IBM has announced a major push into business analytics with plans to hire or train 4,000 new consultants and build six new analytics centres around the world.

Dave Laverty, vice president of marketing for the Information Management IBM Software Group, said at the Information On Demand Global Conference 2009 in Las Vegas that IBM had invested $12bn (£7.3bn) in business analytics over the past five years.

This included the acquisitions of Cognos in November 2007 and SPSS in July this year, as well as considerable R&D spending on IBM's part.

"Software is a key driver of growth for IBM, and business analytics is a key focus of that," said Laverty. "In one application we are seeing analytics that can spot fraud in hours rather than the months it would have taken before."

IBM said that the volume of physical data being digitised is increasing dramatically, and that businesses are at a disadvantage if they are unable to analyse all inputs and outputs.

Big Blue is setting up six business analytics centres around the world, including one in London to work on financial data monitoring and another in Washington investigating cyber crime.

IBM also used the conference to launch three preconfigured analytical applications: IBM Cognos 8 Customer Performance Sales Analytics; IBM Cognos 8 Workforce Performance Talent Analytics; and IBM Cognos 8 Supply Chain Performance Procurement Analytics.

"We are creating an extraordinary amount of information," said Frank Kern, senior vice president of IBM's Global Business Services. "We will hire or train 4,000 people to build hubs of competence around the world. We are very committed to the area of business intelligence."