IBM Launches Business Analytics Enterprise to Break Down Data Silos and Streamline Planning and Analytics

IBM today released Business Analytics Enterprise, a software suite to help enterprises break down data and analytics silos. It includes business intelligence planning, budgeting, reporting, forecasting, and dashboard capabilities and provides a complete view of data sources across the entire business.

Along with IBM Planning Analytics with Watson and IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson, this suite also includes a new IBM Analytics Content Hub that helps streamline how users discover and access analytics and planning tools from multiple vendors in a single, personalized dashboard view.

IBM Analytics Content Hub also features algorithms that can recommend role-based content to help users surface new stories, reports, and dashboards from across the organization and then analyzes usage patterns to recommend content that aligns with specific interests.

IBM also updated IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson, an AI-powered business intelligence solution, with integration capabilities and enhanced forecasting that allows users to consider multiple factors and seasons in their trend predictions. Additionally, IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, an AI-powered solution that helps streamline financial and operational planning, is expected to be available on Amazon Werb Services later this year.

"Businesses today are trying to become more data-driven than ever as they navigate the unexpected in the face of supply chain disruptions, labor and skills shortages, and regulatory changes," said Dinesh Nirmal, general manager of data, AI, and automation at IBM, in a statement. "But to truly be data-driven, organizations need to be able to provide their different teams with more comprehensive access to analytics tools and a more complete picture of their business data without jeopardizing their compliance, security, or privacy programs. IBM Business Analytics Enterprise offers a way to bring together analytics tools in a single view, regardless of which vendor it comes from or where the data resides."

"We've been using IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson for well over a decade now to support decision-making of all kinds across our business. We frequently use it in conjunction with other business intelligence tools, and one challenge was that those tools were always standing side-by-side with no connection between them and the data was separated," Bernd Oerthle, head of analytics reporting and infrastructure at ALH Gruppe, a finance and insurance company in Germany, said in a statement. "With the new IBM Analytics Content Hub, we plan to connect internal stakeholders to multiple different BI solutions for easy access to self-service data, enabling better support for our end customers."