Published on the 12/06/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
Computer giant IBM has formally launched the Watson cognitive computing platform in Australia – its foundation technology for the next 50 years…
The Australian launch of the Watson cognitive computing service signals the switch to a new era of computing according to IBM Australia’s chief technology officer and director of research, Glenn Wightwick.
According to Wightwick, cognitive systems – which are able to learn and reason – stand apart from the previous generation of programmed computers which were designed for specific conditions and requirements. John Gordon, vice president of IBM’s Watson Solution group said Watson was “the foundation for where we see the next 50 years.”
Watson owes its heritage to IBM’s chess-playing Deep Blue computer system of the late 1990s, which was eventually refined into Watson and was debuted two years ago on the US quiz show Jeopardy! where it was pitted against human competitors.
The since refined and now commercially available Watson Engagement Engine, which is being sold as a cloud-based computing service, is currently being offered out of 17 data centres around the world. Initially trialled by around a dozen early adopters, mostly in the healthcare, financial services and telecommunications sectors, the service has now been generally released for Australian enterprises.
The ANZ Bank’s wealth division was one of the first organisations to trial the system and has been using it to provide insight to its financial planners as they sell clients insurance products. IBM yesterday also demonstrated a prototype of a mobile implementation of Watson which would allow bank customers to type in a natural language query to their bank’s Watson app, which would then guide them through the process of applying for a mortgage, for example.
Gordon said that there were now 6 billion mobile devices deployed internationally, and 2.5 billion social media accounts, which signalled that people now expected service which was both personal and swift.
He said companies that used the insights gleaned from big data analysis through a system such as Watson to personalise the services they were able to deliver to customers had the opportunity to begin “ten year” long conversations with their clients that would help drive customer loyalty and advocacy.
IBM said that it would deliver Watson as a “cloud-centric, mobile first” solution to clients.
