Predictive analytics with System z Faster, broader, more cost effective access to critical insights Highlights Optimizes high-velocity decisions that can consistently generate real business results Integrates SPSS Modeler scoring adapters with your transactional applications running on DB2 for z/os to improve the accuracy, speed and performance of real-time scoring while reducing cost and complexity Helps you solve business and research problems with ad hoc analysis, hypothesis testing and predictive analytics Provides your IT organization with a secure, reliable and scalable foundation for the integration of analytic results into existing enterprise infrastructure Overview Today s organizations make thousands even millions of transactional decisions every day. A customer service agent decides to give a customer a discount for a new contract; a system determines whether a potentially suspicious activity should be escalated for investigation; a logistics manager decides if a truck is safe to be put on the road for the next delivery. Each of these decisions, if made correctly, have the potential to improve significantly the competitiveness and profitability of your business because you are able to provide an good customer experience. Yet, many organizations are missing these opportunities because they are basing their decisions on a mix of data, business rules, skills, experience and perhaps even just gut instinct. With 70 percent of all data transactions in the banking, insurance, retail, telecommunications, utilities and government industries occurring on the IBM System z platform, which is renowned for high quality of service and performance, we have an opportunity to change the game with predictive analytics. Combining this data with predictive analytics software can help organiza tions in their daily decision-making and substantially improve outcomes. Organizations can capture information about people s attitudes and opinions, predict the outcomes of interactions before they occur and act on their insights by embedding analytic results into business processes.
Accurate and usable predictive results depend greatly on complete, relevant and current data. The faster you can use the newest and most relevant data in the decision-making process, the higher the quality of the decision. Because much of the data, from financial information to customer lists, personnel records to manufacturing reports, originates on the System z platform, it makes sense to bring the predictive analytics to the data. The superior performance, security and scalability of System z can help you make the most of your predictive analytics solution. You can process and analyze the staggering volumes of ever-changing and increasingly varied data and base your decisions on all of the newest and most relevant data as it is received. For example, if you can understand the current inventory, you can anticipate and assess demand to ensure you have the right products in stock and personnel available when customers need them. Or, by scoring your transactional data in real-time at the point of impact, you can reduce fraud in applications such as credit card transactions and insurance claims or improve the up-sell and cross-sell of other highvolume customer marketing and sales initiatives. Because much of the data, from financial information to customer lists, personnel records to manufacturing reports, originates on the System z platform, it makes sense to bring the predictive analytics to the data. Introducing IBM SPSS for Linux on System z IBM SPSS for Linux on System z is an integral part of the IBM and Data Warehousing on System z portfolio. This combination of software and platform can change how organizations weave analytics into the fabric of their business so they fuel the processes, decisions and actions that optimize outcomes. It is a powerful portfolio that includes: IBM Analytical Decision Management for Linux on System z IBM SPSS Modeler for Linux on System z IBM SPSS Statistics for Linux on System z IBM SPSS Collaboration and Deployment Services for Linux on System z Figure 1: IBM Analytics Decision Management for Linux on System z 2
IBM Analytical Decision Management for Linux on System z IBM Analytical Decision Management is designed to optimize and automate high-velocity decisions that can consistently generate real business results. Using IBM business analytics technologies, IBM Analytical Decision Management for Linux on System z (Figure 1) provides predictive models, business rules, optimization and scoring that can help organizations make predictive analytics an integral part of their businesses. The breakthrough technology of IBM Analytical Decision Management for Linux on System z can help you: Automatically optimize resource tradeoffs that align with your organization s goals. Use predictive analytics models and business rules to get the most out of customer interactions so you can increase revenue, profits and customer loyalty. Predict and prevent threats to mitigate the risk of fraud and to reduce cost. Improve asset and resource availability by preventing equipment failure, staffing downtime and service disruptions. IBM Modeler for Linux on System z SPSS Modeler can help organizations use predictive analytics to gain greater insight into their business and make improvements. With SPSS Modeler for Linux on System z, your organization can: Work with a variety of file formats that have been pulled from (and will be written to) a variety of databases for data preparation. Create models using both structured and unstructured (textual) data. Manage the entire data mining cycle effectively from a single workbench. Fine-tune selected models based on statistical confidence levels. Automate the execution of models and deploy the results into existing systems and processes. Integrate your transactional applications running on IBM DB2 for z/os to improve the accuracy, speed and performance of real-time scoring while reducing cost and complexity. The combination of DB2 for z/os and SPSS Modeler (Figure 2) increases the timeliness of your score because it Figure 2: SPSS Modeler for Linux on System z 3
offers a more efficient, reliable process and makes it available to more customers. The qualities of service of IBM System z are designed to offer improved accuracy, speed and performance in scoring your data while reducing the overall cost and complexity. It scores new and relevant data directly in online transaction processing (OLTP) applications, scales to larger data volumes to improve the accuracy of the data models and patterns created and provides the performance needed to meet and exceed the service level agreements (SLAs) of the OLTP applications or departments. IBM SPSS Statistics for Linux on System z SPSS Statistics software can help companies solve business and research problems with ad hoc analysis, hypothesis testing and predictive analytics. Organizations use SPSS Statistics to understand data, analyze trends, forecast, plan, validate assumptions and drive accurate conclusions. With SPSS Statistics for Linux on System z (Figure 3), you can: Expand the power of your analysis and make more insightful decisions. Take advantage of increased accessibility to advanced analytics with improved tools, output and features. Use mapping capabilities to add a geographic dimension to analysis and reporting. Target, forecast and plan by geographical areas. Use ordinal values for more accurate models when predicting nonlinear outcomes, such as customer satisfaction. Run large, complicated models by generating alternate models with minor changes created with edited scripting rather than reproducing entire models. Figure 3: SPSS Statistics web diagram (output) and chart builder and variables (input) 4
IBM SPSS Collaboration and Deployment Services for Linux on System z SPSS Collaboration and Deployment Services for Linux on System z help provide IT organizations with a secure, reliable and scalable foundation for the integration of analytic results into existing enterprise infrastructure. A unified platform with SPSS Modeler and IBM Decision Management, these services help enterprises increase the impact of their analytics investment with: The ability to deploy real-time scoring into operational systems using standard interfaces and deliver on-demand scores and decisions to people and business applications The ability to automate batch scoring operations The ability to automate important model lifecycle operations such as model evaluation (including champion-challenger), model refresh and model promotion A foundation for Analytical Process Governance that enables managing and auditing analytical artifacts throughout their lifecycle An open and extensible platform that is integrated with the entire IBM SPSS portfolio Linux on System z and your analytics environment Linux on System z can help your organization: Eliminate server sprawl and complexity. Support energy efficiency and environmental initiatives. Meet growing security, compliance and regulatory demands. Linux on System z combines the open standards of the Linux operating system with the power of System z servers. Linux on System z is designed to support advanced virtualization for greater flexibility, resilience and scalability while improving optimization for efficiency and effectiveness. Linux on System z can help lower your IT costs with support for massive consolidation, exploiting the capabilities of System z servers to run multiple and mission-critical business analytics and data warehousing workloads concurrently. Centralized system management and autonomic computing capabilities also help reduce errors and workload-balancing tasks. Linux on System z is designed to scale to meet spikes in server activity, helping to minimize costly transaction delays and potentially devastating system crashes. With a suite of built-in features, System z servers can rapidly respond to, or even anticipate, threats to system health. What does this mean to your SPSS investment? Timely, accurate and secure access to information. With SPSS for Linux on System z, everything you need for business insight is on the same platform as the source data, increasing your business agility while keeping your data safe. Superior scalability, availability and performance. With Linux on System z, your application infrastructure can scale, perform without degradation in application response time and offer continuous solution availability. Reduced costs and complexity. When you combine SPSS with Linux on System z, there is a significant savings in the hardware, software, operating and labor costs associated with the management and maintenance of your enterprise predictive analytics infrastructure. Rapid deployment and expansion. The time associated with deploying a new predictive analytics application, increasing capacity or both is reduced when you rely on the Linux on System z platform for your SPSS Predictive Analytics deployment. 5
Conclusion IBM predictive analytics for System z can help your organization improve its ability to gain detailed insight into present conditions and to evaluate likely events and results. Because IBM predictive analytics is combined with System z, a single platform covers your production, development, test and failover requirements without having to dedicate specific resources to individual needs. The dynamic allocation capabilities of System z helps your predictive analytics solution get what it needs when it needs it without discernible delay. and Data Warehousing on System z The IBM System z platform is the ideal platform for modern business analytics and data warehousing because its core value proposition aligns perfectly with the new requirements that changing market dynamics demand while reducing the operating costs and complexity. As those hosting transactional data on System z today already realize, it is one of the most secure, highest available and reliable platforms on the market one that can scale to accommodate increasing volumes of data and a growing number of users. System z simplifies the deployment, maintenance and management of your business analytics and data warehousing solutions and enables you to more easily deliver against today s aggressive business requirements. IBM Data Warehousing and solutions on System z give you a complete portfolio of business and technology solutions that help everyone from executives to data analysts to employees on the front line gain insight and foresight. Real-time monitoring, reporting, analysis, dashboards and a robust set of predictive analytics enable everyone in your company to make smart, proactive business decisions when and where they are needed. With an enterprise data warehouse infrastructure as the foundation for your business analytics investment, your users are ensured consistent, secure access to accurate and timely business information. 6
About IBM software delivers actionable insights decision-makers need to achieve better business performance. IBM offers a comprehensive, unified portfolio of business intelligence, predictive and advanced analytics, financial performance and strategy management, governance, risk and compliance and analytic applications. With IBM software, companies can spot trends, patterns and anomalies, compare what if scenarios, predict potential threats and opportunities, identify and manage key business risks and plan, budget and forecast resources. With these deep analytic capabilities our customers around the world can better understand, anticipate and shape business outcomes. For more information For further information, visit ibm.com/business-analytics. Request a call To request a call or to ask a question, go to ibm.com/ business-analytics/contactus. An IBM representative will respond to your inquiry within two business days. 7
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