IBM’s Big Data Honeymoon in Vegas

IBM will be kicking off their On-Demand 2011 conference in Las Vegas starting October 23, stringing together almost 700 sessions between event launch and the closing bell on October 27. For those with an eye on big data, especially on the BI and analytics end, this year should provide a range of both technical and hands-on sessions to take a deep-dive—with IBM’s technology, of course.

One of the standout features of this upcoming conference is certainly the wide range of enterprise customers who are bringing stories to bear. While you can view the full list here, this is a who’s who of the Fortune 1000 with companies like Ford Motor, American Express, AT&T, PepsiCo, StateFarm and a laundry list of other household names.

Among some of the more compelling sessions during the week are those that tackle the analytics and cloud spaces as a collective whole—not a tall order for IBM, which is placing an extra amount of emphasis on both lately.

On Tuesday, for example, Arvind Krishna, GM for Information Management Software at IBM, Ray Tacoma from the sales side of Netezza, and client speakers from T-Mobile, Vestas, Intel and Cisco will weigh on the topic, “Brave New World: Appliances, Optimized Systems, Big Data and Cloud.” In addition to touching on every key word IBM is hoping to associate itself with this year, the hour session will address several “big data” and cloud technologies that are reshaping IBM’s enterprise analytics portfolio. Their Smart Analytics Systems, Informix TimeSeries technology, and IBM’s overall big data strategy will take center stage.

IBM has arranged their On-Demand 2011 event around three technical themes, each with their own opportunities for learning and networking. The topics include issues relevant to the Information Management Forum, the Enterprise Content Management Forum, the Business Analytics Forum and the Business Leadership Forum.

The Information Management Forum focus sessions will provide deep-dive technical sessions that cover a range of database and data warehouse tools, as well as present information about general integration, MDM and governance of data. Among some of the key sessions are those related to data warehousing and analytics, IMS and related tools, data lifecycle, security and privacy as well as focused learning opportunities with Infomix, DB2 for Linux, UNIX and Windows, and IBM Infosphere, among others.

The Business Analytics Forum is shaping up to be one of the more compelling offerings during the event, providing attendees with lengthy sessions on analytics deployments from implementation experts and those who have experiences to share. This forum will cover general business intelligence revolving around IBM Cognos 10, predictive and advanced analytics, and sessions related to financial and risk analytics as well as a whole set of sessions that focus on social media and customer analytics.

The Enterprise Content Management Forum will revolve around everything from content analytics to document capture and imaging. The leaders of the forum say that these sessions will allow learners to get a handle on new skills that they can take back to their organization and implement immediately.

We’ll be keeping an eye on news and insights that unfold throughout the week coming up, which may include a few announcements about the future of IBM’s big data strategy.