IBM Monday launched an Analytics Solution Center in Beijing, its first in the emerging market and one of the six such facilities the "Big Blue" is planning to set up globally.

China Analytics Solution Center has been set up to "address the growing client demand in Greater China Region for advanced analytics capabilities and to help them build smarter business systems and drive improved decision-making" the company said in a statement.

The China center, which will be located at IBM's China Business Innovation Center in Beijing, will mainly focus on smarter grid, supply chain management and urban planning area in the country in its initial phases, IBM said.

The Chinese government has expressed its intention to complete building a nationwide smarter power grid by 2020, which analysts said would require hundreds of billions of investment. "The opening of the center is a milestone for IBM, which is as significant as our introduction of the first personal computer into China in 1984," said D.C. Chien, CEO, IBM Greater China Group.

"It is now possible to see patterns in vast amounts of data to extract critical insights and move to a new level of enterprise intelligence," Chien said.

The opening of the Beijing center comes less than one week after IBM agreed to buy Chicago-based data mining and predictive analytics software developer SPSS Inc for US$1.2 billion.

The Beijing center will initially be staffed by up to 300 consultants, software specialists and mathematicians, with plans to retrain or hire an additional 300 if demand grows, IBM said.

The US technology and software giant is planning to set up six analytics solution centers globally and has opened two in Berlin and Tokyo in June and July respectively. The other three centers will be located in London, New York and Washington, the company said.

IBM said it was expanding its portfolio on business-analytics technology and services to meet a growing client demand to cut costs.

The worldwide market for business analytics software will grow by 4 percent to $25 billion this year, according to market research firm IDC.

(China Daily August 4, 2009)