LAS VEGAS, NV - 02 Mar 2004: IBM today announced a new initiative to help Business Partners deliver comprehensive Business Performance Management (BPM) solutions to customers.
BPM combines business processes, information and IT resources and aligns a customer's core assets -- people, information, technology and processes. This enables an organization to create a single, integrated view, with real-time intelligence, of both its business measurements and IT system performance and obtain business information faster, respond more quickly to market trends and competitive threats and improve operational efficiencies and business results, all attributes of an on demand enterprise.
In the retail industry, for example, store managers face daily decisions on urgent issues related to sales, product merchandising and promotions, inventory replenishment, supply chain logistics, pricing changes and employee schedules. They need to have up-to-date information on key retail performance indicators so they can react to problems quickly. This means a store's business processes have to be linked to the IT system to provide an overall view of store operations, an electronic dashboard that tracks key performance indicators automatically and replaces having to sift through paper reports to spot potential problems. A BPM solution can enable a store manager to make daily decisions, based on multiple source of information, that align with the store's strategic direction.
IBM's new initiative offers Business Partners a set of BPM "frameworks" for information, processes, events, business rules and workplace and business systems. The frameworks include tools for software developers, core IBM middleware technology, and technical education and support to enable Business Partners to provide customers with solutions unique to their industry.
"BPM combines business intelligence, business integration, service management and intelligent orchestration, all areas where IBM has demonstrated clear technology leadership in the industry," said Steve Mills, IBM senior vice president and group executive, Software Group. "Business Partners want to work with us because we offer the expertise, education, enablement programs and support to enable them to implement BPM solutions quickly for their customers."
IBM also said that 34 Business Partners initially are working with IBM to extend the value of BPM to their customers. The BPM initiative addresses customers who want to respond faster to market opportunities, competitors' moves and regulatory changes but who also say they are hampered because they don't have a good view of their business environment, can't make changes quickly and can't put what is happening in their industry into the proper business context.
By following IBM's On Demand roadmap, Business Partners will be able to use IBM's BPM expertise to create industry-specific solutions that can help enable a customer to see business processes, end to end, across both business and IT operations. In an insurance company, for example, a claims adjuster or executive might be able to see the status of the overall claims process, data on individual customers and the status of the IT infrastructure that supports the claims process.
As part of this initiative, IBM is working to build a BPM "ecosystem." It will consist of a set of Business Partner frameworks and a software development toolkit that will enable IBM to engage with its Business Partners to provide industry-specific BPM solutions for customers in need of monitoring, analyzing and optimizing their business operations and IT infrastructure.
The IBM middleware infrastructure supporting the BPM initiative features modeling, monitoring and process integration technology from WebSphere, information integration and business intelligence capability from DB2 software; business service management from Tivoli, including Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator and systems management software, and Workplace technology from Lotus. All are made available to the customer in a single view.
A significant new component to IBM's middleware platform supporting BPM is the Common Event Infrastructure (CEI). CEI is designed to enable a business to capture cross-application events in a cohesive way from many IT components -- servers, network routers, switches, applications, databases. This event data then can be used for business-level analysis, which will enable an organization to improve real-time management of its enterprise.
At the PartnerWorld conference, IBM also is announcing a CEI Software Developer's Kit to enable Business Partners and ISVs to write new applications and drive service engagements.
The IBM Business Partners who are supporting IBM's BPM initiative are: Accretio Group, Actuate, Adexa, Alphablox, Amberpoint, Ariba, Ascential Software, Bottomline, Bristol Technology, Business Objects, Cerner, Cognos, Corticon Technologies, Fair Issac, The Haley Enterprise, Hyperion, i2 Technologies, Informatica, iSpheres, Keynote, Lanner Group, MicroStratgegy, Pegasystems, Peregrine, Retek, Salesforce.com, Sapiens, Siebel, Systar, TeamQuest, Viacore, Viador, View Software and YASU Technologies.
Contact(s) information
John Reilly
IBM Media Relations
(914) 766-1067
jcreilly@us.ibm.com
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