Global CIO: IBM's Most Disruptive Acquisition Of 2010 Is Netezza

#2: Advancing the cause of business analytics for the masses. Here's where the IBM connection will really pay off for Netezza in helping customers map out strategies for getting the right information and insights out to the proper people at the optimal time and in the optimal context.

While Netezza has built itself on delivering data warehouse appliances, it's the output of those appliances—the business analytics and their insights and ideas and discoveries—that reflect the real potential of IBM Netezza. As Baum said, "From the beginning, a big part of the Netezza vision has been introducing business analytics to the masses. Now that we're a part of IBM, we expect to help make that happen much, much faster."

#1: Shifting business's focus from rearview mirror to the future. In the next few years, this is the behavior that will separate winning companies from losers, and even survivors from those that enter the one-way death spiral. It's nice to have someone be able to exercise hindsight in explaining why such and such happened last month, last quarter or last year, but it's not enough: the best companies will be able to use analytics to reverse the arrow of time and look into what's coming in the future instead of just hashing over and rationalizing what's already occurred. "The term of BI, unfortunately, given the early genesis of the term, has come to mean reporting and dashboarding," Baum said.

"And while those are very important, they've also become sort of foundational because most companies are already doing it. And that means most BI value today is historical in nature and is all about looking in the rearview mirror. But, the way business analytics and optimization are heading, it's much more toward the forward-looking and actionable information—the advanced analytics and more predictive solutions and the business impact they can have."

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