— SAP has announced that new analytics solutions are available for customers who use its SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud service. The analytics for enterprise business intelligence (BI), predictive analytics, enterprise performance management (EPM) and governance, risk and compliance as well as visualization of analytics, can be deployed by subscription or through existing licenses, SAP said.
SAP also released a new version of a billing solution for communications service providers with an “allowances” function to support personalization of consumer plans. SAP noted that with voice revenues declining and more revenue coming from data services, “consumers want to be able to buy, stack and share voice, data and messaging service quotas across all their devices, family members and business units, and to make changes to those allocations in real time.”
SAP said the allowances feature allows self-service control by customers, who can share allowances with family members or colleagues, decide who can consume certain allowances, and trigger re-fill conditions, as well as monitoring usage and updating priorities in real time.
— IBM signed a $600 million technology partnership this week with natural gas and electric transmission and distribution company NiSource Inc. for a seven-year agreement continuing IT services and exploring new ones. The agreement includes the creation and management of a hybrid cloud computing environment; IBM will help NiSource implement a hybrid IT model relying on ISM’s SoftLayer as well as a private cloud with traditional infrastructure.
Along with increased flexibility for NiSource, the company will now be able to extend its analytics capabilities through collaboration with IBM’s Client Center for Advanced Analytics. IBM has been providing IT services to NiSource since 2005.
— Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is expanding its use of analytics software from SAS to support a consumer engagement program aimed at improving health outcomes.
“Better understanding our customers means communicating with them in the way they prefer, be it text, email, or Internet,” said Shawn Sullivan, BCBSNC’s director of marketing, in a statement. “Analytics play an important role in accomplishing this. The insights we glean will enable us to share information with customers in a way that truly empowers them to make better decisions and to take control of their own health care.”
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