IBM announced a broad portfolio of software that uses predictive analytics to provide greater visibility and integration between the applications that run on an IT infrastructure and key business processes.

By applying analytics expertise to the data center in this way, the new software will enable clients to make more intelligent, automated business decisions and help them embrace cloud computing.

The software enhances business decision management, predictive business service management and integration.

The shift to IT analytics is transforming decision-making for IT and business operations. By using predictive analytics, which harness the vast quantities of data a business creates, organizations can respond more quickly and accurately to customer needs, better anticipate and prevent outages and deliver fact-driven metrics to drive better business outcomes. Analytics can also make improvements across the software development and delivery lifecycle, further reducing cost, risk and time to market.

"Predictive analytics can tame IT infrastructure in much the same way it's taming big data," said Robert LeBlanc, IBM Sr. VP, Middleware Software. "This new software adds intelligence to IT and business processes by basically creating a road map showing the fastest connection between a business and its IT infrastructure. It automatically avoids potholes to ensure the best outcome, which is critical as the market continues to embrace cloud computing."

The new IBM software creates a single view for an organization to gain visibility into all of its physical and digital assets and services, including business processes:

* Decision Management automates business decisions, ensuring an organization is able to make the right decision at the right time. IBM WebSphere Operational Decision Management enables business users to capture the decision logic of experts and apply it to accurately detect and react in real time to critical situations. This also helps eliminate delays in hand-offs between business experts and IT staff.

* Predictive Business Service Management reduces service disruptions and prevents impending issues before they become a problem in the IT and network infrastructure. By applying analytics to gain greater visibility, control and automation in their data centers, organizations will be able to better manage the health of their businesses. IBM Tivoli Analytics for Service Performance, along with a new version of Tivoli Business Service Management is being previewed as part of today's announcements.

* Connectivity and Integration provides greater insight into existing assets, freeing up capital to invest in new growth opportunities. By easily and securely bringing together an organization's disparate data sources and applications, this technology ensures users can access and incorporate vital information regardless of platform, device or data format. As a result, it becomes easier to apply analytics toward business initiatives. Enhanced versions of IBM WebSphere Message Broker and IBM WebSphere MQ allow users to more effectively integrate and disseminate secure information across business processes.