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Top Research Firm Praises URM GROUP for Helping Customers Manage Risk Across Complex Business and IT Ecosystems

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EMA confirms X-Act platform offers unmatched breadth of prescriptive and predictive analytics, calling it “a step beyond BI, big data, AIOps, and other IT analytic investments”

Universal Risk Management Group (URM GROUP), today announced a new report from top market research firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), which praises the predictive insights and correctional guidance offered by URM GROUP’s X-Act® platform as “a step beyond business intelligence (BI), big data, AIOps, and other IT analytic investments.”

EMA has labeled this new category of capabilities “Transformational Analytics,” reporting that the sophisticated algorithms used in X-Act place it in an advantaged position vis-à-vis other, more operations-centric analytic tools that typically rely more on statistics.

Download ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES® (EMA™) White Paper, How X-Act can Optimize Business Performance by Managing the Unknown at https://urmgrp.com/portfolio-item/ema-urm-xact/.

Dennis Drogseth, Vice President of Research at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) noted, “EMA interviews and market research confirmed that no other solution in the market today is designed to bring IT and business components and processes together in a single, unified model as deeply and as efficiently as X-Act. As such, the platform stands out for being proactively prescriptive in minimizing risk and optimizing both IT and business performance.”

What Customers are Saying about X-Act

“I do not believe that there is any other solution in the market that offers a single consistent model for business processes and the application/infrastructure when you seek to optimize both effectively. Only X-Act does that, and it does so with unique levels of accuracy,” Head of Infrastructure Operations at a global Financial Services Company said.

“X-Act tells you where the problems are, where they are likely to materialize in the future, and how planned changes on all fronts may affect the outcome one way or another. This makes investments in new resources, if they’re needed, a fact-based discussion with a clear business context. Not surprisingly, this is one of the reasons for IT executive enthusiasm.” IT Architect, Large European Bank said.

Learn more about X-Act platform at https://urmgrp.com/technology/.

About URM GROUP

URM GROUP provides the technology and services many of the world’s most recognizable brands depend on to optimize opportunities and comprehensively control risks across diverse business and IT systems. With patented generative intelligence technology, X-Act® platform provides a revolutionary way to quickly and predictively pinpoint hidden sources of risk within business ecosystems and know which actions should be taken to meet business goals. Leaders across financial services, retail, manufacturing, transportation, healthcare and governments trust X-Act to make informed decisions relating to a wide range of strategic objectives—from digital transformation, cost management, mergers and acquisitions to supply chain management and production performance. For additional information, visit https://urmgrp.com or connect with us on Twitter @URMgroup.

About EMA

Founded in 1996, EMA is a leading industry analyst firm that specializes in providing deep insight across the full spectrum of IT and data management technologies. EMA analysts leverage a unique combination of practical experience, insight into industry best practices, and in-depth knowledge of current and planned vendor solutions to help clients achieve their goals. Learn more about EMA research, analysis, and consulting services for enterprise line of business users, IT professionals and IT vendors at http://www.enterprisemanagement.com.

X-ACT supports IBM Cloud Innovation

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In his latest blog post, The Right Way to Ensure Operational Stability while moving to the Cloud, Thomas Rose, IBM Cloud Innovation Advisory Leader Germany, Austria and Switzerland, explained how IBM is using X-ACT® to optimize and improve the operational stability of their cloud services.

X-ACT is the innovation behind IBM’s Cloud Load Simulation solution. The emulation and analytics capabilities of X-ACT allows IBM to identify when and if dynamic complexity will lead to system limits within cloud environments, diagnose the root cause of the limit and determine the best remedial actions by weighing the benefits, complexity and cost of proposed solutions.

Many cloud initiatives fail to meet client expectations due to inadequate risk identification and mitigation early in the outsourcing project’s lifecycle. Due to the complexity of modern business, it is no longer possible to intuitively assess both the benefits and risks posed by moving services to the cloud.

Now with X-ACT, users can quickly model existing systems and evaluate how proposed changes will impact the cost efficiency, scalability and performance of business operations. By effectively identifying any potential risks that could impact the quality of service and verifying that all applications will behave correctly under any operational condition, decisions can be made with confidence in the outcome.

This is a win-win for cloud vendors and their clients, as it provides an insurance mechanism to verify that the cloud envrionment will continuously meet the promises made during the early stages of project definition.

Next we will be working to combine IBM Watson and X-ACT technology to implement cloud production control environments, which dynamically react to market events, and control system loads and resources to operate at an optimum cost level.

Optimal Business Control

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Optimal business control (OBC) is a set of management, data collection, analytics, machine learning and automation processes through which management predicts, evaluates, and, when necessary, responds to mitigate dynamic complexity related risks that hinder the realization of business goals.

OBC is enabled by the X-Act OBC Platform to support the goals of universal risk management (URM) through the predictive analysis and prescriptive treatment of business risks. Using the quantitative and qualitative metrics supported by X-Act OBC Platform, users can proactively discover risks that may cause situations of system deterioration. Using this knowledge, systems can then be placed under surveillance to enable right-time risk alerts and preemptive fixing of any identified problems.

Optimal Business Control (OBC) Diagram Through the use of a knowledge library and machine-learning sciences, X-Act OBC Platform enables users to define the optimal treatment of risk and use this knowledge to feed a decision engine that organically evolves to cover new and increasingly complex behavioral scenarios.

X-Act OBC Platform uses situational data revealed through causal analysis and stress testing to provide surveillance of systems and identify cases of increasing risk. These cases are unknowns in big data analytical methods, which are limited to prediction based on data collected through experience. Within the OBC database, a diagnosis definition and remediation plan—that covers both the experience-based knowns and those that were previously unknown—are stored together. This allows for the rapid identification of a potential risk with immediate analysis of root causes and proposed remedial actions.

This approach to right-time risk surveillance, represents a real breakthrough that alleviates many of the pains created by the traditional long cycle of risk management, which starts with problem-analysis-diagnosis and ends with eventual fixing well beyond the point of optimal action. OBC represents a clear advantage by shortening the time between the discovery and remediation of undesirable risks.

As the database is continuously enriched by the dynamic characteristics that continuously evolve during a system’s lifetime, the knowledge contained within the database becomes more advanced. OBC is also adaptive. By continuously recording within the OBC database foundational or circumstantial system changes, the predictive platform will identify any new risk, determine the diagnosis and define the remedial actions, and finally enhance the OBC database with this new knowledge.

Companies with the most mature OBC practices and robust knowledge bases will be able to confidently define and make the right moves at the right time to achieve better economy, control risks and ultimately create and maintain a competitive advantage.