Smarter Analytics and Big Data Building The Next Generation Analytical insights Joel Waterman, Regional Director of Business Analytics for the Middle East and Africa, discusses how IBM is making significant investments in smarter analytics and big data through acquisitions, technical expertise, and research. IBM's big data platform moves analytics closer to data through technologies like Hadoop, stream computing, and data warehousing. The platform is designed for analytic application development and integration using accelerators, user interfaces, and IBM's ecosystem of business partners.