Justifying a strategic B2B initiative that reaches beyond the organization's four walls is especially critical. It encompasses integration of your major information systems to give your company the secure foundation needed to collaborate effectively with customers, partners, and suppliers. With so much at stake, the business case will come under rigorous scrutiny from senior executives and business managers at your company. Fortunately, you can significantly increase your chances of approval if you follow these nine steps.

While many IT professionals know that a good reference architecture can improve business performance, many still aren't sure how to pick the right one. And more importantly, a section of these IT pros -- especially those in SMBs -- still don't know how the right reference architecture can speed up their crucial business processes. The best reference architectures can help IT pros deal with the constant demands to implement new workloads, expand existing ones, and keep the current. This IT Managers' Journal is designed to help IT professionals better understand the role the right reference architecture can play in their businesses -- and how they can get the most out of it. The systems profiled in this journal make it easy to meet the demands of the business, propel growth, and help your business gain a competitive edge. Download this IT Manager's Journal to learn more.

This IBM® Redbooks® Solution Guide explains the business and technical value of emerging patterns of expertise in cloud computing, with specific applicability to IBM PureApplication™ System, IBM Workload Deployer, IBM SmartCloud® Orchestrator, and IBM SmartCloud Application Services. It explains how patterns help companies use the different cloud environments that IBM offers.

Opportunities for growth and innovation hinge on your ability to quickly access and analyze business critical information. This e-book highlights how you can maximize performance in your SAP environment, including the 3 must haves:

Analytic accelerators to deliver faster insights
Rapid ROI and lower TCO
Simplicity

Philip Howard of Bloor Research compares performance capabilities of the leading business intelligence platforms. Companies studied in this comparison are IBM® (Cognos, DB2 with BLU Acceleration), SAP (BusinessObjects, HANA), Oracle (Business Intelligence, Exadata) and Microsoft (Business Intelligence, SQL Server). His conclusion: "DB2® with BLU Acceleration should not only provide better performance in the first place, but also provide consistent performance, with a corresponding requirement for less hardware and less cost."

There's no such thing as "the cloud", says this Frost & Sullivan executive brief. It's more useful to think of the cloud as shorthand for a range of service and deployment models. This practical guide offers steps for moving your company into the cloud, at whatever pace you prefer, with a focus on the SmartCloud Services portfolio offered by IBM and its partners. Read the executive brief for usable advice on selecting the right cloud computing vendor to maximize your chance for success–one that allows you to build on your cloud strategy as your company grows.

An analysis of data from 1,200 benchmarking study participants quantifies the benefits an organization can gain through the use of enterprise resource planning systems (ERP's). Benchmarking data shows that Finance organizations that have adopted ERPs experienced as much as 300 percent material improvements in efficiency, and as much as 65 percent reduction in costs associated with performing Finance and Accounting operations.