IBM and Twitter team to support business decision-making with social data

Just when you thought data was big enough, a new class of data has been unveiled, courtesy of a “landmark partnership” between tech giants Twitter and IBM.

The alliance will enable businesses to use data collected from tweets published around the world to help support their decision-making.  

Through a set of IBM tools, solutions and consulting services, organisations will then be able to predict trends in the marketplace and measure consumer sentiment.

The collaboration will focus on:

• The integration of Twitter data with IBM Cloud-based analytics services, such as Watson
• A set of enterprise applications, with the first joint solution integrating Twitter data with IBM’s ExperienceOne customer engagement solutions, allowing sales, marketing and customer service professionals to map sentiment and behaviour.
• Consulting services that will implement industry specific uses for Twitter data in a number of different verticals such as banking and retail.

Speaking of the partnership, Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and CEO, said: “Twitter provides a powerful new lens through which to look at the world – as both a platform for hundreds of millions of consumers and business professionals, and as a synthesizer of trends. This partnership, drawing on IBM’s leading cloud-based analytics platform, will help clients enrich business decisions with an entirely new class of data. This is the latest example of how IBM is reimagining work.” 

In a blog post, Chris Moody, VP business development at Twitter, wrote: “Something we hear consistently is that companies want guidance on how to incorporate Twitter data into their business operations. Our relationship with IBM will directly address this need by training tens of thousands of IBM Global Business Services consultants on the business applications for Twitter data, as well as the technical and organizational changes needed to effectively weave this important resource into day-to-day business operations.

“And to ensure that companies maximise the value of this new data set, IBM and Twitter will work together on a unique collection of enterprise solutions that include Twitter data in IBM’s analytics solutions. All of this will make Twitter data an even more critical input to the operation of global enterprises.”