IBM to open eight new labs worldwide, including one in Bangalore

Global IT major IBM Friday announced it would be investing $100 million to set up eight new labs worldwide, including one in Bangalore, for enabling its clients to work with experts in design, mobile and digital marketing.

"We will open the new labs in Bangalore, Beijing, Groningen (Netherlands), London, Melbourne, New York, Sao Paulo and Shanghai to provide our clients an opportunity to work with our researchers and consultants on design, data and analytics," the US-based company said in a statement Bangalore.

The company also plans to hire about 1,000 employees for the labs to help its clients develop personalised models of engagement through the consulting model fusing strategy, data and design.

"The new interactive labs will make multi-discipline experts available to help companies recreate their customer experience," IBM global business services vice-president Bridget van Kralingen said in the statement.

Multi-discipline teams in the labs will analyse business challenges and jointly develop solutions that integrate next-generation mobile, social, analytics and cloud technologies.

"As our clients redefine how they engage with their customers or employees, they discover that the traditional digital agency model has limits. We are closing these gaps by integrating our world-class design and research with our strength in big data," Kralingen noted.

The company plans to open additional labs in future to support the global demand for data-driven experiences.

As hallmarks of its consulting practice, the new labs will enable companies to engage with their customers in new ways.

"Our researchers are developing capabilities to harness the value of data to help clients create personalised experiences, while designers are working with clients to develop the design that makes a difference in business outcomes," Kralingen said.

Each day, the company generates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data from a variety of sources -- climate information, to posts on social media sites and purchase transaction records to healthcare medical images.

"We believe that data is emerging as the newest resource for competitive advantage and analytics is the key to make sense of it. We are helping clients harness big data and analytics to provide insights needed to make better decisions, create value, and deliver that value to customers and society," Kralingen added.

IBM has the world's largest portfolio of big data and analytics technologies and solutions, spanning services, software, research and hardware.