ARMONK, N.Y. and ANDOVER, Mass., March
31, 2015 /CNW/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) and The Weather
Company through WSI, its global B2B division, today announced a
groundbreaking global strategic alliance to integrate real-time
weather insights into business to improve operational performance
and decision-making. As part of the alliance, The Weather Company,
including WSI will shift its massive weather data services platform
to the IBM Cloud and integrate its data with IBM analytics and
cloud services.
Weather is perhaps the single largest external swing factor in
business performance – responsible for an annual economic impact of
nearly half a trillion dollars in the U.S. alone1. While
weather prediction is increasingly precise and granular, business
systems generally assume every day is the same. As a result,
knowledge of impending extreme weather disruptions – or even
routine disruptions that drive well understood behaviors and
systemic reactions – don't always trigger operational responses.
Combining weather data with traditional business data and rich data
from an unprecedented number of Internet of Things (IoT) enabled
systems and devices will fundamentally transform enterprise
decision-making.
The IoT and cloud computing allow for collection of
data from more than 100,000 weather sensors and aircraft,
millions of smartphones, buildings and even moving
vehicles. WSI's forecasting system ingests and processes data
from thousands of sources, resulting in approximately 2.2 billion
unique forecast points worldwide, and averages more than 10
billion forecasts a day on active weather days.
By migrating its weather data platform to IBM Cloud, WSI will be
able to accelerate the growth of one of the largest cloud-based
applications in the world. Partnering with IBM also will
enable enterprise clients and industry ecosystems to more easily
integrate WSI weather data – including rapidly updated forecasts –
into their operations and decision-making. Once integrated with
enterprise processes, weather data can be combined with data from
supply chains, customer buying patterns and other sources to create
more valuable insights.
IBM and WSI will deliver new cloud services to businesses in
three key ways:
- Watson Analytics for Weather: IBM and WSI will enable
easy integration of historical and real-time weather data in
business operations and decision making with IBM analytics
platforms such as Watson Analytics. The companies will jointly
develop industry solutions for insurance, energy & utilities,
retail and logistics among others.
- Cloud and Mobile App Developer Tools: Entrepreneurs and
software developers will be able to rapidly build mobile and web
apps that take advantage of WSI data combined with data from
operational systems, connected devices and sensors using advanced
analytics through Bluemix, IBM's cloud application development
platform.
- Business and Operational Weather Expertise: Thousands of
consultants from across IBM Global Business Services will be
trained to combine WSI data with other sources to more effectively
interpret industry pain points, providing clients new insights that
solve business problems.
By combining IBM's cloud computing, industry consulting and
analytics expertise with WSI's precision weather data and
forecasts, the two companies can now enable entire industries to
utilize understanding of weather on business outcomes and take
action at a local level. For example:
- Insurers pay more than $1 billion
in claims every year for vehicles damaged by hail. WSI's Weather
Alert service, together with IBM Analytics, enables insurance
providers to send policyholders text messages that alert them to
impending hailstorms – and safe locations – so vehicles can be
moved before damage occurs. These insights have the potential to
save insurers up to $25 per
policyholder per year in hail-prone areas, or millions of dollars
annually.
- Each winter, retailers in snowy areas see patterns in which
storm forecasts drive spikes in sales of groceries, shovels, sand,
salt and cold-weather gear. Yet those same weather events typically
hamper retail sales as consumers stay inside. But differences can
be profound – during the January 2014
polar vortex, areas with greater than 10°F drops in temperature saw
sales fall 15.5 percent while areas with a less than 10°F drop saw
sales fall only 2.9 percent. The ability to better understand and
predict the impact of such weather events allows retailers to
adjust staffing and supply chain strategies as needed – regionally
and nationwide.
- Utility companies feel the impact of an increase in temperature
and relative humidity – even just a few degrees – dramatically in
air conditioning use and power consumption. The difference between
90 and 95 degrees in Texas, for
example, can equate to $24 million
more in electricity spending per day. With IBM and WSI, utilities
will be able to more accurately predict power consumption so they
can avoid overproducing power, reduce service interruptions and
better serve customers.
"This deal combines the capabilities of the world's largest and
most advanced commercial weather company with the leader in big
data and analytics. Together, we'll help businesses and governments
transform their decisions and operations around weather fluctuation
at a scale that hasn't been possible until now," said David Kenny, chairman and CEO of The Weather
Company. "This is a watershed moment for businesses that have long
been impacted by weather but haven't had the rich data or enhanced
decision-making ability to drive positive business outcomes. The
combination of our new high-resolution forecasting capabilities
with IBM analytics opens up a world of possibilities for the
enterprise."
The partnership builds upon IBM's investment of $3 billion over the next four years in an
Internet of Things (IoT) unit to develop a portfolio of cloud
services, software and related intellectual property.
"There's an opportunity to inform all business operations and
decision-making with real-time actionable insight delivered
securely via the cloud and extracted from all this data collected
from sensors all over the planet," said Bob
Picciano, senior vice president, IBM Analytics. "The Weather
Company and IBM partnership can be a catalyst to making critical
business systems even smarter."
For more information on the new WSI and IBM partnership, please
visit www.ibm.com/IBMandWeather and
www.weathermeansbusiness.com
Join the conversation #IBMandWeather and #weathermeansbiz
For more information on IBM's Internet of Things business,
please visit www.ibm.com/IoT
To view a series of animated Vine videos related to this
announcement visit: https://vine.co/u/1025833884602232832
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About WSI, the professional division of The Weather
Company
Weather Means Business™. WSI is the world's leading
provider of weather-driven business solutions that enable
enterprises to make better decisions using the most
accurate and precise weather data available.
WSI serves some of the world's biggest brands in the aviation,
energy, insurance, and media markets, as well as federal and state
government agencies. We are proud to be a part of The Weather
Company, which focuses entirely on the weather, delivering billions
of discrete forecasts per day around the world, through a media
portfolio that includes The Weather Channel®, weather.com®, WSI and
Weather Underground. Learn more at www.wsi.com.
(1) Source: U.S. Economic Sensitivity to Weather
Variability, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society,
June 2011.
Media Contact: IBM: Vineeta
Durani, 917-855-2680, vineeta.durani@us.ibm.com, or The
Weather Company: David Blumenthal,
david.blumenthal@weather.com
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SOURCE IBM