Summary
We love playing “what-if” games when it comes to analytics and Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, but there are certain “what-if” questions about our businesses that aren’t as much fun to ask because we rarely like the answers: •What if adapting to change in our business was as simple as going to an app store to download and install the right apps at the right time? Change is easier to deal with when it can be managed in a targeted, specific, and efficient manner. But all too often that change also triggers an avalanche of disruption to existing technology, infrastructure, and workflows. •What if our users had access to choose from a rich library of the latest analytics, machine learning, and automation tools to measure, model, and streamline our business? Users should be empowered with the best tools available to do their job. But not all users work in the same way and software evaluation, licensing and upgrade models don’t typically support this kind of flexibility in a cost-effective manner. •What if those same users could work together to constantly expand the universe of available data about your business, but in a way that emphasizes data quality and does not put security, governance, and regulatory requirements at risk? Providing a complete catalog of curated, accurate data to users is the goal. But trying to achieve that goal often leads to long, complex (and sometimes failed) projects that can’t keep up with data growth, often forcing users to work in siloes and “go it alone” with spreadsheets and other applications that can put data quality and security at risk. If only there were better answers to these “what-if” questions—well, maybe there are! IBM Cloud Pak for Data provides a flexible platform that is designed to help address many of the challenges highlighted above. It can run practically, or be hosted, anywhere. And it can evolve and scale with your business, growing in a way that supports the users who can help make that growth possible through built-in data, analytics, and AI/Mac