New technology just doesn’t show up one day, ready to be unpacked and plugged in. It’s borne from years and years, sometimes decades, of research and development and there are few places that commit and support R&D like IBM.

As a recent eWeek article aptly describes, IBM research teams are focused on everything IT these days, from health care and smart planet initiatives, to business analytics and the latter is good news for today’s database and data warehouse operators, as well as business development teams.

And that’s because a company’s future products and services, and hopefully higher revenues and deeper market share, are all tied to one thing: data.

Data analysis, as the article explains, is the combination of mathematics and data that results in better decision making and it’s everywhere when it comes to IT services, helping spur medical research to machine learning.

As an IBM leader recalls, it kicked off two decades ago when IBM helped a major airline company build a custom scheduling project, and then took a big leap forward when IBM bought up PricewaterhouseCoopers a decade ago.

IBM’s approach to IT services is somewhat different from that of other companies. It is able to tap into its own massive research division and incorporate in-house scientific research, such as analytics, into a business division such as Global Services.

For the past year, IBM has highlighted this approach in its Smarter Planet initiative, but the concept actually goes back to 2002, when IBM bought PricewaterhouseCoopers. This began a nearly 10-year effort to bring more research and analytics into the services division.

One of the most recent efforts has been working with the NY tax department to improve revenue collection processes using historical data and analytical methodology. A recent example of this cooperative process is a project with the New York State Department of Taxation to collect tax revenue owed to the state.

IBM researchers are also heavily entrenched in developing new electronic medical record capabilities given government mandates to have such technology in place within the next few years. That’s why IBM bought up Initiate as it aims to bolster features and functionality in gaining data access across proprietary systems.

It’s all about collecting data in a quick, easy and secured fashion to build a single data model with a common format for analysis.

And, as usual, IBM is leading the charge.