IBM's latest addition to its many layered IT stack is IBM Case Manager, a new software offering designed automate content-centric processes and manage unstructured content such as scanned images, electronic documents, web pages, video, email and text messages.

Keen to highlight the proliferating growth of global information to justify the sale of its data management products, IBM is fond of citing recent analyst reports which suggest that enterprise data growth over the next five years will increase by 650 percent -- and that 80 percent of this data will be unstructured information generated from forms, web content and chat transcripts etc.

In answer to these growth estimates, Big Blue is hedging its bets on its new IBM Case Manager product which it says brings new enhancements to the company's content analytics and information lifecycle governance solutions.

"IBM Case Manager integrates content and process management with advanced analytics, business rules, collaboration and social software. Business users now have the tools to support ad hoc processes such as communication by email or paper and extract more value and critical insight from their structured and unstructured information," says IBM.

The new software is said to provide a more integrated way for customers to handle increasingly complex caseloads and shrinking resources in areas such as insurance claims management, credit dispute management, fraud identification/resolution and contract execution.

Adjoined to this news are enhancements to IBM's content analytics software, a technology that the company says is designed to access and analyze structured and unstructured data such as documents, customer correspondence, web forms, email and case notes to drive smarter decisions based on external and internal insights.

"A content analytics solution results in an integrated view of all the information that is relevant for a business. By leveraging information as a strategic asset, businesses can now derive new intelligence and gain competitive advantage in a rapidly evolving marketplace. These enhanced IBM solutions help customers make better decisions faster by capturing content, incorporating it in key business processes, managing its lifecycle, and leveraging it as a trusted source of business insight," said IBM's Ken Bisconti. "Improving process efficiency and information sharing will also drive significant economies of scale and cost savings for customers."