Changing the way business decisions are made

Wednesday, 29 October 2014

Changing the way business decisions are madeWe believe that social data has unlimited value, and near limitless application. Today, we’re taking an important step toward unleashing this value through a new relationship with IBM. This alliance will let enterprises incorporate Twitter data into their decision-making through an established set of IBM tools, solutions and consulting services.

From a data perspective, Twitter represents an enormous public archive of human thought that captures the ideas, opinions and debates taking place around the world on almost any topic at any moment in time. While companies have long listened to what their customers are saying on Twitter, complex enterprise decisions often require input from a lot of different systems. IBM’s expertise is in integrating complex systems and data to make better decisions.

This is why we’re thrilled to partner with IBM, a global leader in helping companies take advantage of emerging technologies and platforms like Twitter. This relationship will enable IBM solutions – like the famous computer Watson – to access Twitter data as an input for multi-variable, pattern-dependent questions like “What do customers like best about my products?” or “Why are we growing quickly in Brazil?” 

Twitter provides a powerful new lens through which to look at the world – as both a platform for hundreds of millions of consumers and business professionals, and as a synthesizer of trends. This partnership, drawing on IBM’s leading cloud-based analytics platform, will help clients enrich business decisions with an entirely new class of data. This is the latest example of how IBM is reimagining work.

— Ginni RomettyChairman, President and CEO, IBM

Something we hear consistently is that companies want guidance on how to incorporate Twitter data into their business operations. Our relationship with IBM will directly address this need by training tens of thousands of IBM Global Business Services consultants on the business applications for Twitter data, as well as the technical and organizational changes needed to effectively weave this important resource into day-to-day business operations.

And to ensure that companies maximize the value of this new data set, IBM and Twitter will work together on a unique collection of enterprise solutions that include Twitter data in IBM’s analytics solutions. All of this will make Twitter data an even more critical input to the operation of global enterprises.

This announcement has been years in the making. Twitter’s data efforts started when we first made our public data available for analysis. Since then, we’ve made great progress in getting social data into the hands of decision makers. Our acquisition of Gnip earlier this year was an important milestone because it gives us an enterprise-grade platform that delivers more than 15 billion social activities per day to a vibrant ecosystem of customers and partners who are innovating using this data. As a result, we have a strong platform for data that makes our relationship with IBM possible.