This week, I'm trying to make sense of what the heck is going on with Research in Motion and how it will affect BlackBerry customers. Plus, there are some new announcements on IBM SmartCloud and IBM PureSystems you need to know about.

Written by Steve Pitcher

IBM recently expanded on its cloud-based SmartCloud for Social Business portfolio by announcing IBM SmartCloud Notes Entry.

IBM SmartCloud Notes Entry is a product that may go well with customers who've already employed IBM SmartCloud Notes in their organization but would like a lower-cost option for elements of the organization that may not need the full Notes experience.

While IBM i-based companies are beginning to run secondary applications in the cloud, many firms are running mission-critical PHP applications there, choosing to take advantage of the cloud's scalability.

Written by Chris Smith

While the question for enterprises a year ago was whether to move an application to the cloud, those same companies today are asking which application workloads to move to the cloud.

Despite IBM's years-long emphasis on offering cloud services, it has yet to offer a commercial cloud service for hosting IBM i applications, preferring to limit its offerings to development in the cloud and the IBM virtual loaner program. For whatever reason, IBM is letting other vendors fill the void, and filling the void they are.

IBM has announced new predictive analytics software that automatically correlates and analyzes big data to help clients embed hyper-intelligence into every business decision. In addition to generating insights on internal data in a matter of seconds, the software measures the impact of social networking channels and factors this information into organizational decision making. The software represents a new class of "decision management" capabilities.