To a lot of people the whole Smarter Planet concept that IBM has been promoting of late might sound like the latest in a long line of empty marketing slogans. But the thing about IBM that you have to give them credit for is they usually can back up their play.

Big Blue has announced it is pioneering a new model for analyzing data that it refers to stream computing as part of a new analytics application called System S.

The System S application is capable on analyzing thousands of streams of data in real time to identify anomalies. As such, System S can be used to analyze massive quantities of data related to everything from click streams and vectors of security attacks to signs of pandemics and advanced quantitative analysis algorithms to a broad array of fields beyond the financial services sector.

Previously, the ability to analyze massive streams of data simultaneously has been limited. But with a new set of mathematical algorithms coupled with new 64-bit multi-core processor platforms, IBM has been able to harness the power of parallel processing to advance analytics using a new Spade language that allows users of the S Series software to develop analytic applications at a level of abstraction that masks the complexity of parallel programming.

One of the great limitations of analytics, data warehousing and business intelligence is that it requires IT organizations to work with limited sets of historical data. The ability to work more effectively with data in real time does not replace the need for those systems. But the ability to work with data in real time does mean that we may be on the cusp of an advance in business productivity driven by IT that is likely to have profound repercussions for years to come.