The History, Development and Application of the Business of Weather at IBM

The provision of information technology and services to the weather community has been an IBM focus for more than twenty years. The work includes providing hardware, software, services as well as leading edge research and development for the global weather community. In addition to being a leading provider of high performance computing systems and services, and providing IT services, IBM has been developing and implementing leading edge solutions for weather sensitive businesses for almost two decades. Key among these is Deep Thunder which has it's origins in work done for the 1996 Olympics. The application of numerical weather prediction models and related software and services to enable predictive environmental analytics has been a central aspect of providing leading edge capabilities that connect weather impacts to business operations and enable proactive solutions. We describe the history, development and application of weather sensitive business focused information technology products, services and solutions at IBM.