimization and
According to recent IT industry analyst reports, enterprise analysis tools achieve up to 50 percent reduced
data growth over the next five years is estimated to increase transformation costs and up to 80 percent faster
by more than 650 percent. Eighty percent of this data is implementation time. New storage services help create
expected to be unstructured. self-service to provision explosive growth while reducing
architects time by 50 percent.
The new analytics capabilities pioneered by IBM Research
will enable chief information officers (CIOs) to construct • Data Center Lifecycle Cost Analysis Tool -- Identifies how
specific, fact-based financial and business models for their IT to reduce total data center costs by up to 30 percent by
operations. Traditionally, CIOs have had to make decisions assessing total cost plus including environmental impact
about their IT operations without the benefit of tools that can over a 10 to 20 year life.
help interpret and model data.
• Security Analytic services -- Analytic systems identify
With today’s news, IBM is expanding its portfolio and known events and automatically handle them; This
furthering its investments in analytics with: results in handling of more than 99 percent of critical
events without human intervention.
• New, patented software capabilities to analyze massive
volumes of streaming data with sub-millisecond response IBM Big Data Software Taps into Hadoop
times and Hadoop-based analytics software to offer
scalable storage to handle tens-of-petabytes level data. IBM is making available new InfoSphere BigInsights and
These capabilities complement and leverage existing IT Streams software that allows clients to gain fast insight into
infrastructure to support a variety of both structured and information flowing in and around their businesses. The
unstructured data types. software, which incorporates more than 50 patents, analyzes
traditional structured data found in databases along with
• 20 new services offerings, featuring patented analytical unstructured data -- such as text, video, audio, images, social
tools for business and IT professionals to infuse media, click streams -- allowing decision makers to act on it
predictive analytics throughout their IT operations. The at unprecedented speeds.
services enable IT organizations to assess, design and
configure their operations to address and take advantage
of petabytes of data.

2

IBM Unveils Breakthrough Software and New Services to Exploit Big Data

BigInsights software is the result of a four-year effort of University of Ontario Institute of Technology
more than 200 IBM Research scientists and is powered by Expands Neo-Natal Research to China
the open source technology, Apache Hadoop. The software
provides a framework for large scale parallel processing Dr. Carolyn McGregor, Research Chair in Health Informatics
and scalable storage for terabyte to petabytes-level data. It at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology has been
incorporates Watson-like technologies, including unstructured exploring new approaches for the last 12 years to provide
text analytics and indexing that allows users to analyze specialists in neonatal intensive care units better ways to spot
rapidly changing data formats and types on the fly. potentially fatal infections in premature babies.

Additional new features include data governance and Changes in streams of real-time data such as respiration,
security, developer tools, and enterprise integration to make heart rate and blood pressure are closely monitored in her
it easier for clients to build a new class of Big Data analytics work and now she is expanding her research to China.
applications. IBM also offers a free downloadable BigInsights “Building upon our work in Canada and Australia, we will
Basic Edition for clients to help them explore Big Data apply our research to premature babies at hospitals in
integration capabilities. China. With this new additional data, we can compare
the differences and similarities of diverse populations of
Also born at IBM Research, InfoSphere Streams software premature babies across continents,” said Dr. McGregor.
analyzes data coming into an organization and monitors it for “In comparing populations, we can set the rules to optimize
any changes that may signify a new pattern or trend in real the system to alert us when symptoms occur in real time,
time. This capability helps organizations to capture insights which is why having the streaming capability that the IBM
and make decisions with more precision, providing an platform offers is critical. The types of complexities that we’re
opportunity to respond to events as they happen. looking for in patient populations would not be accessible with
traditional relational database or analytical approaches.”
New advancements to Streams software makes it possible
to analyze Big Data such as Tweets, blog posts, video IBM’s Big Data software and services reinforces IBM’s
frames, EKGs, GPS, and sensor and stock market data up analytics initiatives to deliver Watson-like technologies
to 350 percent faster than before. BigInsights complements that help clients address industry specific issues. On the
Streams by applying analytics to the organization’s historical heels of The IBM Jeopardy! Challenge, in which the IBM
data as well as data flowing through Streams. This is an Watson system demonstrated a breakthrough capability to
ongoing analytics cycle that becomes increasingly powerful understand natural language, advanced analytical capabilities
as more data and real-time analytic results are available to be can now be applied on real client challenges ranging from
modeled for improvement. identifying fraud in tax or healthcare systems, to predicting
consumer buying behaviors for retail clients.
As a long time proponent of open source technology, IBM
has chosen the Hadoop project as the cornerstone of its Big Over the past five years, IBM has invested more than $14
Data Strategy. With a continued focus on building advanced billion in 24 analytics acquisitions. Today, more than 8,000
analytics solutions for the enterprise, IBM is building upon IBM business consultants are dedicated to analytics and over
the power of these open source technologies while adding 200 mathematicians are developing breakthrough algorithms
improved management and security functions, and reliability inside IBM Research. IBM holds more than 22,000 active
that businesses demand. Hadoop’s ability to process a broad U.S. patents related to data and information management.
set of information across multiple computing platforms,
combined with IBM’s analytics capabilities, now makes To hear how IBM clients are using analytics to transform
it possible for clients to tackle today’s growing Big Data their business visit: http://www.youtube.com/user/
challenges. IBM’s portfolio of Hadoop-based offerings also ibmbusinessanalytics.
include IBM Cognos Consumer Insight which integrates
For more information on IBM Big Data initiatives, visit:
social media content with traditional business analytics,
www.ibm.com/bigdata.
and IBM Coremetrics Explore which segments consumer
buying patterns and drills down into mobile data. Additionally, For more information on IBM’s full set of new analytics
Hadoop is the software framework the IBM Watson computing services, visit: www.ibm.com/services/it-insight.
system uses for distributing the workload for processing
information, which supports the systems breakthrough ability
to understand natural language and provide specific answers
to questions at rapid speeds.

3

Customer Success Stories

Beacon Institute

Faces

Hertz

KTH – Royal Institute of Technology

Marine Institute Ireland

Technovated

TerraEchos

University of Ontario Institute of Technology

Uppsala University

Vestas

Watson

[x+1]

4

Big Data Profiles
IBM Software Group

Beacon Institute,
Clarkson University
and IBM
Managing the environmental impact on rivers
by streaming information

Most of the world’s population lives near a river or estuary. Yet, there is
typically no way to gain a clear understanding of what is happening below
Overview
the surface of the water to help predict and manage changes in the river
The need that could impact local communities that rely on the waterway.
Scientists need new technology to study
complex environmental interactions to
better understand how communities and The River and Estuary Observatory Network (REON) project is a joint
ecosystems interact. effort between Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, Clarkson
The solution University and IBM® Research. REON is the first technology-based,
IBM InfoSphere Streams software and real-time monitoring network for rivers and estuaries of its kind, and allows
high-performance computing system for continuous monitoring of physical, chemical and biological data from
collect and analyze data in real time as it
points in New York’s Hudson, Mohawk and St. Lawrence Rivers by means
streams in from environmental data
sources to support predictive analysis of an integrated network of sensors, robotics, mobile monitoring and
and decision making. computational technology deployed in the rivers.
The benefit
Streaming real-time data technology “Imagine predicting environmental impacts the way we forecast and report
helps resource management programs the weather,” says John Cronin, Founding Director of Beacon Institute and
respond more effectively to chemical,
Beacon Institute Fellow at Clarkson University. “With that technological
physical and biological alterations to
local water resources. capability we can better understand the effects of global warming, the
movements of migrating fish or the transport of pollutants. The implications
for decision-making and education are staggering.”

5

Big Data Profiles
IBM Software Group

Applying real-time technology to help understand
Solution components: the environment
REON is a test bed for the IBM System S stream computing system. A
Software
team of IBM engineers and scientists work on the REON collaboration
• IBM® InfoSphere® Streams
and have access to IBM’s extensive analytical and computational resources
from the IBM Watson Research Lab. The IBM Global Engineering
Solutions team executed the fundamental design elements of the data
“Imagine predicting streaming pilot. This high-performance architecture rapidly analyzes data
environmental impacts as it streams in from many sources.

the way we forecast A networked array of sensors in the river provides the data necessary
and report the weather. to locally observe spatial variations in such variables as temperature,
. . . The implications for pressure, salinity, turbidity, dissolved oxygen and other basic water
chemistry parameters. All of these sensors, transmitting information in
decision-making and real time, results in massive amounts of data.
education are staggering.”
Using real-time, multi-parameter modeling systems helps develop a
— John Cronin, Founding Director of Beacon better understanding of the dynamic interactions within local riverine and
Institute for Rivers and Estuaries and Beacon
Institute Fellow at Clarkson University estuarine ecosystems. Making real-world data easily accessible to outside
systems, researchers, policymakers and educators helps foster increased
collaboration. The ultimate benefit is helping resource management
programs respond more effectively to chemical, physical and biological
alterations to local water resources.

REON—New technology for the smarter
water management
“The Hudson River is the pilot river system for REON, and the 12 million
people who live within its watershed will be the first beneficiaries of our
work,” says Cronin.

Helping to make sense of all that data is IBM InfoSphere® Streams
software, part of IBM’s big data platform. InfoSphere Streams provides
capabilities that collect and analyze data from thousands of information
sources to help scientists better understand what is happening in the
world—as it happens. Eventually, REON data could be applied to visualize
the movement of chemical constituents, monitor water quality, and protect
fish species as they migrate, as well as provide a better scientific
understanding of river and estuary ecosystems.

2

6

Big Data Profiles
IBM Software Group

“As water resource management expert Doug Miell has said, you can’t
manage what you can’t measure. . . Society and business are facing
“The Hudson River is increasingly complex challenges when it comes to understanding and
the pilot river system managing water resources on this planet,” says John E. Kelly III, Senior
for this groundbreaking Vice President and Director, IBM Research. “Getting smart about water
is important to all of us for one simple reason: water is too precious a
initiative, and the 12 resource to be wasted.”
million people who live
within its watershed will Positively Impacting the Environment Worldwide
be the first beneficiaries Cronin concludes, “This new way of observing, understanding and
predicting how large river and estuary ecosystems work ultimately will
of our work.” allow us to translate that knowledge into better policy, management and
education for the Hudson River and for rivers and estuaries worldwide.”
— John Cronin

For more information
To learn more about IBM InfoSphere Streams, visit:
ibm.com/software/data/infosphere/streams

To learn more about IBM big data, visit:
ibm.com/software/data/bigdata

To increase your big data knowledge and skills, visit:
www.BigDataUniversity.com

To get involved in the conversation, visit:
www.smartercomputingblog.com/category/big-data

For more information on Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries,
visit: www.bire.org/home

3

7

IBM Software Manufacturing and Computer Services
Information Management

IBM
Applies emerging technologies to deliver instantaneous
people searches

With an enterprise population of over 600,000 people worldwide, how
Overview do IBM® employees find and connect with their colleagues? For over a
decade, IBM BluePages has been the primary source. This high-demand,
The need
intranet application provides information on all IBM employees and
With over 600,000 names in BluePages, contractors, including areas of expertise and responsibilities. And with
IBM’s employee directory, and over
500,000 queries daily, the average search IBM’s focus on innovation and emerging technologies, positive changes
session takes two minutes. IBM needed a are always on the horizon.
faster, more efficient application.

The solution “BluePages is one of the most used applications at IBM,” says Sara
Weber, manager of IBM’s CIO Lab Analytics team. “At one time,
Using Apache open source technologies,
the IBM CIO Lab Analytics team BluePages was state-of-the-art; however, over the years it was not
developed a new people-search updated to keep up with new advances in Internet technology. With over
application that allows flexible queries 500,000 BluePages searches done every day, and with BluePages accessing
and returns as many results as possible,
as fast as possible. Additional capabilities huge volumes of data, an average search session can take up to two
include quick browsing and photo minutes. When multiple results are returned they do not show individual
images. photo images, and incorrect spelling may yield no results. My team was
The benefit tasked with addressing the question: ‘How can we build a better and
The new Faces application offers
faster people search?’”
instantaneous response time, saving on
average over a minute for each search The goals for this project, aptly named Faces, were to support flexible
session—and thousands of hours daily queries and return as many results as possible, as fast as possible. Results
for IBM employees.
that more closely matched the query would appear first. Additional
capabilities would permit quick browsing and photo images.

8


Applying emerging technologies to deliver
“At IBM, when we innovation
Weber’s CIO Lab Analytics team identifies problems that IBM employees
find an open source are experiencing and finds ways to apply emerging technologies to
technology that has develop solutions. “We had to process tremendous amounts of data, and
then store it in a way that it could be accessed quickly,” says Weber. “For
potential, we experiment this project, we selected Apache Hadoop and Apache Voldemort; both are
with it to understand open source technologies. My development team has extensive expertise
how to use it to bring in using Hadoop technology. The Faces application was developed by two
members of our team over a five month period.”
the most business value
to IBM. For example, Apache Hadoop allows developers to create distributed applications
that run on clusters of computers. Organizations can leverage this
IBM InfoSphere infrastructure to handle large data sets, by dividing the data into “chunks”
BigInsights is a new and coordinating the data processing in the distributed, clustered
class of analytics platform environment. Once the data has been distributed to the cluster, it can be
processed in parallel. Apache Voldemort is a distributed key-value storage
based on Hadoop and system that offers fast, reliable and persistent storage and retrieval.
innovation from IBM. It Specific keys return specific values. If no additional query power is
needed, a key value store is faster than a database.
can store raw data ‘as-is’
and help clients gain “At IBM, when we find an open source technology that has potential, we
rapid insight through experiment with it to understand how to use it to bring the most business
value to IBM,” says Weber. “For example, IBM InfoSphere® BigInsights
large scale analysis.” is a new class of analytics platform based on Hadoop and innovation from
IBM. It can store raw data ‘as-is’ and help clients gain rapid insight
—Sara Weber, Manager, IBM’s CIO Lab through large scale analysis.”
Analytics team

For Faces, Hadoop preprocesses data from the IBM Enterprise Directory
and Social Networks and sends this information to the Voldemort Person
Store (2.2 GB). Voldemort, in turn, sends data to Hadoop processing for
the Person ID fetcher, Reports Loader, Query Expander, and Location
Expander. These results are saved to Voldemort’s Query Store (5.5 GB).
Hadoop also receives images from BluePages that are saved in
Voldemort’s image store to remain available for Hadoop’s montage
generator.

2

9


“We placed all 600,000 names into memory for immediate access,” says
Solution components Weber. “Preprocessing with Hadoop directly improves performance.
Each time you type a letter in a name, results are immediate. We have
Servers
precomputed the search process to retrieve every employee name that
● IBM® BladeCenter® servers matches what is entered. Every time you type another letter, scoring
Software retrieves people who are more relevant to the search criteria. The
● Apache Hadoop information is available and, from a performance perspective, everything
● Apache Voldemort Key Value is ready to go. Memory and storage are inexpensive and nightly
Storage System processing takes only a few hours.”

Weber adds, “We run Hadoop on ten, five-year-old IBM BladeCenter®
“We could not have servers. These Blades are low powered, but Hadoop distributes the
workload and takes advantage of the hardware to the fullest. If more
developed Faces without computation is needed, we can add machines and improve performance
the distributed processing without modifying the code.”

capabilities Hadoop Measuring business value
provides. The Faces According to Weber, the new Faces application enables employees to
application has really receive instantaneous search results. “Conservatively speaking, we are
saving on average over a minute for each search session,” says Weber.
highlighted the power of “Searches are faster and easier. The information is timely and accurate.
Hadoop and has helped With over 500,000 searches daily, IBMers are saving thousands of hours
us address a major pain each day.”

point for all IBMers.” For IBM employees, the improvement is noticeable. “To gain user
acceptance or change user behavior, we know any new solution we create
—Sara Weber has to be significantly faster and better,” says Weber. “As far as I know,
Faces is the fastest growing innovation ever introduced at IBM. In the
first two weeks, Faces went from zero to 85,000 users with continued
viral growth throughout the entire IBM organization. What used to take
minutes now takes milliseconds. We provide a feedback button on all
our applications so users can report errors or issues. With Faces, IBMers
were using the feedback button to say, ‘Thank you for making my job so
much easier.’”

Weber concludes, “We could not have developed Faces without the
distributed processing capabilities Hadoop provides. The Faces application
has really highlighted the power of Hadoop and has helped us address a
major pain point for all IBMers.”

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To learn more about IBM Information Management solutions, please
contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit
the following website: ibm.com/software/data

To learn more about IBM InfoSphere BigInsights, visit:
ibm.com/software/data/infosphere/biginsights

Additionally, financing solutions from IBM Global Financing can enable
effective cash management, protection from technology obsolescence,
improved total cost of ownership and return on investment. Also, our
Global Asset Recovery Services help address environmental concerns with
new, more energy-efficient solutions. For more information on
IBM Global Financing, visit: ibm.com/financing

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2011

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Produced in the United States of America
October 2011
All Rights Reserved

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was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in
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“Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks
of others.

References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that
IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates.

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Big Data Profiles
IBM Software Group

Hertz, Mindshare
Technologies and IBM
Analyzing huge volumes of customer comments in
real time delivers a competitive edge

As the world’s largest airport car rental brand with more than 8,300
Overview locations in 146 countries, Hertz continually requests and receives
feedback from its customers. To retain a competitive edge, the feedback
The need
Improving service means listening to
is analyzed so that issues can be identified in real-time and problems
customers and gathering thousands can be addressed and resolved quickly.
of comments via web, email and text
messages. Each comment is viewed
and categorized manually for customer “Hertz gathers an amazing amount of customer insight daily, including
service reporting. Inconsistencies were thousands of comments from web surveys, emails and text messages.
at an unacceptable level.
We wanted to leverage this insight at both the strategic level and the
The solution local level to drive operational improvements,” says Joe Eckroth, Chief
Using feedback management and
content analytics software, customer
Information Officer, The Hertz Corporation.
comments are captured in real time to be
transformed into actionable intelligence.
Linguistic rules automatically analyze
Leveraging unstructured data to improve
and tag unstructured content into customer satisfaction
meaningful service reporting categories.
Hertz and Mindshare Technologies, a leading provider of enterprise
The benefit feedback solutions, are using IBM® Content Analytics software to
Automated tagging increased report examine customer survey data, including text messages. The goal is
consistency, freed Hertz field managers
from tagging comments, and roughly to identify car and equipment rental performance levels to enable
doubled what the managers had pinpointing issues and making the necessary adjustments to improve
achieved manually.
customer satisfaction levels.

IBM Content Analytics allows for deep, rich text analysis of
information, helping organizations gain valuable insight from
enterprise content regardless of source or format. This technology
can help reveal undetected problems, improve content-centric process
inefficiencies, and take customer service and revenue opportunities
to new levels, while helping to reduce operating costs and risks.

12

Big Data Profiles
IBM Software Group

Using Content Analytics together with a sentiment-based tagging
Solution components: solution from Mindshare Technologies, Hertz introduced a “Voice
of the Customer” analytics system that automatically captures large
Software
volumes of information reflecting customer experiences in real-time,
• IBM® Content Analytics
and helps transform the information into actionable intelligence. Using a
series of linguistic rules, the “Voice of the Customer” system categorizes
comments received via email and online with descriptive terms, such as
“Hertz gathers an Vehicle Cleanliness, Staff Courtesy and Mechanical Issues. The system
amazing amount of also flags customers who request a callback from a manager or those who
customer insight daily, mention #1 Club Gold, Hertz’s customer loyalty program.

including thousands of
“Working closely with the IBM-Mindshare team, we are able to better
comments from web focus on improvements that our customers care about, while removing a
surveys, emails and text time-consuming burden from our location managers. This has greatly
messages. We wanted to improved the effectiveness of our ‘Voice of the Customer’ program and has
leverage this insight at helped build on our reputation for delivering superior customer service.”

both the strategic level
Improving speed and accuracy of processing
and the local level to drive
customer feedback
operational improvements.” In the ultra-competitive world of vehicle and equipment rental, Hertz
recognizes that understanding customer feedback and adapting the
— Joe Eckroth, Chief Information Officer,
business accordingly is what drives market share and success. However,
The Hertz Corporation
most of this valuable information is trapped inside free-form customer
feedback surveys.

Prior to working with IBM and Mindshare Technologies, Hertz location
managers read each customer comment submitted online via email or by
phone, and then manually categorized it for basic reporting and analysis.
This approach proved to be labor-intensive and inconsistent, as comments
were categorized based on a manager’s personal interpretation. Automating
the task of tagging customer comments has increased report consistency
and roughly doubled what the managers had achieved manually.

2

13

Big Data Profiles
IBM Software Group

IBM Content Analytics software has improved the accuracy and speed
of the tagging and analyzing process, setting the stage for more reliable
“Working closely with analytics. Free from manually tagging comments, Hertz field managers
the IBM-Mindshare can now focus attention on performing deep-dive analysis on the
team, we are able to information, quickly identifying trends or issues and adjusting
better focus on operational service levels accordingly.

improvements that
For instance, wait times at car rental locations can be a contentious
our customers care issue. The faster and more efficient the car rental/return process,
about, while removing the more likely the customer will do repeat business. Using analytics
a time-consuming software, Hertz location managers are able to effectively monitor
burden from our customer comments to deliver top customer satisfaction scores for this
critical level of service. In Philadelphia, survey feedback led managers
location managers.”
to discover that delays were occurring at the returns area during certain
parts of the day. They quickly adjusted staffing levels and ensured a
– Joe Eckroth
manager was always present in the area during these specific times.

Hertz remains focused on customers and
providing superior service
The Internet and new social media technologies have made consumers
more connected, empowered and demanding. The average online user is
three times more likely to trust peer opinions over retailer advertising,
underlining the importance for retailers to tap new technologies that pay
close attention to what customers are saying.

This effort with Hertz reflects IBM’s focus on helping organizations use
analytics to get the most value from their information. IBM has a Business
Analytics & Optimization services organization, with 7,000 consultants
who can help clients get up and running with deep analytics capabilities.

3

14

To learn more about IBM Content Analytics, visit:
ibm.com/software/data/content-management/analytics

To learn more about IBM Business Optimization and
Analytics services, visit: ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bao



For more information on Hertz, visit:
www.hertz.com


IBM Corporation
Software Group
Route 100
Somers, NY 10589
U.S.A.

October 2011
All Rights Reserved

IBM, the IBM logo and ibm.com are trademarks or registered trademarks of
International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries,
or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first
occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol (® or ™), these symbols
indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this
information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law
trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the
Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

of others.

References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM
intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates.

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15

Let’s build a smarter planet Education

KTH – Royal Institute
of Technology
Analyzes real-time data streams to identify
traffic patterns

The Royal Institute of Technology (abbreviated KTH) is a university
Stockholm, Sweden in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH was founded in 1827 as Sweden’s first
www.kth.se/?l=en_UK polytechnic and is with Aalto University School of Science and
Technology in Espoo, depending on definition, Scandinavia’s largest
institution of higher education in technology and one of the leading
technical universities in Europe.
“ Analyzing large volumes
of streaming data in real The Opportunity
time is leading to smarter, Researchers at KTH, Sweden’s leading technical university, gather
real-time traffic data from a variety of sources such as GPS from large
more efficient and numbers of vehicles, radar sensors on motorways, congestion charging,
environmentally friendly weather, etc. The integration and analysis of the data in order to better
traffic in urban areas.” manage traffic is a difficult task.

— Haris N. Koutsopoulos,
Head of Transportation and Logistics,
What Makes It Smarter
Royal Institute of Technology, Collected data is now flowing into IBM InfoSphere Streams software—a
Stockholm, Sweden unique software tool that analyzes large volumes of streaming, real-time
data, both structured and unstructured. The data is then used to help
intelligently identify current conditions, and estimate how long it would
take to travel from point to point in the city, offer advice on various
travel alternatives, such as routes, and eventually help improve traffic in
a metropolitan area.

Real Business Results
• Uses diverse data, including GPS locations, weather conditions, speeds
and flows from sensors on motorways, incidents and roadworks
• Enters data into the InfoSphere Streams software, which can handle all
types of data, both structured and unstructured
• Handles, in real time, the large traffic and traffic-related data streams
to enable researchers to quickly analyze current traffic conditions
and develop historical databases for monitoring and more efficient
management of the system

16

Solution Components Please contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner.
Visit us at: ibm.com/education
• IBM® InfoSphere™ Streams
• IBM BladeCenter® HS22 To learn more about KTH – Royal Institute of Technology visit:
• IBM BladeCenter H Chassis www.kth.se/?l=en_UK
• IBM System Storage® DS3400
• Red Hat Linux®


IBM Corporation
1 New Orchard Road
Armonk, NY 10504
U.S.A.

Produced in the United States
March 2011
All Rights Reserved

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, BladeCenter and InfoSphere are trademarks of
International Business Machines Corporation, registered in many jurisdictions
worldwide. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright
and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries,
or both.

Other company, product or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

The information contained in this documentation is provided for informational
purposes only. While efforts were made to verify the completeness and accuracy of the
information contained in this documentation, it is provided “as is” without warranty of
any kind, express or implied. In addition, this information is based on IBM’s current
product plans and strategy, which are subject to change by IBM without notice. IBM
shall not be responsible for any damages arising out of the use of, or otherwise related
to, this documentation or any other documentation. Nothing contained in this
documentation is intended to, nor shall have the effect of, creating any warranties or
representations from IBM (or its suppliers or licensors), or altering the terms and
conditions of the applicable license agreement governing the use of IBM software.

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17

Marine Institute Ireland
Putting real-time data to work and providing a
platform for technology development

When sensors become pervasive, entirely new and unexpected uses for
Overview the flood of information they produce often arise, yielding benefits far
beyond those originally envisioned. Seeing the world in a new way—
The need
via technology—generates an inventive spark, prompting people to
The Marine Institute sought to establish
SmartBay as a research, test and devise new uses for information that they may never have considered
demonstration platform for new envi- before.
ronmental technologies—paving the
way to commercialization and the
development of new markets for Irish- That’s exactly what is happening in Ireland’s Galway Bay, as part of the
based companies. SmartBay project initiated by the Marine Institute Ireland. In support
of its advanced technology platform, which seeks to make Ireland a
The solution
major player in the development of smart ocean technologies, the
The Institute, working with IBM, devel-
oped a pilot information system to feed project’s initial purpose was to develop a platform for testing environ-
environmental data into a data ware- mental monitoring technologies, and the idea was simple: Deploy a
house, where it is processed, analyzed series of radio-equipped “smart buoys” in the bay containing sensors
and displayed in new ways.
that could collect data such as sea state (wave height and action) and
What makes it smarter other weather conditions, water data such as salinity, and similar envi-
The project yields greater insight into ronmental information.
the bay environment, as well as provid-
ing practical value—from understanding
how water quality impacts fisheries to A basis for economic transformation
predicting hazard locations and more. When the Marine Institute learned of the IBM Big Green Innovations
initiative to find ways to use technology to promote and enable envi-
ronmental science, the idea of a collaboration on the SmartBay project
was born. The IBM Advanced Water Management Centre Dublin built
upon the domain expertise of the Marine Institute, complimenting it
with its deep computing intelligence.

While the synergy with the IBM Smarter Planet™ strategy’s drive
towards Smart Green technology was clear, the real impetus behind
the decision to expand SmartBay is largely economic. Beginning in the
1990s, the Irish economy became a global growth powerhouse. Wise
policy decisions and forward-thinking investment had transformed
Ireland into a manufacturing phenomenon.

More recently, with the global economy encountering difficulty,
Ireland’s prosperity began to wane. The government saw the
need to change course, moving the country towards a knowledge-
based economy. Investment in projects that showcase Ireland as a tech-
nological leader would not only create new commercial opportunities,

18

attract talent and additional capital investment, but also prompt a new
Business benefits generation of Irish citizens to pursue careers in knowledge-based
industries.
●
Enables the creation of a vast array of
diverse applications that goes far
beyond the original purpose of the Taking SmartBay to a new level
project, from technical research to The Marine Institute, working in conjunction with government
tourism promotion
agencies, research institutions and the private sector, is working
●
Real-time access via the web together to leverage the significant R+D capacity that exists in Ireland
delivers valuable insight quickly to
remote users to help drive economic development. There is clear potential to
expand SmartBay into an international platform demonstrating new
●
Open architecture enables new appli-
cations to be brought on line easily, approaches to environmental challenges and delivering new technolog-
combining data from both SmartBay ical solutions for a range of global markets.
sensors and other sources, such as
geographical information systems
IBM is working with the Marine Institute to speed the process of inno-
●
Add-on effect of the project promotes vation, starting with an assessment of existing capabilities. The team
education and stimulates economic
development in the Irish economy saw that if the data could be centralized, processed and accessed in the
right way, it could become far more useful—the information already
available could be turned into intelligence and put to work to create
real practical value that impacts the lives of citizens directly.

IBM designed and deployed an enterprise-scale data warehouse using
IBM InfoSphere™ Warehouse, that is connected to the SmartBay
sensors, as well as external sources such as mapping databases and
sensors beyond the bay. An open-standards application layer processes
and analyzes the data in a variety of ways, making it available via a
Web interface enabled by IBM WebSphere® Portal and WebSphere
Application Server. Additional WebSphere products, including
WebSphere MQ and WebSphere Sensor Events, provide a key
middleware layer that integrates the sensors with the data warehouse.
To ensure reliability and scalability, the system is housed on
IBM System x® 3950 servers.

Smarter water: Creating new value from environmental data

Instrumented Sensors deployed on buoys in Galway Bay transmit key data on
ocean conditions and water quality.

Interconnected Sensor data is fed into a central data warehouse for aggregation and
processing, and can be accessed by diverse groups using customized
web applications to generate targeted value.

Intelligent Combining real-time data with a flexible technology platform creates
near-limitless new uses for information—from environmental
research to predictive monitoring, technology validation and much
more.

2

19

The system design makes it easy to combine data from the sensors
Solution components with other online databases—such as geographical information—as
needed to create new functionality. Rapid development, enabled by
Software
IBM DB2® Alphablox® is an important feature, giving project man-
●
IBM DB2® Alphablox® v9.5
●
IBM DB2 Enterprise Server agers the ability to deploy new applications quickly and easily.
Edition v9.5
●
IBM InfoSphere™ Streams The project yields greater insight into the bay environment and can
●
IBM WebSphere® Application
Server v6.1 provide real-time information feeds to a range of stakeholders, while at
●
IBM WebSphere MQ v5 the same time enabling commercial technology developers to test new
●
IBM WebSphere Sensor Events environmental product and service offerings. The project is now mov-
IBM WebSphere Portal Server v6.1
ing into a new phase, with higher bandwidth and powered cabled
●

Servers sensors being deployed that will enable more information to be
●
IBM System x® 3950 gathered. IBM is also working with Irish-based companies on an
advanced initiative to add stream (i.e., real-time) computing capabilities
Services
●
IBM Global Business Services®
to the project, with the goal of increasing its capacity utilizing the real-
time analytical processing capacity of InfoSphere Streams.

Applications limited only by imagination
“The immediate benefits As the IBM and Marine Institute team began to map out the
of SmartBay, whether possibilities for delivering information and services via the SmartBay
portal, more and more potential new uses began to spring up.
it’s helping and support- Stakeholders—the harbormaster, fishermen, researchers, tourism offi-
ing industrial develop- cials and others—were all part of the brainstorming process. The
ment or promoting SmartBay vision was quickly expanding far beyond its initial goals.

marine safety, are The variety of applications either deployed or under consideration for
tangible, direct and SmartBay is strong testament to the power of creative thinking enabled
by the right technological tools. The critical element is the ability to
worthwhile.” analyze, process and present the data in a useful form, tailored to the
needs of specific users. For example:
—John Gaughan, project coordinator,
SmartBay
●
Technology developers can conduct a variety of sophisticated studies
remotely and in near real time, instead of retroactively. Climate
researchers, using sensors on land paired with sensors in the bay, can
learn about the exchange of CO2 across the land-sea interface, and
marine biologists can use acoustic sensors deployed throughout the
bay to assess marine mammal populations.
●
Alternative energy developers can access real-time wave data and
use it to determine the effectiveness of prototype wave-energy gener-
ators, and developers of new sensor technologies can deploy proto-
types on the buoys to find out how well the hardware holds up in a
harsh marine environment, with continuous monitoring.
●
The project can also promote commercial interests. Fishermen
can use environmental data to tell them when to put to sea. Fishery
managers can monitor and track water quality issues, gaining a com-
prehensive view of actual conditions throughout the bay.

3

20

●
Applications developed as part of the SmartBay project can also help
increase public safety. Mariners who spot floating objects that pose a
hazard to navigation can report the location, and the system will
combine this information with geographic data, real-time weather,
current, and tide data to predict the path and position of the hazard
hours in advance. Collaboration with the Galway harbormaster has
also enabled the creation of an expert system based on human expert-
ise that can issue flood warnings more promptly and accurately than
he can himself, based on real-time weather, sea state and tidal
information.

Gaughan says the project provides a positive benefit in many areas.
“The immediate benefits of SmartBay, whether it’s helping and sup-
porting industrial development or promoting marine safety, are
tangible, direct and worthwhile.”

To learn more about how IBM can help you transform your business,
please contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner.

Visit us at:
●
ibm.com/government
●
ibm.com/smarterplanet/water


IBM Corporation
1 New Orchard Road
Armonk, NY 10504
U.S.A.

November 2010
All Rights Reserved

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Let’s Build A Smarter Planet, the planet icons,
AlphaBlox, DB2, Global Business Services, InfoSphere, System x and WebSphere
are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation, registered in many
jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of
IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at
ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

This case study illustrates how one IBM customer uses IBM products. There is no
guarantee of comparable results.


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21

a jStart™ using Big Data to identify Big Opportunities in retail
case study
helping companies
deliver the web
experience their
customers want.
At a Glance
There is a ―Big Data‖ challenge in the e-commerce industry with the explo-
sive growth of social networking sites. With 700 million users on Face-
book—expected to reach 1 billion in 2011, and Twitter up to 140 million
tweets per day, retailers are trying to reach their customers and understand
their shopping habits better using these channels. Without social analytics,

online retailers risk becoming a victim to this deluge of data – unable to
“We are able to vastly improve the
make sense out of the massive volume of product data and customer feed-
online shopping experience by
back, or even able to respond to it in a timely way.
responding almost instantly to
customers and delivering the Working with IBM’s jStart™ team, Technovated created a system that uses
products they want to purchase IBM BigSheets to reduce manual processes while simultaneously tackling
at a very attractive price point.” the ―Big Data‖ challenges that many online retailers experience.

-Gareth Knight Providing a Big Data Edge
CEO, Technovated Technovated is able to respond to shoppers instantly based on customers’
latest product searches, blog posts and tweets about recent purchases.
Using this valuable consumer insight, Technovated can automatically set
up new online stores in a matter of days to deliver shoppers with the prod-
ucts they are searching for at a competitive price point. It used to take six

See how IBM using analytics to
create Smarter Retail ibm.com/jstart

22

a jStart™
case study
weeks to put products up for sale online. Now, using IBM technology com-
About Techovated bined with Technovated’s know-how, it takes a few days.
jStart works with a wide variety of clients and custom-
ers, but frequently, we find some of the best partner-
ships to be with startups. Technovated is very much
Enter Big Data Analytics
a partner in that vein. With offices in London and
Johannesburg, Technovated describes itself this
By using IBM BigSheets, Technovated plans to jump-start its business
way: ―we are able to vastly improve the online shop- growth. Starting off its Web stores with a few thousand product stock-
ping experi- keeping units (SKUs), Technovated will quickly be able to
ence by
cull through terabytes of data to set up niche e-commerce
responding
almost instantly to customers and delivering the
sites ranging from office chairs to running shoes.
products they want to purchase at a very attractive IBM BigSheets is a system developed by IBM’s Emerging Internet Technol-
price point.‖ The Technovated team is focused on
ogies group to allow for the easy and quick exploration of big data. If you’re
leveraging the latest technologies to give them—and
their customers—a competitive edge. In this case, wondering what your data may be trying to tell you, BigSheets is a great
utilizing IBM Big Data technologies, like BigSheets, to place to start—since any line-of-business professional can manipulate the
provide capabilities and business opportunities that tool to identify and take action on
simply didn’t exist for SMB’s until today.
opportunities which may reside in
the data, itself. Since BigSheets
get started with jStart: can merge data from numerous
David Sink sources, your company can obtain
Program Director, jStart Team a high level overview of what’s
IBM Emerging Technologies
dsink@us.ibm.com possible with the data available—
Tel: 919.254.4648 and the opportunity to act on those
Ed Elze insights.
Manager, Bus. Dev., Strategy & Client Engagement
jStart Team, IBM Emerging Technologies The jStart team also has extensive
eelze@us.ibm.com
Tel: 360.866.0160 experience with IBM data analytics technologies and solutions as well.

Jim Smith By leveraging these technologies, your business could extract information
Manager, Client Engagements, Chief Architect
jStart Team, IBM Emerging Technologies from publicly available sources, internal data sources, and partner re-
jamessmi@us.ibm.com sources, and use them to identify patterns, markets, and opportunities to
Tel: 919.387.6653
make the sale. In the end, big data can help identify big opportunities for
John Feller retail. Ready to get started? jStart is. Contact us today.
Manager, Development
jStart Team, IBM Emerging Technologies
fellerj@us.ibm.com
Tel: 919.543.7971 Who is jStart?

Learn More:
jStart is a highly skilled team focused on providing fast, smart, and valuable
ibm.com/jstart/bigsheets business solutions leveraging the latest technologies. The team typically fo-
ibm.com/jstart/bigdata cuses on emerging technologies which have commercial potential within 12-
ibm.com/jstart/textanalytics
ibm.com/jstart/portfolio/technovated.html 18 months. This allows the team to keep ahead of the adoption curve, while
jstart@us.ibm.com being prepared for client engagements and partnerships. The team’s focus
in 2011 includes: big data, text analytics, and the commercialization of IBM’s
Watson technologies.

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2010, IBM Corporation Software Group, Route 100, Somers, NY 10589, USA. Produced in the United States of America, 06-
10, All Rights Reserved. IBM, the IBM logo, and jStart, are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other coun-
tries, or both. Other company, product, and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

23

Big Data Profiles
IBM Software Group

TerraEchos and IBM
Streaming data technology supports covert
intelligence and surveillance sensor systems

A leading provider of covert intelligence and surveillance sensor systems,
TerraEchos, Inc., helps organizations protect and monitor critical infrastructure
Overview
and secure borders. One T erraEchos client is a science-based, applied
The need engineering national laboratory dedicated to supporting the U.S. Department
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
of Energy in nuclear and energy research, science and national defense.
Research lab needed a solution to protect
and monitor critical infrastructure and
secure its perimeters and border areas. One of the lab’s initiatives is to be the first to develop safe, clean and
The solution reliable nuclear power. Another is to investigate and test emerging
IBM Business Partner, TerraEchos, capabilities for the production, manufacturing, conveyance, transmission
implemented an advanced security and consumption of renewable energy, such as solar and wind power.
and covert surveillance system based
Securing the scientific intelligence, technology and resources related to
on the TerraEchos Adelos S4 System
with IBM InfoSphere Streams software these initiatives is vital. Protecting and sustaining the resiliency and
and IBM BladeCenter hardware. operational reliability of the country’s power infrastructures—from natural
The benefit disasters, cyber attacks and terrorism—are matters of national and
Captures and analyzes huge volumes homeland security.
of real-time, streaming, acoustical
data from sensors around research
Protecting its work and securing America’s energy future are responsibilities
lab perimeters and borders, providing
unprecedented insight to detect, classify, the lab takes seriously. To this end, it needed a technology solution that would
locate, track, and deter potential threats. detect, classify, locate and track potential threats—both mechanical and
biological; above and below ground—to secure the lab’s perimeters and
border areas. This solution would provide scientists with more situational
awareness and enable a faster and more intelligent response to any threat.

Distinguishing the sound of a whisper from the wind
even from miles away
The requirements of the ideal solution were considerable. The solution
would have to continuously consume and analyze massive amounts of
information-in-motion, including the movements of humans, animals and
the atmosphere, such as wind. In addition, because scientists lacked time to
record the data and listen to it later, the solution had to gather and analyze
information simultaneously.

24

Big Data Profiles
IBM Software Group

Once analyzed, scientists could extract meaningful intelligence, as well as
Solution components: verify and validate the data, such as distinguishing between the sounds of a
trespasser versus a grazing animal. T put the sophistication of the needed
o
Software technology into perspective, the data consumption and analytical requirements
• IBM® InfoSphere® Streams would be akin to listening to 1,000 MP3 songs simultaneously and successfully
Server discerning the word “zero” from every song—within a fraction of a second.
• IBM BladeCenter® servers

The solution would also serve as the lab’s central nervous system and
would have to meet strict technical requirements, including:
• Interoperability, allowing sensors to work with other sensor types—
such as video data—and enabling scientists to collect an array of data
and create a holistic view of a situation.
• Scalability to support new requirements as the lab’s fiber-optic arrays,
surveillance areas, and security perimeters change.
• Extensibility, serving as a framework to fit into the lab’s existing IT
architecture and integrating with signal processors and mobile and
mapping applications.

To meet these requirements, the lab sought to implement and deploy an
advanced security and surveillance system.

Advanced fiber-optics combine with real-time
streaming data
The lab turned to IBM® Business Partner, T erraEchos, to implement an
advanced security and covert surveillance system based on its TerraEchos Adelos
S4 System, IBM InfoSphere® Streams software and IBM BladeCenter® servers.
InfoSphere Streams is part of the IBM big data platform.

TerraEchos selected InfoSphere Streams as the engine that processes
approximately 1,600 megabytes of data in motion continually generated from
fiber optic sensor arrays. The processing capacity of InfoSphere Streams
enables Adelos to analyze all of the data streaming from the sensors. In
addition, the technology enables Adelos to match the sound patterns against
an extensive library of algorithms, giving TerraEchos the most robust
classification system in the industry.

The Adelos S4 solution is based on advanced fiber-optic acoustic sensor
technology licensed from the United States Navy. Using InfoSphere
Streams as the underlying analytics platform, the Adelos S4 solution
analyzes highly unstructured audio data in real time before the audio
signals are stored in the database. InfoSphere Streams allows multiple
sensor types and associated streams of structured and unstructured data
to be integrated into a fused intelligence system for threat detection,
classification, correlation, prediction and communication by means of a
service-oriented architecture (SOA).

2

25

Big Data Profiles
IBM Software Group

Adelos S4 technology comprises a fiber-optic sensor array buried in the
ground to gather real-time acoustic information. These data are analyzed,
“Given our data and the sound patterns are matched against complex algorithms to
processing and analytical determine what made the noise. Incorporating InfoSphere Streams
challenges associated technology, the Adelos S4 system can instantly identify, distinguish and
classify a variety of objects detected by the fiber-optic sensor array, such
with the Adelos Sensor
as a human whisper, the pressure of a footstep and the chirping of a bird.
Array, InfoSphere
Streams is the right Distinguishing between true and false threats
solution for us and our The solution captures and transmits volumes of real-time, streaming
customers. We look acoustical data from around the lab premises, providing unprecedented
insight into any event. Specifically, the system enables scientists and security
forward to growing our personnel to “hear” what is going on—even when the disturbance is miles
strategic relationship away. In fact, the solution is so sensitive and the analytics so sophisticated
with IBM across various that scientists can recognize and distinguish between the sound of a human
voice and the wind. In this way, the lab can confidently determine whether
sectors and markets to a potential security threat is approaching—and prepare for action—or
help revolutionize the whether it is simply a storm.
concept of Sensor as
a Service.” Using miles of fiber-optic cables and thousands of listening devices buried
underground, the lab collects and analyzes gigabytes of data within seconds and
then classifies that data. These capabilities enable the lab to extend its perimeter
– Dr. Alex Philp, President and CEO,
TerraEchos, Inc.
security and gain a strategic advantage. It not only enables security to make the
best decisions about apprehending the trespassers—such as how many officers
to deploy and which tactics to use—but also thwarts any plans the intruders
may have had to breach the property.

Meeting data processing and analytical challenges
The solution is part of a more comprehensive security system. With the
ability to integrate and collect data from video and airborne surveillance
systems, scientists gain a holistic view of potential threats and issues—or
nonissues. For instance, by cross-analyzing the acoustic data collected by the
solution with the video data of another, the lab can eliminate or minimize
unnecessary security actions, such as dispatching crews to investigate sounds
made by a herd of deer or a fallen tree.

Finally, in addition to meeting the lab’s requirements for extensibility,
interoperability and scalability, the solution saves the lab costs associated with
data storage because data does not have to be stored before being analyzed.

“Given our data processing and analytical challenges associated with the
Adelos Sensor Array, InfoSphere Streams is the right solution for us and our
customers,” says Dr. Alex Philp, President and CEO of TerraEchos, Inc. “We
look forward to growing our strategic relationship with IBM across various
sectors and markets to help revolutionize the concept of Sensor as Service.”

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26





For information on TerraEchos visit:
www.terraechos.com


IBM Corporation
Software Group
Route 100
Somers, NY 10589
U.S.A.

October 2011
All Rights Reserved

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, InfoSphere and BladeCenter are trademarks or
registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the
United States, other countries, or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms
are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol
(® or ™), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks
owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may
also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of
IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information”
at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

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27

University of Ontario
Institute of Technology
Leveraging key data to provide proactive patient care

The rapid advance of medical monitoring technology has done
Overview wonders to improve patient outcomes. Today, patients are routinely
connected to equipment that continuously monitors vital signs such as
The need
blood pressure, heart rate and temperature. The equipment issues an
To better detect subtle warning signs of
complications, clinicians need to gain alert when any vital sign goes out of the normal range, prompting
greater insight into the moment-by- hospital staff to take action immediately, but many life-threatening
moment condition of patients. conditions do not reach critical level right away. Often, signs that
The solution something is wrong begin to appear long before the situation becomes
A ﬁrst-of-its-kind, stream-computing serious, and even a skilled and experienced nurse or physician might
platform was developed to capture and not be able to spot and interpret these trends in time to avoid serious
analyze real-time data from medical
complications.
monitors, alerting hospital staff to
potential health problems before
patients manifest clinical signs of Unfortunately, the warning indicators are sometimes so hard to detect
infection or other issues. that it is nearly impossible to identify and understand their implica-
What makes it smarter tions until it is too late. One example of such a hard-to-detect problem
Early warning gives caregivers the is nosocomial infection, which is contracted at the hospital and is life
ability to proactively deal with potential threatening to fragile patients such as premature infants.
complications—such as detecting
infections in premature infants up to
24 hours before they exhibit symptoms. According to physicians at the University of Virginia,1 an examination
of retrospective data reveals that, starting 12 to 24 hours before any
overt sign of trouble, almost undetectable changes begin to appear in
the vital signs of infants who have contracted this infection. The indi-
cation is a pulse that is within acceptable limits, but not varying as it
should—heart rates normally rise and fall throughout the day. In a
baby where infection has set in, this doesn’t happen as much and the
heart rate becomes too regular over time. So, while the information
needed to detect the infection is present, the indication is very subtle;
rather than being a single warning sign, it is a trend over time that can
be difficult to spot, especially in the fast-paced environment of an
intensive care unit.

28

The monitors continuously generate information that can give early
Business benefits warning signs of an infection, but the data is too large for the human
mind to process in a timely manner. Consequently, the information
● Holds the potential to give clinicians that could prevent an infection from escalating to life-threatening sta-
an unprecedented ability to interpret
vast amounts of heterogeneous data tus is often lost.
in real time, enabling them to spot
subtle trends
“The challenge we face is that there’s too much data,” says Dr. Andrew
● Combines physician and nurse knowl- James, staff neonatologist at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids)
edge and experience with technology
capabilities to yield more robust
in Toronto. “In the hectic environment of the neonatal intensive care
results than can be provided by moni- unit, the ability to absorb and reflect upon everything presented is
toring devices alone beyond human capacity, so the significance of trends is often lost.”
● Provides a flexible platform that can
adapt to a wide variety of medical
monitoring needs
Making better use of the data resource
The significance of the data overload challenge was not lost on
Dr. Carolyn McGregor, Canada Research Chair in Health Informatics
at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT). “As
someone who has been doing a lot of work with data analysis and data
warehousing, I was immediately struck by the plethora of devices pro-
viding information at high speeds—information that went unused,” she
says. “Information that’s being provided at up to 1,000 readings per
second is summarized into one reading every 30 to 60 minutes, and it
typically goes no further. It’s stored for up to 72 hours and is then dis-
carded. I could see that there were enormous opportunities to capture,
store and utilize this data in real time to improve the quality of care for
neonatal babies.”

With a shared interest in providing better patient care, Dr. McGregor
and Dr. James partnered to find a way to make better use of the infor-
mation produced by monitoring devices. Dr. McGregor visited
researchers at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center’s Industry
Solutions Lab (ISL), who were extending a new stream-computing

Smarter healthcare: Using streaming data to help clinicians spot infections

Instrumented Patient’s vital-sign data is captured by bedside monitoring devices up
to 1,000 times per second.

Interconnected Monitoring-device data and integrated clinician knowledge are
brought together in real time for an automated analysis using a
sophisticated, streamlined computing platform.

Intelligent Detecting medically significant events even before patients exhibit
symptoms will enable proactive treatment before the condition
worsens, eventually increasing the success rate and potentially
saving lives.

2

29

platform to support healthcare analytics. A three-way collaboration
Solution components was established, with each group bringing a unique perspective—the
hospital focus on patient care, the university’s ideas for using the data
Software
stream, and IBM providing the advanced analysis software and infor-
● IBM InfoSphere™ Streams
● IBM DB2® mation technology expertise needed to turn this vision into reality.

Research The result was Project Artemis, part of IBM’s First-of-a-Kind pro-
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
gram, which pairs IBM’s scientists with clients to explore how emerg-
●

ing technologies can solve real-world business problems. Project
Artemis is a highly ﬂexible platform that aims to help physicians make
“I could see that there better, faster decisions regarding patient care for a wide range of condi-
tions. The earliest iteration of the project is focused on early detection
were enormous opportu-
of nosocomial infection by watching for reduced heart rate variability
nities to capture, store along with other indications. For safety reasons, in this development
and utilize this data in phase the information is being collected in parallel with established
clinical practice and is not being made available to clinicians. The early
real time to improve the indications of its efficacy are very promising.
quality of care for
neonatal babies.” Project Artemis is based on IBM InfoSphere™ Streams, a new infor-
mation processing architecture that enables near-real-time decision
support through the continuous analysis of streaming data using
—Dr. Carolyn McGregor, Canada Research
Chair in Health Informatics, University of
sophisticated, targeted algorithms. The IBM DB2® relational
Ontario Institute of Technology database provides the data management required to support future
retrospective analyses of the collected data.

A different kind of research initiative
Because SickKids is a research institution, moving the project forward
was not difficult. “The hospital sees itself as involved in the generation
of new knowledge. There’s an expectation that we’ll do research. We
have a research institute and a rigorous research ethics board, so the
infrastructure was already there,” Dr. James notes.

Project Artemis was a consequence of the unique and collaborative
relationship between SickKids, UOIT and IBM. “To gain its support,
we needed to do our homework very carefully and show that all the
bases were covered. The hospital was cautious, but from the beginning
we had its full support to proceed.”

Even with the support of the hospital, there were challenges to be
overcome. Because Project Artemis is more about information technol-
ogy than about traditional clinical research, new issues had to be con-
sidered. For example, the hospital CIO became involved because the

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30

system had to be integrated into the existing network without any
impact. Regulatory and ethical concerns are part of any research at
SickKids, and there were unique considerations here in terms of the
protection and security of the data. The research team’s goal was to
exceed provincial and federal requirements for the privacy and security
of personal health information—the data had to be safeguarded and
restricted more carefully than usual because it was being transmitted
to both the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and to the
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center.

After the overarching concerns were dealt with, the initial tests could
begin. Two infant beds were instrumented and connected to the system
for data collection. To ensure safety and effectiveness, the project is
being deployed slowly and carefully, notes Dr. James. “We have to be
careful not to introduce new technologies just because they’re avail-
able, but because they really do add value,” says Dr. James. “It is a
stepwise process that is still ongoing. It started with our best attempt at
creating an algorithm. Now we’re looking at its performance, and
using that information to fine tune it. When we can quantify what vari-
ous activities do to the data stream, we’ll be able to filter them out and
get a better reading.” The ultimate goal is to create a robust, valid sys-
tem fit to serve as the basis for a randomized clinical trial.

Merging human knowledge and technology
The initial test of the Project Artemis system captured the data stream
from bedside monitors and processed it using algorithms designed to
spot the telltale signs of nosocomial infection. The algorithm concept
is the essential difference between the Artemis system and the existing
alarms built into bedside monitors. Although the first test is focused on
nosocomial infection, the system has the flexibility to handle any rule
on any combination of behaviors across any number of data streams.
“What we’ve built is a set of rules that reflects our best understanding
of the condition. We can change and update them as we learn more, or
to account for variations in individual patients. Artemis represents a
whole new level of capability,” Dr. James notes.

The truly significant aspect of the Project Artemis approach is how it
brings human knowledge and expertise together with device-generated
data to produce a better result. The system’s outputs are based on algo-
rithms developed as a collaboration between the clinicians themselves
and programmers. This inclusion of the human element is critical,

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31

because good patient care cannot be reduced to mere data points.
Validation of these results by an experienced physician is vital since the
interpretation of these results has to do with medical knowledge, judg-
ment, skill and experience. As part of the project, the rules being used
by Project Artemis are undergoing separate clinical research to support
evidence-based practice.

Artemis also holds the potential to become much more sophisticated.
For example, eventually it might integrate a variety of data inputs in
addition to the streaming data from monitoring devices—from lab
results to observational notes about the patient’s condition to the
physician’s own methods for interpreting information. In this way, the
knowledge, understanding and even intuition of physicians and nurses
will become the basis of the system that enables them to do much
more than they could on their own.

“In the early days, there was a lot of concern that computers would
eventually ‘replace’ all health care providers,” Dr. James says. “But now
we understand that human beings cannot do everything, and it’s quite
helpful to develop tools that enhance and extend the physicians’ and
nurses’ capabilities. I look to a future where I’m going to receive an
alert that provides me with a comprehensive, real-time view of the
patient, allowing me to make better decisions on the spot.”

Broadening the impact of Artemis
The ﬂexibility of the platform means that in the future, any condition
that can be detected through subtle changes in the underlying data
streams can be the target of the system’s early-warning capabilities.
Also, since it depends only on the availability of a data stream, it holds
the potential for use outside the ICU and even outside the hospital.
For example, the use of remote sensors and wireless connectivity would
allow the system to monitor patients wherever they are, while still pro-
viding life-saving alerts in near-real time.

“I think the framework would also be applicable for any person who
requires close monitoring—children with leukemia, for example,” says
Dr. James. “These kids are at home, going to school, participating
in sports—they’re mobile. It leads into the whole idea of sensors
attached to or even implanted in the body and wireless connectivity.
Theoretically, we could ultimately monitor these conditions
from anywhere on the planet.”

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32

contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner.

Visit us at: ibm.com/smarterplanet/healthcare


IBM Corporation
1 New Orchard Road
Armonk, NY 10504
U.S.A.

December 2010
All Rights Reserved.

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Let’s Build A Smarter Planet, Smarter Planet, the
planet icons, DB2 and InfoSphere are trademarks or registered trademarks of
International Business Machines Corporation, registered in many jurisdictions
worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or
other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at
ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

This case study illustrates how one IBM customer uses IBM products. There is no
guarantee of comparable results.

1
P. Griffin and R. Moorman, “Toward the early diagnosis of neonatal sepsis and
sepsis-like illness using novel heart rate analysis,” Pediatrics, vol. 107, no. 1, 2001.

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33

Big Data Profiles
IBM Software Group

Uppsala University,
Swedish Institute of
Space Physics and IBM
Streaming real-time data supports large scale study
of space weather

Uppsala University, the Swedish Institute of Space Physics and IBM®
Overview are collaborating on major new Stream Computing project to analyze
massive volumes of information in real time to better understand “space
The need
Plasma eruptions from the sun adversely
weather.” By using IBM InfoSphere® Streams to analyze data from
affect energy transmission over power sensors that track high frequency radio waves, endless amounts of data
lines, communications via radio and TV can be captured and analyzed on the fly. This project offers the capability
signals, airline and space travel, and
satellites. Collecting huge amounts of to perform analytics on at least 6 gigabytes of data per second or 21,600
data has surpassed the ability to store gigabytes per hour—the equivalent of all the web pages on the Internet.
or analyze it.
InfoSphere Streams software is part of IBM’s big data platform.
The solution
IBM InfoSphere Streams software
collects huge volumes of data to be Analyzing large volumes of space weather data
analyzed in real time. Data filtering in real time
capabilities separate meaningful
data from “noise” to reduce data
Scientists sample high frequency radio emissions from space to study
storage requirements. and forecast “space weather” or the effect of plasma eruptions on the
The benefit
sun that reach the earth and adversely affect energy transmission over
Predictive analysis warns when a power lines, communications via radio and TV signals, airline and space
magnetic storm on the sun will reach the travel, and satellites. However, the recent advent of new sensor
earth; preventive changes to sensitive
satellites and power grids can minimize
technology and antennae arrays means that the amount of information
damage caused by energy bursts from collected by scientists has surpassed the ability to intelligently analyze
the sun. it. IBM InfoSphere Streams, software derived from the IBM Research
project System S, enables large volumes of data to be analyzed in real
time making an entirely new level of analytics possible.

“IBM InfoSphere Streams is opening up a whole new way of doing
science, not only in this area, but any area of e-Science where you have
lots of data coming in from external sources and sensors, streaming at
such high data rates you can’t handle it with conventional technology,”
says Dr. Bo Thide, Professor and Head of Research, Swedish Institute
of Space Physics and Director of the LOIS Space Center in Sweden.
“It has helped create a paradigm shift in the area of online observation
of the earth, space, sun and atmosphere.”

34

Big Data Profiles
IBM Software Group

Sunspot activity, electromagnetic storms, and other types of solar
Solution components: activity can impact communications signals. As critical infrastructure
such as power grids and telecommunications networks become more
Software
digitally aware, instrumented and interconnected, it is increasingly
• IBM® InfoSphere® Streams
important to understand how these can be affected by influences such
as electromagnetic interference or other changes in the atmosphere.

“IBM InfoSphere Streams Researchers at Uppsala University and the Swedish Institute of Space
is opening up a whole Physics worked with the LOIS Space Center facility in Sweden to
new way of doing science, develop a new type of tri-axial antenna that streams three-dimensional
not only in this area, radio data from space, extracting a magnitude more physical information
than any other type of antennae array before. Since researchers need to
but any area of e-Science. measure signals from space over large time spans, the raw data generated
It has helped create a by even one antenna quickly becomes too large to handle or store.
paradigm shift in the
area of online observation “We’ve embarked upon an entirely new way of observing radio signals
of the earth, space, sun using digital sensors that produce enormous amounts of data,” Thide
adds. “With this type of research, you have to be able to analyze as
and atmosphere.” much data as possible on the fly. There is no way to even consider
storing it. InfoSphere Streams is playing a pivotal role in this project.
– Dr. Bo Thide, Professor and Head of
Research, Swedish Institute of Space Without it, we could not possibly receive this volume of signals and
Physics, and Director of the LOIS Space handle them at such a high data rate because until now, there was not a
Center in Sweden
structured, stable way of analyzing it.”

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35

Big Data Profiles
IBM Software Group

Predicting events in space and on the sun
The technology addresses this problem by analyzing and filtering the
“InfoSphere Streams is data the moment it streams in, helping researchers identify the critical
playing a pivotal role in fraction of a percent that is meaningful, while the rest is filtered out as
this project. Without it, we noise. Using a visualization package, scientists can perform queries on
could not possibly receive the data stream to look closely at interesting events, allowing them not
this volume of signals and only to forecast, but to nowcast events just a few hours away. These
capabilities will help predict, for example, if a magnetic storm on the
handle them at such a sun will reach the earth in 18 to 24 hours.
high data rate because
until now, there was not The ultimate goal of the project at Uppsala University with IBM
a structured, stable way InfoSphere Streams is to model and predict the behavior of the
of analyzing it.” uppermost part of the atmosphere and its reaction to events in
surrounding space and on the sun. This work could have lasting impact
for future science experiments in space and on earth. With a unique
– Dr. Bo Thide
ability to predict how plasma clouds travel in space, new efforts can
be made to minimize damage caused by energy bursts or make changes
to sensitive satellites, power grids or communications systems.




To get involved in the conversation:

For more information on Uppsala University, visit
www.uu.se

For more information on the Swedish Institute of Space Physics, visit:
www.irfu.se

For more information on the LOIS Space Center, visit:
www.lois-space.net

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36

Vestas
Turning climate into capital with big data

For centuries, sailors have seen how fickle the wind can be. It ebbs
Smart is... and flows like the tide and can allow ships to travel great distances
or remain becalmed at sea.
Pinpointing the optimal location
for wind turbines to maximize
power generation and reduce But despite the wind’s capricious nature, new advances in science and
energy costs
technology enable energy producers to transform the wind into a
Precise placement of a wind turbine reliable and steadfast energy source—one that many believe will help
can affect its performance and its alleviate the problems of the world’s soaring energy consumption.
useful life. For Vestas, the world’s
largest wind energy company, gaining
new business depends on responding “Wind energy is one of today’s most important renewable energy
quickly and delivering business value.
To succeed, Vestas uses one of the sources,” says Lars Christian Christensen, vice president, Vestas Wind
largest supercomputers worldwide Systems A/S. “Fossil fuels will eventually run out. Wind is renewable,
along with a new big data modeling
predictable, clean and commercially viable. By 2020 as much as 10
solution to slice weeks from data
processing times and support 10 times percent of the world’s electricity consumption will be satisfied by wind
the amount of data for more accurate energy and we believe that wind power is an industry that will be on
turbine placement decisions. Improved
precision provides Vestas customers par with oil and gas.”
with greater business case certainty,
quicker results and increased
predictability and reliability in wind Producing electricity from wind
power generation. Making wind a reliable source of energy depends greatly on the
placement of the wind turbines used to produce electricity. The
windiest location may not generate the best output and revenue for
energy companies. Turbulence is a significant factor as it strains turbine
components, making them more likely to fail. Avoiding pockets of
turbulence can extend the service life of turbines and lower operating
costs, which reduces the cost per kilowatt hour of energy produced.

“We can now show our customers how the wind
behaves and provide a solid business case that is on
par with any other investment that they may have.”

– Lars Christian Christensen, Vice President, Vestas Wind Systems A/S

37

Selecting wind turbine sites is a science that Vestas understands well.
Business benefits Since 1979, this Danish company has been engaged in the development,
manufacture, sale and maintenance of wind power systems to generate
• Reduces response time for
wind forecasting information by
electricity. The company has installed more than 43,000 land-based and
approximately 97 percent—from offshore wind turbines in 66 countries on six continents. Today, Vestas
weeks to hours—to help cut installs an average of one wind turbine every three hours, 24 hours a
development time
• Improves accuracy of turbine day, and its turbines generate more than 90 million megawatt-hours of
placement with capabilities for energy per year—enough electricity to supply millions of households.
analyzing a greater breadth and
depth of data
• Lowers the cost to customers “Customers want to know what their return on investment will be
per kilowatt hour produced and
and they want business case certainty,” says Christensen who heads the
increases customers’ return
on investment company’s division responsible for determining the placement of wind
• Reduces IT footprint and costs, turbines. “For us to achieve business case certainty, we need to know
and decreases energy consumption
by 40 percent—all while increasing exactly how the wind is distributed across potential sites, and we need
computational power to compare this data with the turbine design specifications to make sure
the turbine can operate at optimal efficiency at that location.”

What happens if engineers pick a sub-optimal location? According to
Christensen, the cost of a mistake can be tremendous. “First of all, if the
turbines do not perform as intended, we risk losing customers. Secondly,
placing the turbines in the wrong location affects our warranty costs.
Turbines are designed to operate under specific conditions and can break
if they are operating outside of these parameters.”

For Vestas, the process of establishing a location starts with its wind
library, which incorporates data from global weather systems with data
collected from existing turbines. Combined, this information helps the
company not only select the best site for turbine placement, but also
helps forecast wind and power production for its customers.

Smarter Energy: Increases wind power generation through optimal turbine placement

Instrumented Determines the optimal turbine placement using weather forecasts and
data from operational wind power plants to create hourly and daily
predictions regarding energy production.

Interconnected Combines turbine data with data on temperature, barometric pressure,
humidity, precipitation, wind direction and velocity from the ground
level up to 300 feet.

Intelligent Precisely models wind flow to help staff understand wind patterns and
turbulence near each wind turbine and select the best location to
reduce the cost per kilowatt hour of energy produced.

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38

“We gather data from 35,000 meteorological stations scattered around
Solution components: the world and from our own turbines,” says Christensen. “That gives
us a picture of the global flow scenario. Those models are then cobbled
Software
to smaller models for regional level called mesoscale models. The
• IBM® InfoSphere® BigInsights
Enterprise Edition mesoscale models are used to establish our huge wind library so we
can pinpoint a specific location at a specific time of day and tell what
Hardware
the weather was like.”
• IBM System x® iDataPlex® dx360 M3
• IBM System Storage® DS5300
The company’s previous wind library provided detailed information
in a grid pattern with each grid measuring 27x27 kilometers (about
17x17 miles). Using computational fluid dynamics models, Vestas
“In our development
engineers can then bring the resolution down even further—to about
strategy, we see growing 10x10 meters (32x32 feet)—to establish the exact wind flow pattern at
our library in the range of a particular location.
18 to 24 petabytes of data.
And while it’s fairly easy However, in any modeling scenario, the more data and the smaller the
grid area, the greater the accuracy of the models. As a result, Christensen’s
to build that library, we
team wanted to expand its wind library more than 10 fold to include a
needed to make sure that larger range of weather data over a longer period of time. Additionally,
we could gain knowledge the company needed a more powerful computing platform to run global
from that data.” forecasts much faster. Often company executives had to wait up to three
weeks for feedback regarding potential sites—an unacceptable amount of
– Lars Christian Christensen time for Vestas and its customers in this competitive industry.

“In our development strategy, we see growing our library in the range
of 18 to 24 petabytes of data,” says Christensen. “And while it’s fairly
easy to build that library, we needed to make sure that we could gain
knowledge from that data.”

Turning climate into capital
Working with IBM, Vestas today is implementing a big data solution
that is slicing weeks from data processing time and helping staff more
quickly and accurately predict weather patterns at potential sites to
increase turbine energy production. Data currently stored in its wind
library comprises nearly 2.8 petabytes and includes more than 178
parameters, such as temperature, barometric pressure, humidity,
precipitation, wind direction and wind velocity from the ground level
up to 300 feet, along with the company’s own recorded historical data.
Future additions for use in predictions include global deforestation
metrics, satellite images, historical metrics, geospatial data and data on
phases of the moon and tides.

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39

“We could pose the questions before, but our previous systems were
Journey to Smarter not able to deliver the answers, or deliver the answers in the required
Computing timeframe,” says Christensen. “Now, if you give me the coordinates for
your back yard, we can dive into our modeled wind libraries and
Designed for Data
provide you with precise data on the weather over the past 11 years,
Implementing a big data solution
enables Vestas to create a wind library thereby predicting future weather and delivering power production
to hold 18 to 24 petabytes of weather prognosis. We have the ability to scan larger areas and determine more
and turbine data at various levels of
granularity and reduce the geographic quickly our current turbine coverage geographically and see if there
grid area used for modeling by 90 are spots we need to cover with a type of turbine. We can also assess
percent for increased accuracy.
information on how each turbine is operating and our potential risk
at a site.”
Tuned to the Task
Working with IBM, Vestas can increase
computational power while shrinking its IBM® InfoSphere® BigInsights software running on an IBM System x®
IT footprint and reducing server energy
consumption by 40 percent. Today, twice
iDataPlex® system serves as the core infrastructure to help Vestas manage
the number of servers can be run in each and analyze weather and location data in ways that were not previously
of its supercomputer’s 12 racks. possible. For example, the company can reduce the base resolution of its
wind data grids from a 27x27 kilometer area down to a 3x3 kilometer area
Managed for Rapid Service Delivery
Processing huge volumes of climate
(about 1.8x1.8 miles)—a nearly 90 percent reduction that gives executives
data and the ability to gain insight from more immediate insight into potential locations. Christensen estimates this
that data enables Vestas to forecast capability can eliminate a month of development time for a site and enable
optimal turbine placement in 15 minutes
instead of three weeks. This in turn customers to achieve a return on investment much earlier than anticipated.
shortens the time to develop a wind
turbine site by nearly a month.
“IBM InfoSphere BigInsights helps us gain access to knowledge in
a very efficient and extremely fast way and enables us to use this
knowledge to turn climate into capital,” says Christensen. “Before,
it could take us three weeks to get a response to some of our questions
simply because we had to process a lot of data. We expect that we
can get answers for the same questions now in 15 minutes.”

For customers, the detailed models mean greater business case
certainty, quicker results and increased predictability and reliability
on their investment.

“Our customers need predictability and reliability, and that can only
happen using systems like InfoSphere BigInsights,” says Christensen.
“We can give customers much better financial warrantees than we have
been able to in the past and can provide a solid business case that is on
par with any other investment that they may have.”

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40

Smarter Computing by design
Tackling big data challenges
“IBM InfoSphere Vestas and IBM worked together to implement IBM InfoSphere
BigInsights helps us BigInsights software, designed to enable organizations to gain insight
gain access to knowledge from information flows that are characterized by variety, velocity
in a very efficient and and volume. The solution combines open source Apache Hadoop
software with unique technologies and capabilities from IBM to enable
extremely fast way and
organizations to process very large data sets—breaking up the data
enables us to use this into chunks and coordinating the processing across a distributed
knowledge to turn environment for rapid, efficient analysis and results.
climate into capital.”
“IBM gave us an opportunity to turn our plans into something that
– Lars Christian Christensen was very tangible right from the beginning,” says Christensen. “IBM
had experts within data mining, big data and Apache Hadoop, and it
was clear to us from the beginning if we wanted to improve our
business, not only today, but also prepare for the challenges we will
face in three to five years, we had to go with IBM.”

Maintaining energy efficiency in its data center
For a company committed to addressing the world’s energy
requirements, it’s no surprise that as Vestas implemented its big data
solution, it also sought a high-performance, energy efficient computing
environment that would reduce its carbon footprint. Today, the platform
that drives its forecasting and analysis comprises a hardware stack based
on the IBM System x iDataPlex supercomputer. This supercomputing
solution—one of the world’s largest to date—enables the company to use
40 percent less energy while increasing computational power. Twice the
number of servers can be run in each of the system’s 12 racks—reducing
the amount of floor space required in its data center.

“The supercomputer provides the foundation for a completely new
way of doing business at Vestas and combined with IBM software
delivers a smarter approach to computing that optimizes the way we
work,” says Christensen.

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41

“Before, it could take us u The inside story: getting there
three weeks to get a
response to some of our According to Christensen, the idea for this project began with
the collaboration among his team, the company’s global research
questions simply because
department and its sales business units.
we had to process a lot of
data. We expect that we “We needed to know where the goldmines of wind are hidden,
can get answers for the and we needed to have more information to aid our decisions,”
same questions now in says Christensen. “We quickly formed a project group that took
the idea forward and set out some key performance indicators
15 minutes.”
that had to be met in order to proceed to the stage where we
are today.”
– Lars Christian Christensen

For Vestas, the opportunity that a big data solution could provide
made the decision easy. “Once we had the business potential of
having these capabilities, it was fairly easy to gain acceptance,”
says Christensen. “We were able to show the cost of a system
alongside the near-term and long-term benefits, so it was really
a no brainer.”

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42

please contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner.

To learn more about big data solutions from IBM, visit:

To learn more about IBM InfoSphere BigInsights, visit:
ibm.com/software/data/infosphere/biginsights


To get involved in the conversation:

For more information about Vestas Wind Systems A/S, visit:
www.vestas.com

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43

IBM Software

Transform insights
into action
IBM’s Watson and the future of data

Watson, named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, was built by a
Highlights team of IBM scientists who set out to accomplish a grand challenge—
build a computing system that rivals a human’s ability to answer questions
G IBM’s Watson—the computing system posed in natural language with speed, accuracy and confidence. The
that competed with human contestants
on Jeopardy!1—illustrates how managing Jeopardy! format provides the ultimate challenge because the game’s clues
“Big Data” and applying analytics can involve analyzing subtle meaning, irony, riddles, and other complexities in
help businesses gain meaningful insights which humans excel and computers traditionally do not.
G Watson shows how we can confidently
make decisions through ranking answers, But Watson’s breakthrough is not in natural language processing alone.
and handle structured and unstructured Its ability to ingest massive amounts of data, apply hundreds of analytical
data by running hundreds of different
kinds of analytical queries across all dif- queries to come up with an answer, and then put confidence behind that
ferent kinds of information answer, represents an advance for the kinds of problems that are
emerging in business.
G Applying those innovations from Watson
to an organization can help transform
business models Today, computing is increasingly instrumenting business, underlying
every process that runs operations—from supply chain management, to
human resources and payroll, to financial management, security and risk.
And now, as more of the world becomes instrumented—everything from
roadways, power grids, consumer goods and food—businesses need the
ability to analyze the data coming from these sources in real-time.

Traditional computing systems are built to analyze only structured data,
or to run analytics in batch reporting jobs. But today’s businesses require
the same kind of information consumption, advanced analytics and
real-time response that is needed to answer questions on Jeopardy!

44

IBM Software

Insights to drive business decisions

Use insights to
45%
guide future
strategies 20%

Use insights to 53%
guide day-to-day
operations 27%

Top performers
Lower performers

Note: Respondents were asked to rate how well their business unit or department performed the noted
tasks. Chart represents answers from those who selected “very well” using a ﬁve-point scale from “not
well at all” to “very well.”
Source: Analytics: The New Path to Value, a joint MIT Sloan Management Review and IBM Institute for
Business Value study. Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2010.

Figure 1: More than twice as many top performers as lower performers used analytics to guide day-to-day operations and future strategies.

While Watson represents a technological The performance of these computing systems—the hardware
and software that manages the information and runs both ana-
milestone, the real pioneers will be the people lytics and the business processes—is increasingly associated with
and organizations that embrace this innova- the performance of the business. Watson is one example of the
tion and turn its potential into results. new kind of workloads that businesses will apply to achieve
their business goals.

How can Watson-like analytics capabilities Putting the power of Watson to work
transform your business? How does your
organization’s use of “Big Data” manage- For many companies, business analytics has emerged as a strate-
gic priority throughout the C-suite. In fact, top-performing
ment and business analytics compare to that organizations use analytics ﬁve times more than lower perform-
of top-performing companies? ers, according to a 2010 report by the IBM Institute for
Business Value and MIT Sloan Management Review.

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45

IBM Software

Organizations already benefiting from advanced analytics
include:
“ Almost immediately after going live with
G The New York State Department of Taxation and IBM analytics software, we were able to
Finance—The organization, which processes 24 million busi- increase our in-park spending by as much as
ness and personal tax returns annually, is using IBM analytics
software and services to transform its approach from “pay and
25 percent by utilizing 360 degree customer
chase” to “next best case”. views. We now have the ability to see and
analyze data in all corners of our business—
The system identifies the next refund requests most likely to
be questionable and focuses precious audit resources on these.
presented in the way we want to see it
In its five years of operation, the system has preserved more whenever we need it—and be more
than $1.2 billion against fraudulent requests. responsive to our customers.”
G Cincinnati Zoo— Located in Cincinnati, Ohio, the zoo fea-
—John Lucas, Director of Operations, Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden
tures more than 500 animal and 3,000 plant species, making it
one of the largest collections in the country. To keep the facil-
ity running in a sustainable fashion and maximize resources,
the Cincinnati Zoo implemented IBM analytics software. As a
result, the zoo’s growing amount of information was turned
into knowledge for their staff to improve operations.
IBM can provide the same kind of system, information manage-
ment and analytics capabilities that power Watson for your
The zoo was able to increase in-park spending by as much as
organization. The experts who built Watson are on hand to
25 percent by utilizing 360 degree customer views. They
help you chart a path to get more value out of your IT systems.
turned that information into customized offers and perks for
visitors to keep them happy and coming back, and the zoo
To learn more about Watson and how advanced analytics can
is now able to arm their managers with real-time data that
be applied to optimize business outcomes, visit one of our
allows them to react to a dynamic and fluid business driven by
IBM Analytic Solution Centers or ask about coordinating
seasonal weather patterns.
an IBM briefing at a location of your choice. Contact your
IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner for more
Business analytics has also allowed the zoo to integrate the
information, or visit: ibm.com/bao/
operations and run a more sustainable business. This has
helped free up their staff’s time so they can focus on the
Additionally, financing solutions from IBM Global Financing
day-to-day operations in a more meaningful way, while also
can enable effective cash management, protection from technol-
focusing on the larger picture of ensuring the zoo’s animals
ogy obsolescence, improved total cost of ownership and return
continue to receive the best care. Further, the zoo’s revenue
on investment. Also, our Global Asset Recovery Services help
has increased $350,000 per year, which enables them to dedi-
address environmental concerns with new, more energy-
cate more resources to the well-being of the animals.
efficient solutions. For more information on IBM Global
Financing, visit: ibm.com/financing

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46

IBM Software Digital Media
Case Study

[x+1]
Helping clients reach their marketing goals with analytics
powered by IBM Netezza

Digital marketers are good at collecting data, but often find it
challenging to derive actionable insights from the massive volumes of
Overview
information they gather online. When buying ads, for example, many
The need marketers base their decisions on the last click from a previous
Need for stronger computing power to
campaign. This leaves them unable to identify potent indicators
accommodate real-time analysis on massive
data volumes of online and offline data revealed earlier in the purchase funnel, such as in-market readiness.

The solution
This strategy is far from perfect. Some consumers are barraged with ad
IBM Netezza 1000 data warehouse appliance
messages, others are under-exposed, and as a result they do not fully
The benefit understand the product or offer message. The bottom line is that
• 20% growth in digital sales –
advertising dollars aren’t being spent optimally and the business
the clients see more revenue from opportunity is not maximized.
more customers

• Ability to gauge online and offline
How does a company manage its messaging and media channels to
marketing impact effectively propel consumers through the purchase funnel? The answer
lies in the application of complex but essential advertising analysis on
• More robust view of the consumer
massive volumes of data in real-time. This is a capability offered by
• Break down of data silos [x+1] and enabled by IBM® Netezza®.

[x+1] and IBM Netezza
Founded in 1999, [x+1] helps marketers and agencies to maximize
prospect and customer interactions across multiple digital channels
through [x+1] ORIGIN, its digital marketing hub and a suite of
advanced analytics. The process begins with finding consumers and by
“flagging key data elements that tell you if they’re in your target
audience,” says Leon Zemel, [x+1]’s chief analytics officer. Then, by
delivering messages based on the segment and the consumer’s place in
the purchase-decision funnel – along with the right exposure range
(called Optimal Frequency Range, or OFR) – all calculated in real time,
success is achieved.

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Case Study

[x+1] ORIGIN enables the management of audience interactions
“Historically, we talked through the following products and services:

about lift in the response • Media+1 – An audience targeting and bidding Demand Side Platform
rate or the conversion rate. (DSP) for pre-purchased and exchange-based digital media.
S
ite+1 – A website personalization management tool that assembles
Now we’re talking about •
data about prospects and customers, which chooses the statistically
lift in total digital sales. optimal mix of offers or content to show each site visitor.
And we’re seeing a big • L
anding Page+1 – A service for delivering tailored landing pages
based on visitor profiles and traffic sources. When paired with
year-over-year impact – 20 Media+1, it becomes a highly effective media-aware landing page.
percent growth. Net-net, • Analytics tools and services, including the 2011 release of Reach/
Frequency Manager, which provides packaged and custom reporting
the client is seeing more and insights to track and improve digital marketing across the
revenue from more customer purchase decision funnel.
customers.” • Open Data Bridge DMP (Digital Management Platform) to
collect, store and manage all first and third party data for in-bound and
— Leon Zemel
out-bound marketing.
Chief Analytics Officer, [x+1] Inc.

POE™, [x+1]’s proprietary Predictive Optimization Engine which is at the
heart of [x+1] ORIGIN, is engineered to leverage sophisticated mathematical
models to test, optimize and scale marketing return on investment.

The strategic and tactical marketing, and media outputs made possible
by [x+1]’s technology and tools, are driven by data that spans the
massive Internet population. Though it’s not about volume alone;
effective use depends on the analysis of the right elements.

As Zemel sees it, too many firms rely on small-data approaches – such
as attribution analysis based on the last click – which fail to track the
impact of offline media. [x+1] tracks attributions across both digital and
offline channels and delivers effective, predictive analysis.

It takes granular data to complete this task and the data points have to
be “organized so they can be analyzed and leveraged for marketing
value,” according to Zemel. As many firms have learned the hard way,
massive data capture cannot be effectively leveraged with traditional
database marketing technology.

Big computing power
Enter IBM Netezza. [x+1] had decided to replace its legacy MySQL
database with a data warehouse appliance that would provide the
needed horsepower, scalability and ease of use.

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48

Case Study

Previously [x+1] used Oracle, SAS, and in-house developed ETL
Solution Components processes, which put flat files directly into solutions like SAS. Data
volumes were growing and the analytics team had to perform
Hardware increasingly complex ad-hoc analysis to serve clients and help them
• IBM® Netezza® 1000 grow their businesses. That meant moving from a traditional relational
database management systems (RDBMS) to proprietary analytical tools.

“We used to look at every impression individually as opposed to taking a
comprehensive view of that user,” Zemel says. “We had to take a more
longitudinal look. But we couldn’t support that level of complexity.”

What [x+1] needed was processing power, the kind that facilitates
data-intensive analysis in a real-time environment. Having heard from
partners and other firms in the space, [x+1] turned to IBM Netezza.
While other solutions were also considered, “We compared IBM
Netezza to our Oracle environment more than anything,” Zemel says.

Based on this review, [x+1] chose the IBM Netezza data warehouse
appliance and deployed it with minimal effort. One deciding factor was
speed – IBM Netezza facilitates real-time analytics. Additionally [x+1] was
impressed with IBM Netezza’s scalability and price/performance ratio.

The IBM Netezza data warehouse appliance architecturally integrates
database, server and storage into a single, easy to manage system which
requires minimal set-up and ongoing administration. It delivers high
performance, out-of-the-box, with no indexing or tuning required, and
it simplifies business analytics dramatically by consolidating all analytic
activity in the appliance, right where the data resides.

Data is now run through TIBCO® Spotfire and placed in visualization
outputs for the convenience of the end users – namely media planners
and analytics professionals at digital marketing firms and their agencies.
IBM Netezza helps marketers cut through the digital exhaust and
respond more quickly to consumer needs. In short, it helps them
synchronize large data volumes into meaningful marketing.

By installing the IBM Netezza data warehouse appliance, [x+1] was able to
provide its analytics team with a simple SQL interface that could handle
massive volumes of data. The analysts can focus on gleaning insights, and
the engineering team can focus on the company’s core products.

3
49

Case Study

At the same time, clients can now move quickly up the maturity curve
“For this single client, we – they can leverage increasingly sophisticated types of data analysis to
create business value. Firms that climb the maturity curve the fastest
collect five billion are the ones most likely to win.
cross-channel marketing
impressions per month from A client’s story
With the IBM Netezza engine empowering [x+1]’s solutions, [x+1] is
all its marketing activities. helping marketers solve seemingly insoluble problems. For example,
This is where we really use one client had a “mass of uncultivated user interactions – log files, web
site analytic data, customer data,” says Zemel. “But it had trouble fully
the power of IBM Netezza.” monetizing this sprawling virtual metropolis of digital customers.”
— Leon Zemel
They had the typical problem of bombarding some consumers with the
same ad over and over just because they visited a web site. Meanwhile,
other consumers who needed multiple touches, simply didn’t get them.
“Last-view attribution analysis leads us to believe that this might
actually be working,” Zemel says. “But consumers are not going to
switch brands just because they saw one display ad.”

The result for this client: “The audience composition was way below
where it needed to be,” Zemel says. Even worse, the firm didn’t know
the full impact of its marketing. “There was a disconnect between the
digital investment and digital P&L.”

Multi-dimensional data
To solve this problem, [x+1] applied two core customer-centric,
data-driven marketing precepts:

• Define the consumer and their needs.
• Determine the messages and investment that will move the consumer
along the purchase funnel.

This required a multi-dimensional data approach: The company had to
update the consumer’s record with every interaction – in real-time.
They also needed to access demographic and lifestyle data from
third-party sources. This was needed to determine who the consumer
is and their personal profile segment, as well as behavioral data based
on all the touches that are being supplied to that consumer. These
included banner-clicks, search activity, site visits, product signups and
comparison shopping.

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50

Case Study

How do these different data elements work together?
Prospect segmentation does not tell the business owner enough
information regarding the person who is preparing to make a purchase. An
audience prospect segment for a car dealer (e.g. urban dweller, head of
household, student) won’t reveal that he or she is in the market to buy a car,
but it will when combined with his or her behavior. “If he or she has
searched or visited a car shopping site, we have a strong indication of how
likely he or she is to buy a car,” says Zemel.

He warned, though, that it takes at least a half-dozen data sources to create
a robust consumer profile, and that the marketer must judge the accuracy
of each source to decide which ones to use for modeling and targeting.

At this point, having applied predictive segmentation to the data, the
client was able to decide the message and the Optimal Frequency
Range (OFR). “The OFR is a critical lever for creating marketing
success,” says Zemel. “The family guy with two cars may require more
message exposure to get him to consider to switch brands than a person
buying their first car.”

OFR analysis looks at the entire marketing picture by segment and
user. It is based not on the last impression, but on all interactions from
the start of the relationship – thus, it is a broader and far more effective
gauge of consumer intent than last-view attribution. “We bid higher
for people that were below the OFR and got impressions in front of
them,” Zemel says. “And we reduced our bids for people who were
beyond that range or not in the target audience. We shifted the entire
media plan into that sweet spot.”

That done, [x+1] built “look-a-like segments to expand the coverage
and the size of our target audience,” Zemel says. Then, during the
calibration period, [x+1] analyzed all media sources and their audience
impact, applying mathematical models to determine the spend and
frequency cap on each one. The client could move dollars where they
needed to go – within the OFR.

The client was now able to track – and more effectively use –
traditional or negotiated media and, “at the same time, complementary
to that, we were able to fill in the gaps in the real- time inventory
exchanges,” says Zemel.

You might wonder: Is it difficult to connect online and offline activity
when the sale is offline? The answer, no. Take the case of the auto
purchase. “If someone requests a quote or a dealer visit online, there are
ways through lead management to optimize that,” Zemel says.
“Sometimes there isn’t a direct connection, so it’s a little bit more
correlative at first.”

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Case Study

The benefit: digital sales growth
Armed with the power of IBM Netezza, [x+1] produced several benefits
for its client. First, there was an attitudinal change. “We shifted the
client’s whole view of how they were managing media in market,”
Zemel says. “They went from a last-view, CPA performance-based
optimization plan to a more meaningful and comprehensive approach.”

Based on this, the client determined how consumers were moving
through the funnel – and the financial impact. “We had to prove that
there was a causal effect – that we put dollars in and got total digital
sales out,” Zemel says.

The firm also knocked down barriers separating brand and
performance marketing. “Breaking down the silos didn’t take a
hammer or a re-org,” Zemel says. All it took was “a marketing
framework focusing on the audience.” People at the firm and its agency
could see where they fit in, and work toward the same business goal.

Another benefit was control: The client is in full command of frequency
and audience engagement. At the same time, the client has moved away
from relying on near-term performance for analysis and can now see the
total effect on its business. This has led to a better audience composition.

The result is that the company is now able to work with massive data
volumes. “For this single client, we collect five billion cross-channel
marketing impressions per month from all its marketing activities,”
Zemel says. “This is where we really use the power of IBM Netezza.”

And what about the most important barometer: revenue?
“Historically, we talked about lift in the response rate or the conversion
rate,” Zemel says. “Now we’re talking about lift in total digital sales.
And we’re seeing a big year-over-year impact – 20 percent growth.
Net-net, the client is seeing more revenue from more customers.”

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52

Case Study

About [x+1]
[x+1], the online targeting platform leader, maximizes the return on
marketing investment (ROI) of websites and digital media using its
patented targeting technology. Providing the first end-to-end digital
marketing platform for advertisers and agencies, it optimizes
engagement rates and lift conversion in both media and on websites.
Its predictive marketing solutions enable automated, real-time decision
making and personalization so the right advertisement and content is
delivered to the right person at the right time. Top companies in
financial services, telecommunications, online services and travel have
significantly increased the performance of their digital marketing using
the services of [x+1]. The company is headquartered in New York City.
For more information, please visit www.xplusone.com; follow us on
twitter @xplusone.

About IBM Netezza
IBM Netezza pioneered the data warehouse appliance space by
integrating database, server and storage into a single, easy to manage
appliance that requires minimal set-up and ongoing administration
while producing faster and more consistent analytic performance. The
IBM Netezza family of data warehouse appliances simplifies business
analytics dramatically by consolidating all analytic activity in the
appliance, right where the data resides, for blisteringly fast
performance. Visit netezza.com to see how our family of data
warehouse appliances eliminate complexity at every step and lets you
drive true business value for your organization. For the latest data
warehouse and advanced analytics blogs, videos and more, please visit:
thinking.netezza.com.

IBM Data Warehousing and
Analytics Solutions
IBM provides the broadest and most comprehensive portfolio of data
warehousing, information management and business analytic software,
hardware and solutions to help customers maximize the value of their
information assets and discover new insights to make better and faster
decisions and optimize their business outcomes.

7
53

InfoSphere BigInsights – Business Partner Ecosystem

Put the power of IBM Business Partners behind your business. Whether you are looking for solutions, tools or system integrators,
you’ll find the resources you require in IBM’s BigInsights eco-system offerings outlined below. Explore the business partner
websites as well to find more detail or call your local IBM representative for more information.

Buckley Data Group is a leading independent IT infrastructure authority offering
comprehensive infrastructure services from assessment through implementation.
With technical consultants specializing in storage, servers, security, virtualization
and network management, Buckley provides expertise to your clients across
industries globally. Using a channel-based sales model, Buckley builds your
brand with your clients.

CCG Partners Inc. offers highly specialized Data Management resources
providing value-add data services for the installation, integration and deployment
of the IBM Big Data Platform using data quality processes and supporting
best practices.

CCG Partners provides enterprise-class data quality management services
and data governance frameworks enabling trusted enterprise analytics, risk
mitigation, increased rate of adoption and improved ROI enhancing IBM’s
InfoSphere BigInsights deployment activities for big data initiatives.

ClickFox maps the complex maze of customer experience journeys formed by
interactions at every touch point with a company. Unlike business intelligence
tools, ClickFox links disjointed, cross-channel data to fully understand and
analyze customer behavior in a holistic view. Without ClickFox, businesses see
only siloed views and scattered pieces that make up the complete picture of the
customer experience.

Concord is a specialty solution provider with extensive experience in process,
data, and system integration. Concord is an established IBM Premiere Business
Partner with a proven track record delivering industry solutions based on IBM’s
Information Management, and WebSphere product lines as well as Hadoop.
In addition, Concord has created ComplETE suite that complements and
enhances the BigInsights platform by providing end-to-end business process
visibility in mainframe & distributed environments as well as environments where
establishing precise transaction relationships seems impossible. We offer true
end-to-end correlation. The suite includes transaction monitoring, transaction
trending, transaction analytics, event management and payload forensics.

The suite couples the power of Hadoop with in-memory MOLAP cubes
embedded in our RETE rules engine to deliver the fastest real-time analytics &
simulation platform on the market.

The Datameer Analytics Solution provides four key elements:

• Wizard-based data integration platform designed for IT users and BI
analysts to integrate large datasets of structured and unstructured data

• Integrated analytics with familiar spreadsheet-like interface with more than
180 built-in analytic functions

• Drag and drop reporting and dash boarding visualization for business-users

• Big data scalability and cost-effectiveness of Hadoop together with IT
management tools that overcome Hadoop’s heavy technical burden

54


Datameer utilizes and runs on IBM’s platform for big data which provides a
dependable, enterprise-ready implementation of Apache Hadoop. Datameer
provides a packaged business intelligence platform on IBM’s platform for big
data that helps overcome Hadoop’s complexity and lack of end-user tools by
providing business and IT users with business intelligence (BI) functionality
across data integration, analytics and data visualization in the world’s first BI
platform for Hadoop.

Uncovering hidden connections by reading and processing data in advance,
Synthesys empowers the data analyst to make smart decisions faster. Synthesys
automates the understanding of cloud-scale data and uncovers the hidden
connections of entities that lie within.

Synthesys® integrates with InfoSphere BigInsights by seamlessly operating
in the scalable Hadoop environment. Synthesys brings unique value to the
InfoSphere BigInsights solution by automatically transforming massive amounts
of text into the underlying facts and connections.

By performing this knowledge extraction process without any prior definition
of the meaning of words (e.g., no use of ontology, taxonomy, etc.) Synthesys
uniquely identifies associations and non-obvious connections by digitally
examining and comparing contexts around extracted facts.

This also allows Synthesys to continue to be useful in “dirty data” (all caps,
machine translations, etc.) as well as coded language. Through our API,
integration of the analysis results of Synthesys can be seamlessly integrated into
IBM BigSheets and other emerging visualization and workflow solutions.

Fully integrated with the IBM InfoSphere BigInsights platform, Jaspersoft BI Suite
provides BigInsights users with plug-and-play access to their organization’s
Big Data and the ability to combine this with information from a wide range of
other sources, e.g. the web and subscription services. Jaspersoft’s easy-to-use
reporting, dashboard and analytic tools enable BI builders and business users
to build, for example, a 360o view of a customer’s history, website behavior
and credit record for retail analytic and targeting applications. BigInsights and
Jaspersoft are ideally suited for departmental applications within the enterprise
or complete BI solutions for larger SMB customers.

All Karmasphere products are built on the Karmasphere Application Framework
to unlock the power of Hadoop with unparalleled ease:

• Deliver dramatic productivity improvements to the big data job developer

• Make it easy for technical data analysts to discover value in their big data set

• Provide the framework for business intelligence analysts to drive valuable
insights from big data

By working together to integrate IBM’s implementation of Apache Hadoop
with Karmasphere products, there is a seamless out-of-the-box experience for
data professionals ensuring application development and analysis on the IBM
platform for big data is completed quickly and productively, increasing the ROI of
enterprise big data projects.

Kitenga provides the industry’s first “big data” search & analytics platform with

integrated information modeling & visualization capabilities - an entirely new
kind of insight engine for today’s big data world.

55


• Kitenga ZettaVox combines proven next-generation technologies like
Hadoop for scalability and performance, Lucene/SOLR search, Mahout
machine learning, 3D information modeling, and advanced Natural
Language Processing in a fully integrated, configurable, cloud-enabled
software platform that can be deployed quickly and cost effectively.

• ZettaVox is designed for non-programming professionals, empowering
them to efficiently create customized, domain-specific analytics ecosystems
supporting massive scale ingestion and processing of information resources
with the ease of drag-and-drop widgets.

• Kitenga’s solution is a radical improvement over traditional BI dashboards
that support basic charting from static, transactional, structured data
sources while ignoring the wealth of knowledge buried in mounds
of unstructured information. Traditional analytics solutions based on
databases inherently suffer from scalability limitations, are inflexible,
offer an impoverished suite of analytical and visualization tools, and are
outrageously expensive. Kitenga empowers organizations to extract
unprecedented levels of actionable insights from their information universe.
Kitenga ZettaVox ships with out-of-the-box integration with IBM InfoSphere
BigInsights Enterprise Edition. This not only minimizes customer risk, time and
effort wasted in cobbling together one-off solutions, but ZettaVox customers
can now benefit from significant add-value functionality of the IBM platform.
Enterprise customers can now enjoy the legendary customer support from IBM
combined with the power and flexibility of open source Hadoop.

Someone can live or die depending on the correct and authentic medications
being dispensed. Hospitals and medical professionals clearly agree leveraging
RFID technology for better tracking of a drug’s expiration date, information about
the drug administered, tracking and updating inventory levels, all performed
with real-time visibility, would increase efficiency, reduce costs, and improve
patient safety.

The Intelliguard Medication Management System consists of three components:

• Pharmacy Reader: By reading multiple tags within a tote or container, the
Intelliguard Pharmacy Reader makes receiving distributor shipments at the
hospital pharmacy efficient and accurate by eliminating the need for item-
level scanning or manual counting.

• Real-time inventory control is maintained as medication is distributed
within the hospital to an Intelliguard Automated Dispensing Cabinet. The
Automated Dispensing Cabinet increases nursing efficiency by eliminating
manual counting and item-level barcode scanning and through access to
ambient and refrigerated medications in one location.

• The Intelliguard Patient Bedside Reader assists with the compliance and
verification necessary to eliminate medication errors through The Five
Rights of Medication Safety: Right Patient, Right Drug, Right Dose, Right
Route and Right Time.

56


mLogica, a technology and product consulting company, was founded by senior
managers from leading technology organizations. mLogica is headquartered
in Orange County, California, with development centers and sales offices in
California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Toronto, UAE, India, Scotland
and Malaysia, including an ISO 9000 certified development center.

We have designed, implemented and managed mission-critical business
applications, databases and systems for large commercial enterprises and
public sector organizations, as well as mid-market businesses. Our clients
include major organizations in the financial services, entertainment, technology,
education, health care, telecommunications, manufacturing, and transportation
and logistics industries.

Persistent is a global company specializing in software product and technology
innovation. For more than two decades, we have partnered closely with
pioneering start-ups, innovative enterprises and the world’s largest technology
brands. We have utilized our fine-tuned product engineering processes to
develop best-in-class solutions for customers in technology, telecommunication,
life science, healthcare, banking, and consumer products sectors across North
America, Europe, and Asia.

Thanks to our extensive technology product expertise, customers also turn
to us for technology strategy and consulting services. Persistent’s customers
benefit from our deep knowledge of next-generation Cloud, BI and Analytics,
Collaboration as well as Mobility-based computing platforms. By leveraging our
strategic technology partnerships, IP-based accelerators, and agile development
processes, companies can successfully navigate increasing time-to-market
pressures and deliver the highest quality solutions, faster and more cost
effectively.

Revolution Analytics delivers advanced analytics software at half the cost of
existing solutions. By building on open source R—the world’s most powerful
statistics software—with innovations in big data analysis, integration and
user experience, Revolution Analytics meets the demands and requirements
of modern data-driven businesses. It now runs on top of the IBM InfoSphere
BigInsights platform, get the power of this joint solution today!

Systech is a leading provider of services and solutions in the area of Business
Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Corporate Performance Management
solutions for companies large and small in most industries around the world
for over 15 years. Utilizing an approved technology and a proven methodology,
Systech reveals business opportunities across the enterprise. Systech’s unique
approach enables clients to make continuous, fact-based decisions to improve
their revenue and create value.

Think Big Analytics is the leading professional services firm for big data and
advanced analytics. We work with innovators to create solutions that tap into
the power of Hadoop and NoSQL to process unstructured data, unlocking new
insights and products that were never before possible.

57


Large scale, open-source information platforms

• Agile approach

• Advanced analytics and data science

• Integration patterns for Hadoop and NoSQL

• Harness unstructured data

Develop your big data capabilities

• Big data integration

• Analytic solutions

• Software development

• Cluster configuration

Your big data solution starts with a Brainstorm

• Solution roadmap

• Big data architecture

• Recommended infrastructure

• Proof of concept
• Delivery project plan

Built on commodity hardware, Zettaset is an out-of-the-box offering that
integrates more than 30 services and dependencies into a single autonomous
solution. Built-in self-management includes automated server provisioning, a
fail-safe process for monitoring all pertinent processes and self-healing. Ease
of deployment and support for small files all add to the Zettaset competitive
advantage. Further, a simple licensing model leads to a significantly lower total
cost of ownership

• Zettaset’s architecture supports BigInsights’ Application Programming
Interfaces (APIs) and tools, using ZooKeeper and Thrift to perform reporting
and management. Thrift supports most major programming and scripting
languages and all of Zettaset’s Thrift API’s are open.

• Zettaset provides value in monitoring, provisioning, and management of
the system as well as significantly lowering the cost of integration; allowing
users to easily make Zettaset a part of their platforms, frameworks and User
Interfaces (UI).

• Strong authentication using Kerberos, in conjunction with group and user
level access control and data encryption, extends BigInsights’ LDAP
authorization so that users can fully customize their security model to further
protect the safety and availability of their data.

• Zettaset’s administration console fully integrates with BigInsights’ Web
console to allow easy administration and management of services, nodes,
and jobs.

• Failover of the NameNode as well as all other critical components in
the system, such as Oozie, Hive and ZooKeeper, mitigates the risk of
data loss, data access, and failure to schedule and coordinate jobs and
query datasets.

58

Featured Business Partners

Datameer

Digital Reasoning

Jaspersoft

Karamsphere

MEPS

59

Datameer,
Inc.

Datameer
Analy,cs
Solu,on
(DAS)

Solu%on
Descrip%on

The
Datameer
Analytics
Solution
(DAS)
leverages
the
scalability,

flexibility
and
cost-‐effectiveness
of
Apache
Hadoop
to
deliver
a
business

user
focused
BI
platform
for
big
data
analytics.
DAS
overcomes

Hadoop's
complexity
and
lack
of
tools
by
providing
business
and
IT
users

with
business
intelligence
(BI)
functionality
across
data
integration,

analytics
and
data
visualization
of
structured
and
unstructured
data.

Features
and
Benefits

¥  Wizard-‐based
data
integration
designed
for
IT
users
and
BI
analysts
to

integrate
large
datasets
of
structured
and
unstructured
data

¥  Integrated
analytics
with
familiar
spreadsheet-‐like
interface
and
over

180
built-‐in
analytic
functions

¥  Drag
and
drop
reporting
and
dashboarding
visualization
for
business-‐
users

¥  Big
data
scalability
and
cost-‐effectiveness
of
Hadoop
together
with
IT

management
tools
that
overcome
Hadoop's
heavy
technical
burden

Value
Proposi%on

The
Datameer
Analytics
Solution
(DAS)
provides
a
complete
business
For
more
Informa%on.
contact:

user
focused
BI
solution
for
Hadoop
including
data
integration,
analytics

(650)
286-‐9100

and
visualization
without
the
need
for
extensive
IT
and
programming

www.datameer.com

resources.

DAS
utilizes
wizard-‐based
data
access,
180+
pre-‐built
analytic

functions
and
drag
and
drop
visualization
via
charts,
graphs,
maps
and

dashboards.

The
end
result
is
a
big
data
analytics
solution
with
dramatic

ease-‐of-‐use
and
unparalleled
cost
effectiveness
and
scalability.

Company
Descrip%on

Based
in
Silicon
Valley,
Datameer
offers
the
first
data
analytics
solution

built
on
Hadoop.
Founded
by
Hadoop
veterans
in
2009,
the
company's

breakthrough
product,
Datameer
Analytics
Solution
(DAS),
provides

unparalleled
access
to
data
with
minimal
IT
resources.
DAS
scales
to

4,000
servers
and
petabytes
of
data
and
is
available
for
all
major
Hadoop

distributions
including
Apache,
Cloudera,
EMC
GreenPlum,
Yahoo!,
IBM,

and
Amazon.

60

SYNTHESYS® DATA SHEET

Synthesys®
Entity Oriented Analytics
for Cloud-Scale Data Understanding

Digital Reasoning introduces a new era in data analytics with Synthesys.
Built to address the most complex data analytics challenges, Synthesys® excels at extracting,
resolving, and linking entities and concepts from unstructured and structured data. Uncovering
hidden connections by reading and processing data in advance, Synthesys empowers the
analyst to make smart decisions faster. Synthesys automates the understanding of cloud-scale
data and uncovers the hidden connections of entities that lie within.

Entity Oriented Analytics the way humans do — by analyzing the context
Synthesys takes a new approach to large scale around the entity and comparing that context “Synthesys is the
data understanding by focusing analytics on the signature across the entire corpus. In this way, culmination of 10 years
entity. By transforming documents and files into Synthesys uniquely uncovers non-obvious
their underlying people, places, locations, and connections and hidden meanings buried in of efforts working on
other entities, Synthesys reduces the reading spelling problems, dirty data or code words. the most critical data
burden for analysts and empowers new discovery
and analytics. Entities and concepts are resolved
analytics challenges in the
Cloud-Scale Data Challenges
into their unique characteristics while underlying
Enterprises and government agencies are dealing intelligence community.”
connections are identified based on usage.
with data challenges that reach into the hundreds
Synthesys does not start with a preconception
of millions of documents and more. Synthesys Tim Estes
of the data model or the meanings of words.
was built for these “big data” challenges. In Founder and CEO
Instead, Synthesys learns the meaning of words
order to understand data in Digital Reasoning Systems
real time, Synthesys compares
new data to the corpus already
ingested and analyzed without
re-indexing. Synthesys
maintains all attributes about
entities and context, continually
comparing new data to the
existing analysis. This allows
Synthesys to constantly update
the associations, similarities and
the resulting link analysis. This
allows Synthesys to maintain the
associations, similarities and the
Synthesys Analysis Tools
resulting link analysis.
Entity Graph Viewer, Associative Net, GeoLocator

61

SYNTHESYS® DATA SHEET

Gadgets
Product Features
Financial Data Contextual Query
Flight Records
Search Augmentation
° Entity Extraction

Structured
Link Analysis
Analyst
Entity ° Entity Resolution
Data Tools
Graph Viewer
° Link analysis
SSNs Conceptual
Associations
Entity
Resolution Faceted ° Unstructured Data Analytics
Navigation
° Analytics tools and visualizations
Biometric Data Widgets ° Geolocation extraction
Data Ingestion ° Machine generated abstracts
of documents
Intel Reports ° Built on Cloudera Distribution
Watches of Hadoop (CDH3)

Unstructured
Entity
Extraction
Geotagging
Early ° Built on Cassandra v0.7
Data Warning Triggers
Message Traffic
Product Requirements
Knowledge Base Alerts Minimum requirements:
Emails & Documents
° 7 nodes of commodity servers
° Node details:
— Memory – 8GB
— CPU – 2 Cores
Synthesys Architectural Diagram — Storage – 850GB
— Platform – 64 bit

Typical requirements:
Knowledge Base Entity Graph Viewer (EGV)
Synthesys maintains data attributes in the The Entity Graph Viewer is a visualization tool ° 20 nodes of commodity servers
Knowledge Base. The knowledge base is built that allows the analyst to view the connections
° Node details:
— Memory – 16GB
on a horizontally scalable architecture including and social “maps” identified by Synthesys. — CPU – 4 Cores
tight integration with Hadoop and Cassandra. Working in combination with GeoLocator and — Storage – 1.5TB
By combining these best-of-breed Internet Associative Net, EGV provides the analyst with — Platform – 64 bit
technologies, Synthesys delivers advanced unique insight into the underlying facts in the
analytical capabilities with high performance data. EGV shows the connection of entities both Operating Systems
and horizontal scalability. in terms of “how” as well as the direction of the
connection (i.e. who knows who). With this ° Red Hat® Enterprise Linux
(or compatable)
visualization, the analyst can clearly see how one
Associative Net entity is connected to another and can quickly
° Runtime Platform – Java® 6
Associative Net is one of the most powerful
drill into the abstract or context supporting the
and unique aspects of Synthesys. It identifies
identification of this linkage. If the abstract is
synonyms or closely related entities as well as
not sufficient, it is possible to drill further down
strength of relationship scores for entities in the
to the original document where the evidence of
corpus. For example, Associative Net would show
the linkage originated. With this ability to show
“stinger missile” and “blow pipe” as synonymous
high-level linkage and drill down to the supporting
because of their use in the corpus. Similarly, one
data, Synthesys simplifies the analyst’s job by
person’s connection to another person or place
first identifying underlying facts and, only if
can be identified and the relationship strength
needed, allowing the analyst to read the complete
scored. Associative Net provides confidence to
document. By pushing the time-intensive reading
the analyst that all connections, relationships 730 Cool Springs Blvd., Suite 110,
tasks later into their process, Synthesys enables Franklin, Tennessee 37067
and synonyms are being considered — including
the analyst to spend more time interpreting and +1 615 370 1860
intentionally coded language
taking action.”
visit our website at
Synthesys® — make better decisions, faster. www.digitalreasoning.com

© Copyright 2011. All Rights Reserved. Digital Reasoning® is a registered trademark
of Digital Reasoning Systems, Inc. (DRSI). Synthesys™ is a trademark of DRSI.

62

Introducing Jaspersoft

The most widely used Industry Recognition:
Business Intelligence
Suite in the World:
Magic Quadrant

 14 Million Downloads
 235,000 Community Members
 165,000 Production Deployments
 14,000 Commercial Customers
Jaspersoft End-to-End BI Suite

Reporting Dashboards Analytics Data Integration
©2011 Jaspersoft Corporation. Proprietary and Confidential 1

63

Joint Value Proposition with IBM

 Complete Big Data analytic solution combining the strength
of IBM with the world’s most widely used BI suite
 Fully integrated, plug-and-play access to Big Data from
internal, public and subscription services
 Easy-to-use reporting, dashboard and analytic tools
 Combine Big Data to build for example 360o customer view
for retail analytic and targeting applications.
 Ideally suited to departmental BI or larger SMB customers
needing ease of use and rapid ROI
 Powerful technical solution including full support for
Hadoop Hive SQL interface, HDFS, Avro file format and
Hbase


64

Easy to Use BI Tools for BigInsights

Business User
 Web-Based Ad Hoc report designer
 Metadata simplifies data access
 Chart, Table, Filters, Sorting, & more

Data Analyst
 Web-based Ad Hoc analysis UI
 Speed-of-thought response time
 Advanced analytic queries via MDX

IT and Power User
 Secure, auditable, scalable
 Highly formatted reports & dashboards
 Interactive reports for casual users

66

Karmasphere Analyst
Get graphical SQL access to IBM InfoSphere BigInsights from the desktop.

Karmasphere Analyst provides quick, efficient SQL access to big data on IBM
InfoSphere BigInsights from a familiar graphical desktop environment running on
Windows, MacOS or Linux.
Karmasphere Analyst expands the capabilities of Apache Hive, so that techni-
cal analysts, SQL programmers, data developers and DBAs can easily create
and manage tables, access data on Hadoop with SQL, visualize and integrate
results with other desktop applications and data stores – all from a familiar
graphical desktop environment.
Karmasphere Analyst works with structured
“ Karmasphere has significantly
reduced our development time
and unstructured data, automatically
discovers schema, and can access any
for MapReduce jobs
Jeff Ellin
” Hadoop cluster in private data centers or in
the cloud.
Vice President, Technology, TidalTV
Analyze all your Big Data
Supports IBM InfoSphere BigInsights
Works on any Desktop
Karmasphere Analyst gives you easy SQL access to your
Windows, MacOS, Linux
data in Hadoop.

Discover Data, Create Access any Hadoop cluster, its data, • Automatic discovery of Hadoop data structures including structured
and Manage Tables and create schemas for use with and unstructured data
Hadoop and Hive • Unified view of multiple Hadoop data stores from the desktop
• Easy creation and manipulation of new tables and existing Hive tables
• Drag and drop access to Hadoop (HDFS) file system from the desktop
• Support for local metadata stores and remote, shared metadata
stores via JDBC

Write & Prototype SQL Visually develop, optimize and debug • Query syntax checking
SQL queries for any Hadoop environment • Visual query plans
from the desktop • Query explanations
• Embedded Hive and Hadoop for desktop prototyping
• More than 100 User Defined Functions (UDFs) and common SerDe’s
• Customization with User Defined Functions (UDFs) and SerDe’s

Profile and Diagnose Visually monitor, profile, manage and • Graphical query plan progress display
diagnose Hive-based SQL jobs • Job profiling with calendars, I/O charts, Histograms, etc.
• Job diagnostics leveraging Apache Vaidya project
• Visual log file access of job task and mapper progress on a Hadoop cluster

Generate, Visualize View, store and integrate query results • Out-of-the-box tabular and page-able display of results
and Explore in multiple ways • Out-of-the-box support to store results on Hadoop cluster
• Support for storage in other data stores via UDFs
• One button visualization within familiar desktop applications including
Microsoft Excel and Tableau

Keep Data Secure Safely communicate with clusters • SSH access to clusters behind firewalls
behind firewalls

Get Priority Support Get priority technical support • From the leader in Hadoop developer and analyst tools

Big Analytics for Big Data on Hadoop
info@karmasphere.com • www.karmasphere.com • 1-650-292-6100
67

Karmasphere Studio
Graphically develop Hadoop jobs for IBM InfoSphere BigInsights. Fast.

Karmasphere Studio is a graphical environment to develop, debug, deploy
and monitor applications for Hadoop. It accelerates the development process
for experienced Hadoop developers and reduces the learning curve for those
new to Hadoop. By making it easy to learn and implement MapReduce jobs,
Karmasphere Studio increases productivity by shielding users from the intricacies
of Hadoop, enabling them to do more in fewer steps. Jobs can be deployed
from any operating system, through any proxy and firewall, and to any version
of Hadoop in private or public clouds.
Karmasphere Studio provides value to
“ Karmasphere is beneficial
because it gives the developer
developers just starting with Hadoop
and to experienced developers of Java,
tools that they are familiar using Cascading and Streaming jobs for Hadoop.
in other environments, plus it
Develop for IBM’s Big Data Platform
brings in tools critical to working
Supports IBM InfoSphere BigInsights
in a Hadoop environment, which
allows users to quickly package Develop and test from the Desktop
and launch jobs without having Windows, MacOS, Linux
to get their hands dirty inside Use with your favorite IDE Karmasphere Studio allows you to quickly and easily
Hadoop
”
Will Duckworth, Vice President,
Eclipse, NetBeans graphically develop and debug Hadoop applications.

Software Engineering, comScore, Inc.

Community and Professional Versions
Karmasphere Studio
Get going quickly with the free Karmasphere Studio Community Edition. When you’re ready Community Professional
to profile, optimize, package and debug production jobs, reach for the Professional Edition. Edition Edition

Learn and Prototype • Simplify and reduce the learning curve with guided MapReduce development n n

Develop & Debug • Visually build Hadoop applications quickly
• Debug locally without lengthy deployment and fixing cycles n n
• Understand every MapReduce application in detail

Monitor & Access the • Monitor the cluster, HDFS and jobs on the cluster n n
Hadoop Cluster • Access local and HDFS files including log files with familiar drag and drop system

Profile and Optimize • Graphically monitor and profile application performance and behavior in-depth
Jobs for Production • Investigate and diagnose the behavior of any job n
• Identify and fix problems

Package and Export • Package and export jobs from the development environment
for Production • Automatically package the MapReduce job into a JAR file to hand over to n
production cluster job schedulers
• Control parameter generation to limit configuration problems

Deploy and Manage • Profile, optimize, diagnose, and fix through firewalls
on Production Clusters • Access Hadoop clusters through SSH n
Securely

Get Priority Support • Get priority technical support from the leader in Hadoop developer and analyst tools n

Big Analytics for Big Data on Hadoop
info@karmasphere.com • www.karmasphere.com • 1-650-292-6100
68

Corporate Fact Sheet
MEPS Real-Time, Inc.

Location MEPS Real-Time, Inc. is headquartered in Carlsbad, CA.

Company In 2001, MEPS was founded and, in 2006, was spun-off and
History incorporated as a wholly owned subsidiary of Howard Energy.
Like so many great American corporate stories, the core
intellectual property of MEPS Real-Time was developed in
2001…in an airport…on a napkin. Seriously.

Two key managers of Safety Syringes, Inc. asked themselves,
“How can we better utilize technology to track medications in SSI
syringes throughout the hospital?” Ultimately, the two concluded
that this would be a valuable tool for all medications distributed to patient’s bedside….a
Medication Error Prevention System with increased visibility of inventory …MEPS Real-Time
was conceived that day.

To say it was a commitment from our investors to get from 2001 to today would be an
understatement.

The RFID industry was just evolving. There were no standards. In 2004, there was a brief
thought that Wal-Mart would move the industry forward. But, their suppliers rejected the
technology advancement. And so, the RFID industry languished. But, MEPS Real-Time didn’t
stand still and our investors didn’t withdraw support. We learned and they stayed committed.

From 2001-2003, our early systems were based on passive 13.56 MHz high-frequency (HF)
RFID tags. These tags operated well when affixed to packages of liquid medicines, however,
only 30 to 40 HF tags could be reliably read when attached to drug products and stored in close
proximity to each other inside the cabinet and this did not meet our requirements.

From 2004-2006, we then tested passive tags operating at 2.45 GHz, which functioned well
during a hospital pilot test at MD Anderson Cancer Center. However, the 2.45 GHz tags utilized
proprietary, soon to be obsolete, technology and we decided we wanted to offer only
standardized hardware.

The technology was spun-off from SSI in 2006 and MEPS Real-Time, Inc. was incorporated as
a wholly owned subsidiary of Howard Energy.

We redeveloped our system, in 2008, to utilize EPC Gen 2/ISO 18000-6c UHF tags and readers
because the hardware is standardized and the tags can be read reliably and in required
quantities—approximately 100 tags per drawer…an Intelliguard™ Automated Dispensing
Cabinet (ADC) can have as many as eight drawers.

In 2009, we began the critical task of bringing together the right team to lead MEPS Real-Time
into the future. We introduced our Intelliguard™ product at the American Society of Health
System Pharmacists Mid-year Meeting in Las Vegas and received much interest from industry
and from end-users.

A pilot project with Sharp Memorial Hospital was initiated in 2010 to manage the expiration
dates of high-cost, slow-moving inventory in the pharmacy department. Previously, this was a
labor intensive, time-consuming, critical task… a perfect opportunity to demonstrate the
capabilities of RFID and Intelliguard™.

Today, the Intelliguard™ product is positioned as “RFID Solutions for Critical Inventory.” We
hope you’ll be a part of our future.

69

Corporate Fact Sheet
MEPS Real-Time, Inc.

Company Initial interest in ability to utilize RFID to simply track pharmaceutical products with the Safety
Background Syringes, Inc. Needle Guards™. Quickly recognized counterfeit prevention, patient safety and
inventory management benefits of RFID as well as time management and nursing efficiency.

Management Shariq Hussain, President and CEO
Team Jim Caputo, Vice President, Corporate Strategy
Jay Williams, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development
Tom Hall, Vice President, Operations
Paul Elizondo, Director, Engineering and R&D

Technology Impinj: The world’s leading developer of UHF RFID.
Partners ThingMagic: A leading provider of UHF reader engines, development platforms and design
services for a wide range of applications.
Ethertronics: The leading developer and manufacturer of high performance embedded antennas
for wireless devices.

Products Intelliguard™ RFID Solutions for Critical Inventory offering:
Expiration Date Control, Lot Number Control, NDC Control, ePedigree Capability, Counterfeit/
Diversion Prevention, and Medication Error Prevention.

Industry Facts According to several national studies, there are 400,000 preventable medication injuries every
year in America’s hospitals.

Of 4 billion US prescriptions in 2007, up to 40 million may have been filled with counterfeits, up
to 10% in California.

Counterfeit prescriptions projected to cost $75 billion worldwide by 2010.

In 2009, California passed ePedigree legislation that will require all medications to have item
level serialization by 2015-16. RFID is the most pragmatic solution for ePedigree when
integrated into existing workflow and business practices.

While barcodes have been used to manage medication distribution for some time, by providing
real-time visibility of inventory with RFID, hospitals and the pharmaceutical supply chain can
implement inventory management efficiency and capabilities beyond all barcode systems.

Contact 2841 Loker Ave. East, Carlsbad, CA 92010
O: 760-448-9500 F: 760-448-9599 E: info@mepsrealtime.com www.mepsrealtime.com

MEPS, MEPS Real-Time, Inc., and Intelliguard are trademarks of MEPS Real-Time, Inc., Carlsbad, CA.
70 900-0003 Rev A


October 2011
All Rights Reserved

IBM and the IBM logo are trademarks
or registered trademarks of International
Business Machines Corporation in the
United States, other countries, or both.

Other company, product and service names
may be trademarks or service marks of
other companies.

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