New Resources Focus on Eliminating Complexity from Application Development
IBM (NYSE: IBM) is introducing new offerings to make it easier for business partners and clients to create "patterns of expertise", a new software capability first introduced as part of IBM's PureSystems family of expert integrated systems. These patterns are designed to radically streamline the set-up and management of hardware and software resources.
PureSystems, introduced in April, is the result of $2 billion in research, development and acquisitions over four years, and has been designed to help change the economics of IT so that organizations can reduce their IT costs and complexity and put more resources towards innovation and growth.
Central to enabling and streamlining IT operations through PureSystems are these patterns of expertise. IBM announced today a new Virtual Pattern Kit to enable clients and business partners to convert technology expertise into reusable, downloadable packages of their own. This complements the patterns that are already being created by both IBM and more than 125 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). Once designed, these patterns are embedded directly into the PureSystems machines to automate a wide range of manual and administrative IT tasks.
As part of this announcement, IBM will also offer clients and business partners access to the PureSystems family to create and test their patterns through the IBM SmartCloud. This will help organizations to radically simplify data center operations, and capitalize on the massive cost savings and efficiency gains PureSystems delivers.
"With almost two-thirds of global IT budget being spent on just maintaining their current infrastructure, it's imperative that companies find ways to reduce the complexity in their data centers," said Marie Wieck, General Manager, IBM Application and Integration Middleware. "The introduction of patterns will revolutionize how applications are being developed and managed, simplifying tasks that organizations once spent months on and allowing them to refocus on innovation."
New Resources Help Ecosystem of Business Partners and Clients to Create Applications and Patterns
By offering clients and business partners the ability to create applications and patterns of expertise of their own for PureSystems, businesses will be able to significantly lower development costs, rapidly create new solutions for clients, and fill regional or topic skill gaps. These resources are based on the expertise and experience of IBM's technical community and the developers and researchers that created PureSystems. They include:
· IBM Virtual Pattern Kit for Developers: This no-charge software development tool kit provides in-depth technical resources for developers interested in creating their own pattern of expertise for IBM PureSystems. The tool kit provides practical tools for developers to test out patterns of expertise by creating applications that run on PureSystems and the ability to begin the development work to create patterns of expertise. The tool kit will help companies move their applications from creation to testing and availability in the IBM PureSystems Centre. For patterns of expertise, the tool kit will help companies begin the development work and prepare to collaborate with IBM to finalize the project. Once partners develop their own optimized patterns of expertise with IBM, their applications can seamlessly be deployed on either the IBM SmartCloud or IBM PureSystems in minutes, enabling their clients to choose their preferred deployment model.
· PureSystems Cloud Trial: A PureSystems development environment is available to developers for 90 days at no charge. The trial can help developers create applications through IBM's SmartCloud that are ready to run on IBM's new expert integrated systems. This cloud sandbox removes the hassle of server provisioning, operating system and middleware set up and the complicated cycles of permissions and procurement associated with software development. Now, if a developer has an idea for a PureSystems application, they can be creating and testing their application in a PureSystems-ready environment in minutes. The cloud trial also includes Collaborative Lifecycle Management software from IBM enabling business partners to work together on a project, or to work directly with a client's developers. This collaborative approach can significantly increase the speed of software development, encourage innovation and empower developers with the tools they need to track the project through its completion.
By removing some of the biggest challenges of software development, IBM is helping businesses empower their technical experts to rapidly create a proof of concept for clients, and test new ideas.
For example, a software developer, working for a bank, has an idea for a mobile application and would like to build a prototype to demonstrate its potential business benefits. Without the PureSystems cloud trial, the developer needs to obtain the necessary financing and permissions for the project. Then they need to secure and provision the hardware, download a base operating system, set up a middleware stack and enlist the expertise of skilled programmers to tune the middleware stack to ensure optimal performance. This can take days to achieve.
With the PureSystems cloud trial, the developer can log into the IBM SmartCloud and immediately begin working on the application in an environment that is already set up. They have 90 days to build a proof of concept without any risk that the hardware will be re-allocated to another priority effort, and without needing the expertise of additional software developers to tune the middleware.
IBM Makes it Easy for Business Partner Ecosystem to Embrace PureSystems
More than 150 solutions have been developed for IBM PureSystems by more than 125 of the world’s leading ISVs. With technical and validation resources from IBM, these companies have the flexibility to optimize their industry-leading applications to run on either the IBM PureFlex or IBM PureApplication systems.
To continue the rapid adoption of PureSystems among leading technology companies, clients can now nominate ISV patterns they would like to see in the PureSystems Centre. Additionally, special enablement events are being hosted at IBM Innovation Centers in 25 cities around the globe. These events are designed for all types of Business Partners and will offer resources and advice on how companies can grow their business with PureSystems. Additionally, developers have access to a wide variety of PureSystems technical resources on IBM developerWorks. There, developers can learn about PureSystems, watch technical demos and hear from others working on the technology.
New Patterns for Business Intelligence and Business Process Management and Social Collaboration
In addition to offering resources to business partners and clients to create their own patterns, IBM is also introducing several new patterns that organizations can leverage based on their needs. These patterns are based off of proven best practices and expertise for complex tasks that IBM has learned from decades of client and partner engagements. Now, they have been captured, lab-tested and built into PureSystems. With the push of a button, an organization can easily pull up a workload-specific pattern, dramatically reducing the time and effort associated with installing, configuring, tuning and managing software on an ongoing basis.
· Business Process Management (BPM): Patterns for deploying business process applications within a private cloud. IBM Business Process Manager provides clients with visibility, management and insight into their business processes. Through PureSystems, IBM intends to provide Business Process Manager Advanced and Business Process Manager Standard patterns, enabling customers to scale the use of BPM throughout their company faster and focus their resources on activities that add value to the business such as improving key processes, instead of installation and configuration.
· Business Intelligence: A pattern that drives deployment of IBM Cognos Business Intelligence applications in 20-minutes. IBM Cognos Business Intelligence equips business users with reporting, analysis, dashboard, and scorecards to help them easily analyze all information to drive better business decisions. Now with PureSystems, clients will be able to focus their efforts getting faster answers to their key business questions, rather than spending time and resources on installing, configuring, tuning and maintaining complex Business Intelligence environments.
· Social Collaboration: A pattern that gives clients the ability to quickly foster collaboration, expertise location and sharing among their employees. A social business recognizes that people do business with people and optimizes how people interact to accomplish organizational goals. The Social Collaboration pattern will provide clients with an integrated set of capabilities that can be rapidly deployed and easily maintained to deliver new levels of social business in a private cloud, empowering people to easily connect with employees, partners, and customers to optimize collaboration.
Pricing and Availability
The first two models of the PureSystems family – PureFlex System and PureApplication System -- start shipping to customers this quarter. PureSystems support POWER processors and Intel processors. Fifty clients are already engaged in the IBM PureExperience program to learn how they are able to put the PureApplication System to work for them.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Sproxil, Inc. Teams with IBM to Help Consumers, Industry, in the Fight Against Drug Counterfeiting
New Software Enhances Pharmaceutical Companies’ Ability to Analyze and Visualize Drug Counterfeiting Patterns in Emerging Markets
Sproxil is using IBM technology to help the pharmaceutical industry reduce drug counterfeiting and allow consumers to verify the authenticity of prescriptions in seconds with their mobile phones.
Through its collaboration with IBM, Sproxil is extending manufacturers’ ability to view and analyze real time consumer data to detect and prevent drug counterfeiting in developing countries, where 25 to 50 percent of medicines are believed to be counterfeit,1 costing the industry $75 billion a year. 2 With the collaboration, Sproxil also uses IBM’s cloud service to provide clients with secure, reliable data access virtually anywhere.
Sproxil’s pharmaceutical clients, such as Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, have been able to combat counterfeiting by using the company’s Mobile Product Authentication (MPA) solution to affix a scratch-off label with a unique code to each package of medication. Upon purchase, consumers scratch the label to reveal the code, which they then send via a free text message to a telephone number provided on the package. Within seconds, consumers receive a return text message from Sproxil letting them know if the medication is genuine.
As a part of this process, Sproxil’s MPA solution produces a large, rapidly flowing stream of information concerning pharmaceutical sales and suspected incidences of counterfeiting that pharmaceutical manufacturers have access to through Sproxil’s client portal.
To make it easier for its clients to view and analyze this market data, Sproxil turned to IBM’s ILOG Elixir software, which provides rich visuals such as advanced charts and graphics. Using these and other new capabilities, pharmaceutical manufacturers around the world will be able to better manage and analyze petabytes of transaction data in real time. Now, pharmaceutical companies can more easily identify patterns in counterfeiting and deploy their resources accordingly. Sproxil’s new portal featuring ILOG will be launched during the second quarter of 2012.
“Many of our clients are in locations where high-speed Internet connectivity is unreliable or nonexistent,” said Sproxil Chief Executive Officer Dr. Ashifi Gogo. “Through our work with IBM, we can enable our clients to render charts with high-speed, even in low-bandwidth situations. Through IBM’s cloud service, we are also able offer clients secure and reliable application availability no matter where they are located,” he said.
“Sproxil continues to advance its MPA solution to make it easier for us to successfully prevent consumers from being subjected to counterfeit medications,” said Chokri Ahmadi, business director, Merck Group, West Africa Region. “The new dashboard will allow us to make better use of the data we receive through the client portal, which in turn should help our business and our customers.”
Counterfeit medicines have become a critical issue for developing nations, with an impact measured in lives. For example, of the one million malaria deaths that occur worldwide each year, 200,000 are reportedly the result of counterfeit anti-malarial drugs. Additionally, the WHO indicates that 700,000 Africans die annually from consuming fake anti-malarial or tuberculosis drugs.
“Sproxil and IBM share a commitment to using technology to protect the health and safety of people around the world,” said Paul Chang, supply chain solutions leader, IBM. “With the help of IBM, Sproxil and its clients are making prescription drugs safer for millions of people who live in areas where counterfeiting is rampant.”
Sproxil has been working closely with IBM since 2010, when it was named the winner of IBM SmartCamp Boston and then received honorable mention in IBM’s SmartCamp World Finals. SmartCamp is an entrepreneurial contest that introduces start-up companies to venture capitalists, academia, government and industry leaders who can help them grow their businesses. After Sproxil’s strong performances in the SmartCamps, the company received an investment round of funding earlier this year from the Acumen Fund. Sproxil is also a member of IBM’s Global Entrepreneur initiative, which assists start ups with product development and speeds their time-to-market.
Using IBM SmartCloud, Sproxil is benefiting from the cost savings and scalability associated with a cloud environment while preserving the ability to take advantage of the security, existing applications, reliability, management and support services more typical of a private cloud.
IBM has deep expertise in the pharmaceutical industry and works with most of the world's pharmaceutical and life sciences companies in support of their discovery and development processes and providing business analytics to help deliver more personalized treatments.
To combat counterfeiting in the regions where it is most widespread, pharmaceutical manufacturers around the world – including several of the top 10 as well as small firms – are teaming with Sproxil to offer consumers a simple and quick way of making sure their medication is authentic.
About Sproxil, Inc.
Sproxil is a venture-backed, social enterprise that provides world-class brand protection services in emerging markets. Through the company’s Mobile Product Authentication™ (MPA) solution, brand owners can connect with their customers in a way not previously achieved, by helping to ensure the goods they purchase are not stolen or counterfeit. Sproxil’s patent-pending product verification service allows individuals to text message a single-use item-specific code found on products using MPA technology, and receive a rapid response confirming the product’s genuineness or alerting the consumer to report incidents of suspicious activity to the brand owner. Sproxil’s solution is compatible with any tangible item, and it is already widely used by leading pharmaceutical companies to curb the multi-billion dollar counterfeit drug industry. Recognized as innovative and instrumental in the battle against counterfeiting, Sproxil has won the IBM SmartCamp Boston Award and the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative Outstanding Commitment Award, as well as received regulatory endorsements from the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control in Nigeria and the Pharmacy and Poisons Board in Kenya. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States and continues to expand its presence in multiple countries across Asia and Africa.
Sproxil is using IBM technology to help the pharmaceutical industry reduce drug counterfeiting and allow consumers to verify the authenticity of prescriptions in seconds with their mobile phones.
Through its collaboration with IBM, Sproxil is extending manufacturers’ ability to view and analyze real time consumer data to detect and prevent drug counterfeiting in developing countries, where 25 to 50 percent of medicines are believed to be counterfeit,1 costing the industry $75 billion a year. 2 With the collaboration, Sproxil also uses IBM’s cloud service to provide clients with secure, reliable data access virtually anywhere.
Sproxil’s pharmaceutical clients, such as Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, have been able to combat counterfeiting by using the company’s Mobile Product Authentication (MPA) solution to affix a scratch-off label with a unique code to each package of medication. Upon purchase, consumers scratch the label to reveal the code, which they then send via a free text message to a telephone number provided on the package. Within seconds, consumers receive a return text message from Sproxil letting them know if the medication is genuine.
As a part of this process, Sproxil’s MPA solution produces a large, rapidly flowing stream of information concerning pharmaceutical sales and suspected incidences of counterfeiting that pharmaceutical manufacturers have access to through Sproxil’s client portal.
To make it easier for its clients to view and analyze this market data, Sproxil turned to IBM’s ILOG Elixir software, which provides rich visuals such as advanced charts and graphics. Using these and other new capabilities, pharmaceutical manufacturers around the world will be able to better manage and analyze petabytes of transaction data in real time. Now, pharmaceutical companies can more easily identify patterns in counterfeiting and deploy their resources accordingly. Sproxil’s new portal featuring ILOG will be launched during the second quarter of 2012.
“Many of our clients are in locations where high-speed Internet connectivity is unreliable or nonexistent,” said Sproxil Chief Executive Officer Dr. Ashifi Gogo. “Through our work with IBM, we can enable our clients to render charts with high-speed, even in low-bandwidth situations. Through IBM’s cloud service, we are also able offer clients secure and reliable application availability no matter where they are located,” he said.
“Sproxil continues to advance its MPA solution to make it easier for us to successfully prevent consumers from being subjected to counterfeit medications,” said Chokri Ahmadi, business director, Merck Group, West Africa Region. “The new dashboard will allow us to make better use of the data we receive through the client portal, which in turn should help our business and our customers.”
Counterfeit medicines have become a critical issue for developing nations, with an impact measured in lives. For example, of the one million malaria deaths that occur worldwide each year, 200,000 are reportedly the result of counterfeit anti-malarial drugs. Additionally, the WHO indicates that 700,000 Africans die annually from consuming fake anti-malarial or tuberculosis drugs.
“Sproxil and IBM share a commitment to using technology to protect the health and safety of people around the world,” said Paul Chang, supply chain solutions leader, IBM. “With the help of IBM, Sproxil and its clients are making prescription drugs safer for millions of people who live in areas where counterfeiting is rampant.”
Sproxil has been working closely with IBM since 2010, when it was named the winner of IBM SmartCamp Boston and then received honorable mention in IBM’s SmartCamp World Finals. SmartCamp is an entrepreneurial contest that introduces start-up companies to venture capitalists, academia, government and industry leaders who can help them grow their businesses. After Sproxil’s strong performances in the SmartCamps, the company received an investment round of funding earlier this year from the Acumen Fund. Sproxil is also a member of IBM’s Global Entrepreneur initiative, which assists start ups with product development and speeds their time-to-market.
Using IBM SmartCloud, Sproxil is benefiting from the cost savings and scalability associated with a cloud environment while preserving the ability to take advantage of the security, existing applications, reliability, management and support services more typical of a private cloud.
IBM has deep expertise in the pharmaceutical industry and works with most of the world's pharmaceutical and life sciences companies in support of their discovery and development processes and providing business analytics to help deliver more personalized treatments.
To combat counterfeiting in the regions where it is most widespread, pharmaceutical manufacturers around the world – including several of the top 10 as well as small firms – are teaming with Sproxil to offer consumers a simple and quick way of making sure their medication is authentic.
About Sproxil, Inc.
Sproxil is a venture-backed, social enterprise that provides world-class brand protection services in emerging markets. Through the company’s Mobile Product Authentication™ (MPA) solution, brand owners can connect with their customers in a way not previously achieved, by helping to ensure the goods they purchase are not stolen or counterfeit. Sproxil’s patent-pending product verification service allows individuals to text message a single-use item-specific code found on products using MPA technology, and receive a rapid response confirming the product’s genuineness or alerting the consumer to report incidents of suspicious activity to the brand owner. Sproxil’s solution is compatible with any tangible item, and it is already widely used by leading pharmaceutical companies to curb the multi-billion dollar counterfeit drug industry. Recognized as innovative and instrumental in the battle against counterfeiting, Sproxil has won the IBM SmartCamp Boston Award and the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative Outstanding Commitment Award, as well as received regulatory endorsements from the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control in Nigeria and the Pharmacy and Poisons Board in Kenya. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States and continues to expand its presence in multiple countries across Asia and Africa.
New IBM Business Integration Software Helps Enterprises Accelerate Adoption of Social Business, Cloud and Mobile Technologies
The Ottawa Hospital uses IBM technology to help improve patient care
IBM (NYSE:IBM) today unveiled a range of new business integration software capabilities designed to help organizations quickly begin incorporating the collaborative and intelligent capabilities of social media, mobile computing and cloud computing into their enterprise applications.
The cornerstone of enabling enterprises to embrace these critical technologies is the new version of IBM WebSphere Application Server. The fastest application server on the market, WebSphere Application Server now provides clients with new flexibility for embedded deployments and is ready for cloud with built in virtualization. This new offering provides the software platform that today powers more than 100,000 clients worldwide.
Complementing WebSphere Application Server is a range of new integration software offerings including:
· IBM Business Process Manager – Combines new capabilities around social, collaboration, governance and mobile to dramatically improve the way work is done. This allows organizations to gain visibility in the ways they change, manage measure and improve the processes that run their business.
· IBM Operational Decision Management – Speeds and simplifies the way that organizations manage the business rules that control a wide range of decisions across business processes and applications. The new "social media" style user interface provides an intuitive environment for collaboration and simplifies searching, viewing and making rule changes.
· IBM WebSphere Cast Iron Live Web Application Programming Interface (API) Services – Allows companies to extend their services to support the emerging community of developers who are building new social, mobile and cloud applications. This new purpose-built offering provides a comprehensive solution to deliver, socialize and manage business API assets.
The Ottawa Hospital Turns to IBM to Improve Patient Care
One client – The Ottawa Hospital has already begun testing how these new software and services from IBM can dramatically change their business model. Working with IBM, they are building a new system that improves the quality of patient care and helps them to better manage the flow of patients throughout the hospital.
Recently, the hospital had seen a tremendous increase in patients, resulting in higher occupancy rates and ultimately, overcrowding. Additionally, the patients being admitted had complicated and acute symptoms, placing a greater strain on the need for coordinated healthcare delivery. The IBM system provides extensive patient information and hospital resource availability to the clinical staff, via mobile device, at the point of care – speeding both admission and treatment.
“Physicians should be focused on patient care, not be tied up doing lower value activity, like calling for consults or trying to negotiate admission for a patient,” said Dale Potter, Senior Vice President & CIO at The Ottawa Hospital. “The concept behind our new system from IBM is that we are able to help our staff have one consolidated view on important data and processes, getting the right information to physicians at the right time.”
For example, the attending physician can send an electronic request to the patient’s physician for clarification on past diagnosis. The patient’s doctor receives the consultation request immediately on their most accessible device – a tablet, smart phone or a computer. They respond directly to the specific consult questions electronically, so the attending physician can correctly diagnose the patient.
The new system builds upon IBM’s expertise in the area of Business Process Management (BPM), Operational Decision Management and analytics, and is critical to helping the hospital rethink the manner in which it utilizes its IT infrastructure in order to cut across functional silos and better coordinate care.
A Decade of Leadership
IBM has been the overall marketshare leader in middleware software for eleven consecutive years. In fact, IBM now commands 32.1 percent market share and has extended its lead to nearly double that of its closest competitor.
Key to WebSphere's success within the middleware segment is IBM's continued investment in product performance, a commitment that has once again resulted in industry leading benchmarks. In the first test of its recently announced WebSphere Application Server v8.5, IBM was named world leader in middleware performance as measured by SPECjEnterprise 2010 in EjOPS/processor core which measures efficiency of middleware software servers. Based upon the latest industry standard benchmark results, IBM's middleware software is 16 percent faster than any other vendor's middleware software on equivalent hardware.
These new capabilities are on display at this year’s IMPACT conference, which features more than 8,500 attendees and hundreds of client testimonials, presentations, workshops and product demos.
IBM (NYSE:IBM) today unveiled a range of new business integration software capabilities designed to help organizations quickly begin incorporating the collaborative and intelligent capabilities of social media, mobile computing and cloud computing into their enterprise applications.
The cornerstone of enabling enterprises to embrace these critical technologies is the new version of IBM WebSphere Application Server. The fastest application server on the market, WebSphere Application Server now provides clients with new flexibility for embedded deployments and is ready for cloud with built in virtualization. This new offering provides the software platform that today powers more than 100,000 clients worldwide.
Complementing WebSphere Application Server is a range of new integration software offerings including:
· IBM Business Process Manager – Combines new capabilities around social, collaboration, governance and mobile to dramatically improve the way work is done. This allows organizations to gain visibility in the ways they change, manage measure and improve the processes that run their business.
· IBM Operational Decision Management – Speeds and simplifies the way that organizations manage the business rules that control a wide range of decisions across business processes and applications. The new "social media" style user interface provides an intuitive environment for collaboration and simplifies searching, viewing and making rule changes.
· IBM WebSphere Cast Iron Live Web Application Programming Interface (API) Services – Allows companies to extend their services to support the emerging community of developers who are building new social, mobile and cloud applications. This new purpose-built offering provides a comprehensive solution to deliver, socialize and manage business API assets.
The Ottawa Hospital Turns to IBM to Improve Patient Care
One client – The Ottawa Hospital has already begun testing how these new software and services from IBM can dramatically change their business model. Working with IBM, they are building a new system that improves the quality of patient care and helps them to better manage the flow of patients throughout the hospital.
Recently, the hospital had seen a tremendous increase in patients, resulting in higher occupancy rates and ultimately, overcrowding. Additionally, the patients being admitted had complicated and acute symptoms, placing a greater strain on the need for coordinated healthcare delivery. The IBM system provides extensive patient information and hospital resource availability to the clinical staff, via mobile device, at the point of care – speeding both admission and treatment.
“Physicians should be focused on patient care, not be tied up doing lower value activity, like calling for consults or trying to negotiate admission for a patient,” said Dale Potter, Senior Vice President & CIO at The Ottawa Hospital. “The concept behind our new system from IBM is that we are able to help our staff have one consolidated view on important data and processes, getting the right information to physicians at the right time.”
For example, the attending physician can send an electronic request to the patient’s physician for clarification on past diagnosis. The patient’s doctor receives the consultation request immediately on their most accessible device – a tablet, smart phone or a computer. They respond directly to the specific consult questions electronically, so the attending physician can correctly diagnose the patient.
The new system builds upon IBM’s expertise in the area of Business Process Management (BPM), Operational Decision Management and analytics, and is critical to helping the hospital rethink the manner in which it utilizes its IT infrastructure in order to cut across functional silos and better coordinate care.
A Decade of Leadership
IBM has been the overall marketshare leader in middleware software for eleven consecutive years. In fact, IBM now commands 32.1 percent market share and has extended its lead to nearly double that of its closest competitor.
Key to WebSphere's success within the middleware segment is IBM's continued investment in product performance, a commitment that has once again resulted in industry leading benchmarks. In the first test of its recently announced WebSphere Application Server v8.5, IBM was named world leader in middleware performance as measured by SPECjEnterprise 2010 in EjOPS/processor core which measures efficiency of middleware software servers. Based upon the latest industry standard benchmark results, IBM's middleware software is 16 percent faster than any other vendor's middleware software on equivalent hardware.
These new capabilities are on display at this year’s IMPACT conference, which features more than 8,500 attendees and hundreds of client testimonials, presentations, workshops and product demos.
Online and Mobile Buying Trends Continue to Rise in First-Quarter, Reports IBM
Mobile Commerce Nearly Doubles to 13.3 Percent of Online Retail Sales
Rising Consumer Sentiment Driven By Improving Online Experience
The U.S. retail industry saw continued growth in online and mobile buying trends in the first-quarter, driven by today's rising digital consumer marketplace. According to the IBM (NYSE: IBM) retail online economic indicator, a cloud-based analytics report which examines the state of the online retail sector, mobile commerce grew to more than 13 percent, while online buying grew more than 6 percent in March 2012.
This report follows recent news from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Census Bureau which announced its estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for the first-quarter 2012. According to the findings, retail sales increased by 0.8 percent in March compared to February and sales for the month were up 6.5 percent compared to the same time last year. Total sales for the first quarter of 2012 were up 6.4 percent from the same period a year ago.
IBM's retail online economic indicator identified several trends of importance to chief marketing officers, ecommerce leaders and customer service professionals. The most notable development over this first-quarter period was the continued growth of mobile commerce sales which accounted for 13.3 percent of online retail sales, double the number seen in the same time-frame the previous year.
In addition to sales, the economic indicator identified an increase in positive consumer sentiment around key attributes of a successful digital buying experience. The indicator found consumers are increasingly optimistic when it comes to convenience, experience and overall value, each up from this same period last year, based on their online shopping experience. Businesses are also increasingly looking to analyze social media such as Facebook and Twitter to assess the way their customers view them.
Part of IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative, the retail online economic indicator draws data and insights from IBM's big data offerings to provide the industry's most comprehensive look into the pulse of online retail through traditional and social media channels. The indicator analysis for first-quarter 2012 reveals the following trends:
Online Retail Sales for Q1 2012 versus Q1 2011
Consumer Spending: While total online sales were down 1.9 percent over Q1 2011, sales increased 6.3 percent from February to March 2012.Mobile Sales: Sales from mobile devices reached 13.3 percent, up from the 7 percent in Q1 2011.Mobile Traffic: 17.1 percent of all online sessions on a retailer's site were initiated from a mobile device, exceeding the 6.1 percent over this same period in 2011.Mobile Devices: Apple's iPhone continued to rank one for mobile device retail traffic at 6.5 percent with Android taking second at 5.9 percent. iPad came in third at 5.3 percent.Social Traffic: Shoppers referred from Social Networks generated 1.1 percent of all online traffic over Q1 2012, identical to the 1.1 percent seen in 2011.Social Sales: Shoppers referred to retailer sites from Social Networks generated 2.4 percent of all online sales over Q1 2012, an increase from the 1.7 percent seen over this period last year.Online Retail Categories for Q1 2012 versus Q1 2011:
Apparel stores maintained strong momentum with Q1 sales growing 14.9 percentDepartment stores continued to catch the attention of consumers with sales growing 20.4 percentHealth & Beauty sales grew by 28.8 percent as consumers continued to treat themselves this quarterHome goods experienced a 29.3 percent increase in sales in Q1 with consumers continuing to shop for their homes.Jewelry stores continued recent momentum with sales growing by 11.3 percentOffice Supply/Electronics experienced growth in Q1 with online sales increasing by 6.6 percentConsumer Sentiment for Department Stores for Q1 2012 versus Q1 2011
The Buying Experience: While consumers believe the overall "Buying Experience" improved year over year, the digital online experience saw the most positive improvements in sentiment. A leading factor was convenience which had a 65.8 percent positive sentiment rating, more than six times the negative sentiment. This was followed by value which was 51.8 percent, interaction at 36.6 percent and deals at 30.4 percent.The Online Influence: The key elements driving growing positive sentiment have the highest affinity with the online channel, demonstrating the influence it is having on the overall buying experience. These concepts include information quality and availability, in-store integration, convenience, shipping and interaction.Product Availability: On the opposite side of the spectrum, negative sentiment was highest around availability which received a rating of 24.4 percent."Over the first quarter, the digitally empowered consumer continued to demonstrate the momentum of the online channel and specifically mobile commerce, which has established itself as a legitimate channel for shopping," said Craig Hayman, General Manager, IBM Industry Solutions. "Moving ahead, we will help retailers synchronize the demand and supply chains to address issues of product availability and connect to the mobile buyer."
To further discuss the Economic Indicator and field questions, Strategy Director, IBM Digital Marketing Jay Henderson will conduct an online question and answer session on May 2, 2012, 3-4 p.m. ET. To participate in the discussion, register here.
IBM online economic indicator
The IBM retail online economic indicator features data from IBM's analytics offerings including the Benchmark and IBM Cognos Consumer Insight. The IBM Benchmark is the only analytics-based, peer-level benchmarking solution that measures online marketing results, including real-time sales data. All of the data is aggregated and anonymous. Analysis of public social media content came via IBM Cognos Consumer Insight which provides insight into underlying holiday shopping trends, hot topics of discussion and consumer sentiment. Follow the conversation at #bigdata
About IBM Smarter Commerce
IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative delivers software and services to help companies transform their business processes to more quickly respond to shifting customer demands in today's digitally transformed marketplace. The initiative is driven by the demands from organizations who are increasingly looking for ways to bring new levels of automation to marketing, sales and fulfillment to secure greater customer loyalty. The growth of mobile, social and online commerce are key trends within Smarter Commerce.
Rising Consumer Sentiment Driven By Improving Online Experience
The U.S. retail industry saw continued growth in online and mobile buying trends in the first-quarter, driven by today's rising digital consumer marketplace. According to the IBM (NYSE: IBM) retail online economic indicator, a cloud-based analytics report which examines the state of the online retail sector, mobile commerce grew to more than 13 percent, while online buying grew more than 6 percent in March 2012.
IBM's retail online economic indicator identified several trends of importance to chief marketing officers, ecommerce leaders and customer service professionals. The most notable development over this first-quarter period was the continued growth of mobile commerce sales which accounted for 13.3 percent of online retail sales, double the number seen in the same time-frame the previous year.
In addition to sales, the economic indicator identified an increase in positive consumer sentiment around key attributes of a successful digital buying experience. The indicator found consumers are increasingly optimistic when it comes to convenience, experience and overall value, each up from this same period last year, based on their online shopping experience. Businesses are also increasingly looking to analyze social media such as Facebook and Twitter to assess the way their customers view them.
Part of IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative, the retail online economic indicator draws data and insights from IBM's big data offerings to provide the industry's most comprehensive look into the pulse of online retail through traditional and social media channels. The indicator analysis for first-quarter 2012 reveals the following trends:
Online Retail Sales for Q1 2012 versus Q1 2011
Consumer Spending: While total online sales were down 1.9 percent over Q1 2011, sales increased 6.3 percent from February to March 2012.Mobile Sales: Sales from mobile devices reached 13.3 percent, up from the 7 percent in Q1 2011.Mobile Traffic: 17.1 percent of all online sessions on a retailer's site were initiated from a mobile device, exceeding the 6.1 percent over this same period in 2011.Mobile Devices: Apple's iPhone continued to rank one for mobile device retail traffic at 6.5 percent with Android taking second at 5.9 percent. iPad came in third at 5.3 percent.Social Traffic: Shoppers referred from Social Networks generated 1.1 percent of all online traffic over Q1 2012, identical to the 1.1 percent seen in 2011.Social Sales: Shoppers referred to retailer sites from Social Networks generated 2.4 percent of all online sales over Q1 2012, an increase from the 1.7 percent seen over this period last year.Online Retail Categories for Q1 2012 versus Q1 2011:
Apparel stores maintained strong momentum with Q1 sales growing 14.9 percentDepartment stores continued to catch the attention of consumers with sales growing 20.4 percentHealth & Beauty sales grew by 28.8 percent as consumers continued to treat themselves this quarterHome goods experienced a 29.3 percent increase in sales in Q1 with consumers continuing to shop for their homes.Jewelry stores continued recent momentum with sales growing by 11.3 percentOffice Supply/Electronics experienced growth in Q1 with online sales increasing by 6.6 percentConsumer Sentiment for Department Stores for Q1 2012 versus Q1 2011
The Buying Experience: While consumers believe the overall "Buying Experience" improved year over year, the digital online experience saw the most positive improvements in sentiment. A leading factor was convenience which had a 65.8 percent positive sentiment rating, more than six times the negative sentiment. This was followed by value which was 51.8 percent, interaction at 36.6 percent and deals at 30.4 percent.The Online Influence: The key elements driving growing positive sentiment have the highest affinity with the online channel, demonstrating the influence it is having on the overall buying experience. These concepts include information quality and availability, in-store integration, convenience, shipping and interaction.Product Availability: On the opposite side of the spectrum, negative sentiment was highest around availability which received a rating of 24.4 percent."Over the first quarter, the digitally empowered consumer continued to demonstrate the momentum of the online channel and specifically mobile commerce, which has established itself as a legitimate channel for shopping," said Craig Hayman, General Manager, IBM Industry Solutions. "Moving ahead, we will help retailers synchronize the demand and supply chains to address issues of product availability and connect to the mobile buyer."
To further discuss the Economic Indicator and field questions, Strategy Director, IBM Digital Marketing Jay Henderson will conduct an online question and answer session on May 2, 2012, 3-4 p.m. ET. To participate in the discussion, register here.
IBM online economic indicator
The IBM retail online economic indicator features data from IBM's analytics offerings including the Benchmark and IBM Cognos Consumer Insight. The IBM Benchmark is the only analytics-based, peer-level benchmarking solution that measures online marketing results, including real-time sales data. All of the data is aggregated and anonymous. Analysis of public social media content came via IBM Cognos Consumer Insight which provides insight into underlying holiday shopping trends, hot topics of discussion and consumer sentiment. Follow the conversation at #bigdata
About IBM Smarter Commerce
IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative delivers software and services to help companies transform their business processes to more quickly respond to shifting customer demands in today's digitally transformed marketplace. The initiative is driven by the demands from organizations who are increasingly looking for ways to bring new levels of automation to marketing, sales and fulfillment to secure greater customer loyalty. The growth of mobile, social and online commerce are key trends within Smarter Commerce.
IBM to Acquire Tealeaf Technology, Inc. to Help Marketers Deliver Exceptional Digital Experience for Smarter Commerce
IBM (NYSE:IBM) today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Tealeaf Technology, Inc., a leading provider of customer experience analytics software that helps organizations to gain intelligence and react more swiftly to consumer trends in today's digitally transformed marketplace. Financial details were not disclosed.
The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory clearance and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2012.
With this agreement, IBM extends its Smarter Commerce initiative by adding qualitative analytics capabilities that provide chief marketing officers (CMOs), e-commerce and customer service professionals with real-time and automated insights into online customer buying experiences across online and mobile devices. As a result, organizations can gain actionable insight that allows them to improve customer support, transform site usability, tailor marketing campaigns and increase online conversion rates.
The need to deliver a seamless mobile experience has become increasingly critical to CMOs with global online commerce expected to hit $1 trillion by 2014 and mobile commerce $200 billion by 2015.
Tealeaf has over 450 customers worldwide including 30 of the Fortune 100 companies. These customers are predominantly in financial services, travel, retail and communications services. Current clients include: Dell, Wells Fargo, Air Canada, GEICO, Orbitz, Crate & Barrel, Neiman Marcus, Expedia, Zappos, ING Direct, Best Buy, DirecTV, McKesson and StubHub.
Organizations today are struggling to meet the demands created by the rapidly shifting buying patterns of their customers, who increasingly turn to online, social and mobile channels to gather information, make purchases and receive services. This new digital marketplace requires companies to be highly responsive to their customers’ behaviors in order to both compete and grow. The opportunity to better understand a customer’s experience on websites and mobile devices presents a major competitive advantage for businesses.
Tealeaf provides a full suite of customer experience management software, which records and analyzes a customer’s website and mobile interactions. As a result, marketers can spot patterns and address issues in website and mobile application design and provide a more streamlined online customer experience that leads to improved revenue, customer satisfaction, customer service productivity, and profitability.
For example, using Tealeaf software, the CMO of an online retailer can identify weaknesses in a recent mobile marketing campaign by spotting instances and replaying scenarios that triggered customer sessions to end prematurely. As a result, marketers can improve the customer’s experience by addressing usability, site design or ease of use and reach out to consumers to recapture their interest.
In another instance, an online travel agency finds that when visitors misspell a vacation package name and receive zero search results, nearly 100 percent of the visitors leave the site without completing a booking, prompting the website team to address the response and offer other navigation options. By replaying and analyzing each customer’s session, the travel agent can pinpoint the issue and immediately serve those customers and maintain their loyalty.
“Marketers must continuously deliver a better customer experience on both the Web and mobile devices to meet the expectations of today's empowered consumers," said Craig Hayman, General Manager of Industry Solutions at IBM. "With these new capabilities from Tealeaf, we can not only provide chief marketing officers and other marketing leaders the qualitative insights into how customers actually experience their brands, but show them how to react in real time across marketing, sales and service.
“Tealeaf's patented technology can be deployed into a business’s current environment with no needed modifications so they begin capturing customer data and delivering optimal experiences immediately,” said Rebecca Ward, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Tealeaf. “IBM Smarter Commerce is the perfect fit for Tealeaf and further establishes IBM as the leading partner for businesses looking to succeed in today’s fast evolving environment.”
Tealeaf will extend IBM’s leadership in Smarter Commerce by giving companies qualitative web and digital analytics capabilities, allowing them to capture and replay a customer’s web and mobile interactions to provide a more granular and richer view of a customer’s experience. This insightful view helps marketers answer the question of “why” customers interact as they do and thus provide a more optimized online customer experience leading to improved revenue, customer satisfaction, customer service productivity and profitability.
Consistent with IBM's Smarter Commerce strategy and following the closing of the transaction, IBM will continue to support and enhance Tealeaf's technologies and clients while allowing them to take advantage of the broader IBM portfolio. Tealeaf will be integrated into IBM's Enterprise Marketing and Management (EMM) Group, which includes previously acquired assets from Coremetrics, Unica and DemandTec. IBM has invested more than $3 billion in building its Smarter Commerce initiative, a key driver of growth and profitability.
Tealeaf is based in San Francisco, California with additional offices in Europe.
The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory clearance and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2012.
With this agreement, IBM extends its Smarter Commerce initiative by adding qualitative analytics capabilities that provide chief marketing officers (CMOs), e-commerce and customer service professionals with real-time and automated insights into online customer buying experiences across online and mobile devices. As a result, organizations can gain actionable insight that allows them to improve customer support, transform site usability, tailor marketing campaigns and increase online conversion rates.
The need to deliver a seamless mobile experience has become increasingly critical to CMOs with global online commerce expected to hit $1 trillion by 2014 and mobile commerce $200 billion by 2015.
Tealeaf has over 450 customers worldwide including 30 of the Fortune 100 companies. These customers are predominantly in financial services, travel, retail and communications services. Current clients include: Dell, Wells Fargo, Air Canada, GEICO, Orbitz, Crate & Barrel, Neiman Marcus, Expedia, Zappos, ING Direct, Best Buy, DirecTV, McKesson and StubHub.
Organizations today are struggling to meet the demands created by the rapidly shifting buying patterns of their customers, who increasingly turn to online, social and mobile channels to gather information, make purchases and receive services. This new digital marketplace requires companies to be highly responsive to their customers’ behaviors in order to both compete and grow. The opportunity to better understand a customer’s experience on websites and mobile devices presents a major competitive advantage for businesses.
Tealeaf provides a full suite of customer experience management software, which records and analyzes a customer’s website and mobile interactions. As a result, marketers can spot patterns and address issues in website and mobile application design and provide a more streamlined online customer experience that leads to improved revenue, customer satisfaction, customer service productivity, and profitability.
For example, using Tealeaf software, the CMO of an online retailer can identify weaknesses in a recent mobile marketing campaign by spotting instances and replaying scenarios that triggered customer sessions to end prematurely. As a result, marketers can improve the customer’s experience by addressing usability, site design or ease of use and reach out to consumers to recapture their interest.
In another instance, an online travel agency finds that when visitors misspell a vacation package name and receive zero search results, nearly 100 percent of the visitors leave the site without completing a booking, prompting the website team to address the response and offer other navigation options. By replaying and analyzing each customer’s session, the travel agent can pinpoint the issue and immediately serve those customers and maintain their loyalty.
“Marketers must continuously deliver a better customer experience on both the Web and mobile devices to meet the expectations of today's empowered consumers," said Craig Hayman, General Manager of Industry Solutions at IBM. "With these new capabilities from Tealeaf, we can not only provide chief marketing officers and other marketing leaders the qualitative insights into how customers actually experience their brands, but show them how to react in real time across marketing, sales and service.
“Tealeaf's patented technology can be deployed into a business’s current environment with no needed modifications so they begin capturing customer data and delivering optimal experiences immediately,” said Rebecca Ward, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Tealeaf. “IBM Smarter Commerce is the perfect fit for Tealeaf and further establishes IBM as the leading partner for businesses looking to succeed in today’s fast evolving environment.”
Tealeaf will extend IBM’s leadership in Smarter Commerce by giving companies qualitative web and digital analytics capabilities, allowing them to capture and replay a customer’s web and mobile interactions to provide a more granular and richer view of a customer’s experience. This insightful view helps marketers answer the question of “why” customers interact as they do and thus provide a more optimized online customer experience leading to improved revenue, customer satisfaction, customer service productivity and profitability.
Consistent with IBM's Smarter Commerce strategy and following the closing of the transaction, IBM will continue to support and enhance Tealeaf's technologies and clients while allowing them to take advantage of the broader IBM portfolio. Tealeaf will be integrated into IBM's Enterprise Marketing and Management (EMM) Group, which includes previously acquired assets from Coremetrics, Unica and DemandTec. IBM has invested more than $3 billion in building its Smarter Commerce initiative, a key driver of growth and profitability.
Tealeaf is based in San Francisco, California with additional offices in Europe.
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