Editor’s note: IBM’s recent “World of Watson” event showcases how Big Blue is turning its super computer into a provider of multiple business solutions as the artificial intelligence market grows increasingly competitive. Technology Business Research offers an in-depth overview of Watson’s progress in the first of two reports.
LAS VEGAS – The 2016 World of Watson event demonstrated how IBM is taking Watson from the laboratory to the market.
The company used the event to position Watson as a product in what is now a competitive artificial intelligence (AI) market and offered solutions across four business areas. This is a critical time for IBM business as it brings a new product set infused with cognitive capabilities to market. The company has been working on integrating Watson technology into many areas of its portfolio, training the cognitive systems in multiple areas, and only recently emerging with a broad set of productized offerings.
By defining Watson in the emerging cognitive computing market, IBM set the bar for comparisons. Competitors in machine learning, a subset of cognitive computing, are emerging, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Salesforce, Oracle and others. IBM began to expose how the Watson technology differs from this field and how its application of the technology is ready for business.
TBR believes IBM will continue to make a market in cognitive computing and is successfully capturing a premium position in the space. While IBM provides cognitive building blocks for developers, it views a broader opportunity as a solution provider attacking problems technology previously could not address. Parallel Watson investments include the Watson Data Platform portfolio for addressing the expanding issue of aligning data flows into applications and how IBM’s Global Technology Services (GTS) and Global Business Services (GBS) units are using Watson to better develop solutions for clients across a life cycle of design, deployment and operational evolution.
Cognitive computing is emerging from the laboratories and is starting to impact businesses. Five years from now, most businesses will have used or deployed some portion of cognitive or machine learning solutions across their IT estate and IBM is top of mind for consideration.
Over 17,000 World of Watson attendees, including partners, customers, employees and analysts, converged in Las Vegas, Nevada for the three day event. Notable presence from customers was apparent in each keynote, from start-ups to very large enterprises, showcasing the range of organizations and use cases the Watson portfolio can cater to.
IBM utilizes Watson to break through in SaaS
Though the company touts over 150 SaaS applications, it certainly is not known as a top SaaS contender, rather as having a strong focus on IaaS and PaaS when it comes to IBM Cloud. Earlier this year IBM made several announcements around its Marketing Cloud and Commerce on Cloud portfolios as the first real breakthroughs that underscored the company’s reinvigorated SaaS initiatives. Prior to this, IBM acquired several SaaS assets and providers such as Kenexa and Silverpop, but each largely kept to themselves and retained their brand names.
Now, assets such as Silverpop, a common user interface, and underlying cognitive assets through Watson are being tied together in solutions that address end-user needs and pain points, such as Marketing Cloud.
At World of Watson, IBM announced several new Watson solutions aimed at line-of-business (LOB) functions:
IBM Watson Marketing – Cognitive solutions for marketers; Watson Customer Experience Analytics, Watson Content Hub
IBM Watson Commerce – Cognitive solutions for commerce professionals; Watson Order Optimizer
IBM Watson Supply Chain – Cognitive solutions for supply chain professionals; Watson Supply Chain Insights
IBM Watson Work – Watson Workspace, Watson Work Services
IBM, which traditionally appealed to the IT departments of organizations, has recognized the shift in cloud buyer persona from an IT-minded role to one that seeks to utilize technology to improve business outcomes. As such, the Watson capabilities are being accessed by the IBM LOB-focused solutions. For example, Watson capabilities are being brought to bear within the Watson Marketing Solutions. With Watson, IBM strengthens its appeal to the LOB buyer by addressing specific functional and vertical pain points with value-added data and insight to allow for faster achievement of business outcomes and goals.
Brand rationalization makes IBM’s cloud more consumable
During the event, though discussions and sessions primarily focused on the Watson portfolio, IBM did address a customer pain point regarding its non-Watson cloud portfolio. On the first day of the event, IBM’s Project Atlas, the combination of SoftLayer and Bluemix portfolios under the Bluemix brand name went live. Despite the fact that prior to this the IaaS and PaaS layers were integrated, there were separate log-ins and user IDs as well as very different look and feel, which caused confusion to newcomers.
Now that IaaS (SoftLayer) is available through Bluemix.com, new users can self-serve both IaaS and PaaS in one place, much like the experience granted through Microsoft Azure, while existing customers’ accounts are being linked and phased through Bluemix. This, combined with the aforementioned SaaS updates and naming schemas, underscores IBM’s efforts to make its cloud portfolio more consumable and understandable for the growing number of SMEs and SMBs coming to the company through self-service, digital channels.
Enterprise-ready cognitive solutions differentiate IBM in the AI market As TBR surmised in a recent commentary, the AI market is filling rapidly with a broad variety of competitors that have a wide range of portfolio development and go-to-market strategies. Recognizing it is no longer alone in the space, IBM is beginning to shift its Watson messaging from market making to market differentiation.
Clarifying its definition of a “cognitive solution” was a key step in this evolution. For an IBM solution to warrant the Watson brand name, the solution must either incorporate one or more Watson APIs, services or fundamental cognitive technologies, or it must exhibit four characteristics:
Understand – absorb a variety of structured and unstructured data types, in context and at speed;
Reason – form hypotheses, rational arguments and recommendation to aid humans with decision making;
Learn – incorporate data and insight from continuous interaction, at first with expert trainers and later with end users;
Interact – relate to humans in natural language
IBM also emphasized what makes its approach different from other major AI players, namely, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook (all of which IBM allies with on a research level in the Partnership on AI, announced in September). IBM positions itself in stark contrast to these competitors as a cognitive solutions vendor for enterprise, applying industry- or domain-specific data and expertise to deliver business outcomes and letting clients retain ownership of their data and insights. Partnerships (e.g., Twitter, Pitney Bowes) and acquisitions (e.g., The Weather Company, Truven Health Analytics) enable IBM to offer curated data sets that, in combination with the client’s data, enhance and differentiate Watson’s business insights.
IBM will continue to compete with AI platform vendors to court the developer community, but catering to an expanding range of industries, professions and roles with prebuilt Watson applications and domain-oriented consulting will remain the company’s key differentiator as the market evolves. With LOB funding an increasing share of IT purchases, IBM’s strategy maximizes its opportunity to recoup its heavy investment in cognitive technologies. However, as customer adoption increases, IBM will need to continue its investment in cognitive skilled consultants in GBS to ensure smooth implementation of solutions.
Coming in Part Two: Collaborative analytics tools support multiple organizational roles
(c) TBR
