Dive Brief:
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IBM is simplifying its analytics pricing with "FlexPoints," which customers can use in any analytics platform, according to IBM analytics researchers, which ZDnet first noted. IBM Analytics is now available in a bundle of three different platforms, including Hybrid Data Management, Unified Governance and Integration, and Data Science and Business Analytics.
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The Hybrid Data Management Platform allows all data to be "accessible to developers" while the Unified Governance and Integration Platform allows customers to accommodate regulatory compliance and privacy concerns with data. The Data Science Platform allows customers to use their data as a predictive tool for future business scenarios.
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Companies are free to delegate funds or FlexPoints to the platforms that best suit their needs, resulting in a lessened burden on deciding how a company's analytics budget is constructed.
Dive Insight:
About 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created daily. Data is increasingly being treated as an "enterprise asset," but to accommodate the rate at which it amounts on a daily basis, finding cheaper but functional options is important.
IBM offering a flexible, bundled approach to data management could be used as a tool for proposals in the C-suite. Organizations with leadership directly involved in analytics are more likely to reach goals based off of data-driven analytics. Adopting a plan that allows for flexible spending can prove attractive to the C-suite.
However, IBM's offerings are just the latest in series of vendors working to accommodate the growing need for better managed and cheaper analytics options. In October, Oracle debuted its autonomous cloud database for "data warehouse workloads," and Cisco plans to debut its "intuitive networking" system in March to bring analytics to encrypted traffic for more customer visibility.
In December, Microsoft announced its own model of price reductions for Big Data management. Prices for its Azure HDInsight (HDI) went down by 52%. HDI customers already had a 63% decline in total cost of ownership, establishing Microsoft as a go-to source for data analytics. Coupled with its share of the cloud market, Microsoft's offerings are in direct competition to IBM's.
