Today, IBM rolled out the availability of its cloud computing software, called IBM System S, that enables massive amounts of data to be analyzed in real-time. System S is designed to help clients become more “real-world aware” by accessing live data and responding to changes across complex data systems.

IBM, which is making System S available as a trial at no cost to help clients to better understand the software’s capabilities, is designed for constant, real-time analytics. Using a newly developed streaming architecture and mathematical algorithms, System S creates a forward-looking analysis of data from any source – narrowing down precisely what people are looking for and continuously refining the answer as additional data is made available.

For example, IBM says System S can analyze hundreds or thousands of simultaneous data streams – stock prices, retail sales, and weather reports and then deliver nearly immediate analysis to users who need to make split-second decisions.

Financial services firm TD Securities is already using System S to ingest more than five million bits of trading data per microsecond to make faster financial trading decisions. IBM says that to match the capacity of the system, a trader would have to be able to read the entire works of Shakespeare 10 times in less than one second and then identify and execute a stock trade faster than a hummingbird flaps its wings.

IBM says System S took more than 100 patents and seven years to develop.