IBM named Company of Year

Technology powerhouse IBM has been named the 2010 Global Frost & Sullivan Company of the Year in the digital-media market.

International research firm Frost & Sullivan said a recent analysis of the digital-media market had recognised IBM's leadership through its

cutting-edge technology, media intelligence and vision.

The firm's industry analyst Loren Johnson said IBM had a grasp of the future market and the technology demands of digital media that was far beyond that of its competitors. Its focus on business analytics, combined with in-depth industry expertise and a corporate vision dedicated to creating a smarter planet, set it apart, she said.

IBM focuses on a number of strategies to meet the needs of the digital-media industry. It has developed a cohesive Media Enterprise Framework that embraces open standards and is focused on helping media firms to continue the transformation from analog products and physical distribution to digital offerings and network distribution.

This framework allows IBM to tap the breadth and depth of its core technologies, open architectures and customer-centric services to offer tailored solutions to its digital-media customers. Its ability to harvest tangible and re-usable assets out of these engagements, combined with its global go-to-market capabilities, enables IBM to deliver superior returns to its clients' key initiatives, Johnson said.

In addition, IBM's focus on extending its core-software platforms while successfully executing a number of important acquisitions has enabled it to develop a unique and deep set of capabilities. Its recent acquisition of technology leaders such as SPSS, Netezza, Coremetrics, iLOG, Sterling Commerce and Unica will empower its customers with unprecedented business analytics, measurement and performance-improvement capabilities. Media customers can use the full range of IBM business analytics tools to measure performance, interpret data, generate insights and make real-time informed decisions.

Frost & Sullivan said IBM's development of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) for the media industry that identified 11 different digital workflow processes and standardised the interfaces, workflows and integration technologies, was also noteworthy. SOA has accelerated the integration of technologies, the capacity for standard application programming interfaces and connectors, and the ability of media companies to upgrade systems and tools within these processes and products simply and easily.

For digital-media file management, the development of the Long-Term File System (LTFS) allows media companies to tag, store, retrieve, and archive content. In effect, this solution can enable content categorisation and indexing, hierarchical storage management and automated retrieval, all imbedded into the physical data-tape itself. For those companies still straddling the traditional world of physical assets while moving toward digital assets, such file-management systems represent a confluence of tools, processes and systems into a singular asset-management solution.

Frost & Sullivan said IBM was a proven industry pioneer with a unique, defined perspective of the media and entertainment marketplace, and its vision and competitive strategies would enable it to continue defining innovation across the digital-media industry for many years.

Frost & Sullivan usually presents its Company of the Year award to a company that has demonstrated great growth strategies and implementation. The award lauds the recipient's innovation in business processes, products and technologies to achieve leadership in customer value and market penetration.