Charter Communications to Move Rules-Based Business Decisions to IBM Cloud

Armonk, N.Y. - 02 Oct 2015: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Charter Communications, Inc., one of the largest cable entertainment and broadband communications companies in the United States, is implementing its rules-based construction workflow and tracking system in the cloud. Based on a proof of concept in an early adopter program, Charter intends to implement IBM Operational Decision Manager (ODM) on Cloud hosted on IBM SoftLayer into full production now that the service is generally available.

In the proof of concept, the IBM ODM on Cloud offering allowed Charter Communications to provide employees with the ability to track construction progress while behind the scenes accounting for the various categories of plant assets added or removed. Charter plans to implement a number of additional decision services using IBM ODM on the Cloud for complex workflow routing, work assignment, job costing, ROI calculations, and project accounting.

“With thousands of jobs in flight at any given time, and hundreds of millions of dollars in capital invested in our cable plant, we believe that IBM ODM on Cloud will allow us to delight our customers while maximizing capital effectiveness. The solution tied to new advanced analytics will allow optimization that was not possible before,” said Sean Bristol, Sr. Director HFC Construction Standards & Compliance, Charter Communications. “When fully deployed in the cloud, we will benefit from quick changes and workflow adaptability, while improving visibility, accountability, and productivity in our construction processes.”

IBM ODM on Cloud is a collaborative, role-based cloud service to capture, automate, and manage frequently occurring, repeatable rules-based business decisions. Businesses like Charter Communications can be up and running on ODM on Cloud within 48 hours from purchase to use and its natural language interface makes it easy to use by business analysts without requiring IT or programming support.

“In today’s market, clients need to automate decisions and processes in order to meet increasing demand for personalized self-service delivery. With its rapid time to value, IBM ODM on Cloud provides a key ingredient for companies to achieve their digital transformation objectives with a decision platform that is easy to manage and operate,” said Marie Wieck, general manager, IBM Middleware. “Clients can focus on their core competencies and reduce time spent on IT operations.”

Teknovare Inc., a Denver, Colorado based advanced IBM Business Partner specializing in developing decision support systems and business rules management systems, is leading the effort to help Charter design and implement a new construction workflow management system, named CenterPointe. At its core, CenterPointe is a Business Process Management System in which operational decision management plays a big role. CenterPointe is implemented entirely in the cloud using a number of IBM offerings including: IBM BPM on the Cloud, IBM ODM on the Cloud, and IBM SoftLayer.

"Our experience working with IBM ODM on Cloud is game-changing and has far exceeded our expectations because it was so easy to provision. We were up and running within a few hours,” said Tom Wilger, President of Teknovare. “Based on our experience with the software, we will strongly encourage customers who require a robust business rules-based decision management system to use IBM ODM on Cloud.”

IBM ODM on Cloud is ideal for projects born on the cloud and in hybrid scenarios. Due to its subscription-based model, the service is accessible to small and medium sized businesses, as well as departmental projects in larger organizations. The service is packaged in a monthly subscription and gives clients the ability to develop, test, and put rules into production. ODM on Cloud is available exclusively on IBM SoftLayer, IBM’s Infrastructure as a Service, and delivers market-leading business rule management system (BRMS) benefits similar to those available in IBM Operational Decision Manager Standard.

IBM ODM on Cloud joins IBM BPM on Cloud in extending IBM's Smarter Process capabilities into the cloud, bringing additional economic benefits and time to value for reinventing business operations.

Smarter Process Portfolio Enhancements

In addition, IBM plans to offer upgrades for on-premises versions of IBM Operational Decision Manager and IBM ODM for z/OS. The new on-premises versions will enhance the business user experience, simplify platform operations and improve performance.