On Wednesday afternoon, before a standing-room-only audience in downtown DC, IBM Corp. held a briefing titled “Big Data: The New Natural Resource.” During it, David McQueeney, vice president for software at IBM Research, described how corporate leaders increasingly appreciate the move toward ‘big data’ — but the field itself has not yet reached a point at which it can efficiently capture, integrate, and analyze these data and make results available to decision makers in a timely fashion.

Yet decision makers know that a huge opportunity is presenting itself, if only they can “master the tsunami of data,” as McQueeney said.

Indeed, McQueeney noted that the tidal wave of data is only getting larger day by day, thanks to the ubiquity of transactions, sensors, documents, reviews, and social networks, not to mention weather global events, etc. There is an increasing realization in corporate board rooms throughout the country that putting accurate analyses into the hands of the decision makers can achieve game-changing scenarios, such as helping a doctor predict premature newborns before they happen, helping large stores determine to whom to offer coupons, or helping technical call centers determine solutions even before a customer even calls in.

And that’s why Wednesday’s event also served as the venue for IBM’s announcement of a new partnership with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) that broadens an existing, long-running collaboration in high-performance computing (HPC). The partnership, called “Deep Computing Solutions,” will reside within LLNL’s High Performance Computing Innovation Center (HPCIC). From IBM’s news release (after the jump):

HPCIC was created to help American industry harness the power of supercomputing to better compete in the global marketplace. Deep Computing Solutions will bring a new dimension to the HPCIC, adding IBM’s computational science expertise to LLNL’s own, for the benefit of Deep Computing Solution’s clients…

 

Computer and domain science experts from IBM Research and LLNL will work together with a broad range of American industry collaborators to devise HPC solutions that can help accelerate the development of new technologies, products and services. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to: applied energy; green energy, including renewable(s); biology; materials science; fabrication; manufacturing; data management; and informatics.

For more details, check out IBM’s news release — and see a video featuring LLBL’s HPIC director, Frederick Streiz, describing the announcement:

(Contributed by Kenneth Hines, CCC Program Associate)