IBM today announced 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, IBM said.
According to IBM, the SIL significantly expands IBM’s nearly 10-year-old services research program by bringing together services, research, software developers and industry experts from around the company to focus initially on the creation of services software applications for cloud computing, analytics and mobility.
IBM invests more than $6 billion annually on R&D and employs about 3,000 researchers worldwide, with about a third of them focused on services and analytics, the company said.
“Our singular focus is to help our clients capitalise on technologies that solve problems and create new possibilities,” said Mike Daniels, senior VP 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.”
IBM researchers, developers and other technical experts who will participate in the SIL have an array of credentials, including development and client experience in computer science, software, security and compliance, systems management, mathematics and business optimisation, data mining, storage, computer systems, user interaction and cognitive sciences. The central mission of these elite researchers and developers is to turn the intellectual property created during client engagements into software – thereby making it easier and faster to replicate a solution to thousands of engagements around the globe.
“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, said Mahmoud Naghshineh, VP and director, IBM Services Innovation Lab. “Our efforts are focused on understanding the problems of service organisations from the perspectives of people, practices, information and technology to provide them new opportunities for revenue, cost savings and to foster innovation.”
The SIL will operate out of IBM Research’s Labs worldwide, including New York,California, China, Israel, India, Japan, Switzerland and Brazil.
IBM said that the initial focus of the SIL projects includes cloud computing, advanced analytics, service delivery automation, enterprise mobilisation and smarter planet.
The SIL is the latest example of the investments in research innovation and software capabilities that IBM has made over the past decade to create higher-value service offerings, IBM added. IBM researchers have participated in more than 1,000 IT business process and consulting client services engagements, IBM pointed out.
With more than 15,000 services and software patents issued to IBM inventors in the last five years, patented services applications have played a major role in enabling IBM to deliver on its smarter planet vision – a world where technologies are increasingly interconnected, instrumented and intelligent — by quickly moving an invention into client engagements around the world, from smarter healthcare and smarter water management to smarter buildings and smarter crime prevention, the company conlcuded.
