At the SmarterCities forum, IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced the opening of its first European Analytics Solution Center in Berlin, initially designed to serve public sector clients, universities and healthcare organizations. The new center is the first step, in a recently announced global network that addresses the emerging market for advanced analytics capabilities, which will help clients build smarter business systems and drive improved decision-making. Based at IBM's Spreebogen site, it will operate with around 100 employees and will draw on the services of over 300 consultants, software specialists and mathematicians across Germany. It will access expertise from the IBM Boeblingen Development Lab, one of IBM's largest development labs worldwide that designs technologies that are key components to providing modern and innovative IT-solutions to clients.
The new center was announced at IBM Smarter Cities Summit in Berlin, which is exploring how progressive cities are modernizing to spur economic development, drive greater innovation, transform for competitive advantage and meet the pressing demands of a more engaged and intelligent citizenry.
"Precise business decisions with far-reaching consequences for the entire organization today need to be made at ever shorter intervals. The cause for wrong decisions often stems from insufficient information at the time of the decision-making process. The public sectorlike private enterpriseneeds suitable tools and more advanced analytics to have always crucial information and knowledge at the right time and place at its disposal," said Martin Jetter, General Manager, IBM Germany.
"We welcome IBM's continued commitment in Berlin," said Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor of Berlin. "The decision in favor of a Berlin location with around 100 highly qualified jobs in IT services is a further positive sign of the city's attractiveness."
Berlin was chosen for this investment due to its status as a center for administration with an international skills base. The Berlin Center is part of a network of centers recently detailed by IBM as the company expands its capabilities around business analytics. Additional centers will be located in Tokyo, New York City, Beijing and Washington, D.C.
The Berlin Center will have access to IBM's comprehensive Information Management portfolio that includes technologies integrated following acquisitions of Cognos and iLog. It will also utilize mathematicians and advanced analytics experts from IBM Research and industry expertise from management consultants in IBMs Business Analytics and Optimization services organization. The performance scope of these services becomes visible, for example, in a traffic-project with the administration in Singapore. There, a system was developed to precisely predict the time of traffic flows in the city's Central Business District.
The Berlin Center's main task will be to help administrations, universities and healthcare sector clients to access higher quality data faster and more efficiently across administrations and organizations and to analyze and interpret it, leading to improved decision-making. Other innovative approaches will deal with key issues such as proximity to the public, transparency, efficiency and competitiveness.
Within this range of issues the focal points will include redesigning front and back office processes including topics such as RFID, telematics, the e-health card and e-file, the use of shared service centers, and IT transformation.
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