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IBM has recently delivered a string of disappointing quarters, and announced recently that it would take a multibillion-dollar hit to offload its struggling chip business. But Will Knight writes at MIT Technology Review that Watson may have the answer to IBM's uncertain future.
IBM's vast research department was recently reorganized to ramp up efforts related to cognitive computing. The push began with the development of the original Watson, but has expanded to include other areas of software and hardware research aimed at helping machines provide useful insights from huge quantities of often-messy data. “We’re betting billions of dollars, and a third of this division now is working on it,” says John Kelly, director of IBM Research, said of cognitive computing, a term the company uses to refer to artificial intelligence techniques related to Watson.
The hope is that the Watson Business Group, a division aimed making its Jeopardy winning cognitive computing application more of a commercial success, will be able to answer more complicated questions in all sorts of industries, including health care, financial investment, and oil discovery; and that it will help IBM build a lucrative new computer-driven consulting business.
But Watson is still a work in progress. Some companies and researchers testing Watson systems have reported difficulties in adapting the technology to work with their data sets. “It’s not taking off as quickly as they would like,” says Robert Austin. “This is one of those areas where turning demos into real business value depends on the devils in the details. I think there’s a bold new world coming, but not as fast as some people think.”
IBM needs software developers to embrace its vision and build services and apps that use its cognitive computing technology. In May of this year it announced that seven universities would offer computer science classes in cognitive computing and last month IBM revealed a list of partners that have developed applications by tapping into application programming interfaces that access versions of Watson running in the cloud. Big Blue said it will invest $1 billion into the Watson division including $100 million to fund startups developing cognitive apps. “I very much admire the end goal,” says Boris Katz adding that business pressures could encourage IBM’s researchers to move more quickly than they would like. “If the management is patient, they will really go far”.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Sunday November 09 2014, @10:17PM
As I've said (many times) before, IBM has been riding on the undeserved income from the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM crowd", while putting out out crappy software products, charging obscene amounts for anyone stupid enough to still be using their zOS mainframe stuff, and thinking it could continue. That said, despite them off-shoring any of their 'business' technology for 'support' and 'consulting', I still have some respect for them as they're one of the very few companies still doing *real* R&D. I'm actually a little amazed it's still going on. IBM is making real breakthroughs in AI, performance, high density storage, etc ... the stuff that actually *deserves* the sort of patent protection we only ever hear about being abused for 'business methods'.
(Score: 2) by keplr on Sunday November 09 2014, @11:04PM
I don't know how they've managed to keep the bus moving forward so long after the wheels fell off. That's momentum for you. Thinkpad going to Lenovo, and the subsequent abysmal drop in quality and engineering, felt like a personal loss for me. All my old Thinkpads are still functional, but most are obsolete. I do still keep an X201 up to date with a Linux install. With the sale of their server business to Lenovo I don't think they actually produce any computers anymore (until you scale all the way up to esoteric z/OS products), which is a shame. Selling and supporting mainframes doesn't seem like a growth industry--although they'll probably always be a market for banks and government databases.
So what does the future of IBM look like? They'll sell mainframes, support and consultancy contracts to fund an R&D department which generates licensable patents. Not a bad business I suppose, but probably not capable of sustaining hundreds of thousands of employees in 170 different countries.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 1) by Linatux on Monday November 10 2014, @02:54AM
The zOS stuff is not cheap, but not nearly as expensive as some of the attempts at replacing it I've seen.
It is extremely reliable - worth the money for that alone if reliability is a priority.
If you've already got one, and look after it, it's often way cheaper than the alternatives.