IBM sets up Services Innovation Lab

BANGALORE, INDIA: IBM announced on Thursday the creation of the Services Innovation Lab (SIL), a new global lab that will initially comprise about 200 technology experts hand-picked from around the company.

The lab will accelerate the expansion of real-time analytics and software automation in both IBM's technology services offerings and its global services delivery capabilities, said a press release.

The SIL will operate out of IBM Research’s Labs worldwide, including New York, California, China, Israel, India, Japan, Switzerland and Brazil, it added.

IBM said it invests more than $6 billion annually on research and development and employs about 3,000 researchers worldwide, with about a third of them focused on services and analytics.

“Our singular focus is to help our clients capitalize on technologies that solve problems and create new possibilities,” said Mike Daniels, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Services.

“Creation of the Services Innovation Lab demonstrates how we at IBM differentiate our capabilities vs. competition. We harness the best of what IBM research and development can deliver in science and engineering to help our clients be more innovative,” he added.

According to Mahmoud Naghshineh, vice president and director, IBM Services Innovation Lab, “The Services Innovation Lab is creating a research environment that leverages advances in services science, analytics and cloud computing to create innovation that matters for our clients anywhere in the world.”

The initial focus of the SIL projects includes:

Cloud Computing: The SIL will create both new cloud services and devise new methods for moving traditional computing environments to a cloud-based model.

Advanced Analytics: The SIL will invent new ways to tightly integrate analytic services with business processes to create new types of services and applications that can be injected into client accounts more quickly.

Service Delivery Automation: The SIL will use data mining and real-time analytics software to create new delivery capabilities that will improve the operation of a data center by enabling IT management to become predictive and proactive.

Enterprise Mobilization and Smarter Planet: Capitalizing on technologies used in personal computing, the SIL will develop a sophisticated set of technologies for the mobile computing marketplace. Key areas of focus are security, ease of use and enabling enterprise applications on mobile devices.