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IBM announced the formation of a new business unit inside the company, dedicated to accelerating its leadership in the Internet of Things (IoT).
IBM estimates that 90 percent of all data generated by devices like smartphones, tablets, connected vehicles and appliances is never analyzed or acted upon. As much as 60 percent of this data begins to lose value within milliseconds of being generated. To address this challenge, IBM will announce plans to develop new industry-specific cloud data services, IoT developer tools and expanded ecosystem partnerships.
“Our knowledge of the world grows with every connected sensor and device, but too often we are not acting on it, even when we know we can ensure a better result,” said Bob Picciano, senior vice president, IBM Analytics. “IBM will enable clients and industry partners apply IoT data to build solutions based on an open platform. This is a major focus of investment for IBM because it’s a rich and broad-based opportunity where innovation matters.”
As a prime example of this work in action, IBM and The Weather Company also announced a global partnership to integrate real-time weather insights into business to improve operational performance and decision-making.
The Weather Company, and WSI its global B2B division, provides 10 billion discrete forecasts per day including the collection of data from 100,000+ private weather sensors, aircrafts, millions of smartphones, buildings and even moving vehicles.
This partnership represents a turning point for businesses that have long been impacted by weather, but have not had the data or enhanced decision-making ability to drive positive business outcomes -- until now. After all, weather is perhaps the single largest external swing factor in business performance – responsible for nearly half a trillion dollars in economic impact in the United States alone.
The partnership builds upon IBM’s investment of $3 billion over the next four years in an Internet of Things (IoT) unit to develop a portfolio of cloud services, software and related intellectual property, and follows our recent announcement of an alliance with Twitter to integrate social data into enterprise decision-making. As part of the partnership, The Weather Company and WSI will shift its massive weather data services platform to the IBM Cloud and integrate its data with IBM analytics and cloud services.