IBM's "New play" in the Big Data age

From the birth of "big data" words, "What is Big Data", "What is the core value of big data", "How can we make full use of big data?" Be asked the most questions. After a few short years of development, traditional it vendors to accelerate the pace of transformation to large data, but also have a large data interpretation. So what has changed in the new Big Data age for IBM, the century-old store?

We'll see this in a sci-fi movie: Hi, Mike (the name of the smart computer), tell me how to get to the shortest distance to a building ... hi, tell me which company to buy?... Hi, tell me how the disease should be treated ... Just say a few words to the computer to get the best results. Over the years, this is a vision of artificial intelligence, which is now the ultimate goal of large data and analysis.

It's a long way from now, but IBM's research on large data and analytics has brought that goal closer together, which is "Watson," or "cognitive computing."

Large data and "cognitive computing"

Now the general view of big data is that data is like natural resources, such as minerals or oil, and that natural resources need to be dug up and refined to produce value, such as gasoline from oil, and data. The world is producing a lot of data every day, and the data generated over the past three years is more than the sum of previous human history, and if not processed and analyzed, the vast data is worthless as a mineral that has not been refined.

After the analysis of the data has value, so for the enterprise, large data and analysis of the greatest charm lies in the ability to bring analysis insights for the enterprise, relying on data more scientific decision-making, further promote enterprise productivity. So, how to effectively carry out large data analysis? Now many manufacturers have given different ideas and solutions, IBM is an "artificial intelligence" + "big Data" way to provide large data analysis and services, that is, "Watson foundations."

People familiar with IBM should have heard of "Watson," an AI computer named after the IBM founder, who had triumphed over humans in the "Dangerous Edge" television program fame. Watson's ability to overcome the "secret" of human beings is mainly as follows: the ability to recognize natural language, to interact with humans, to analyze problems like the human brain, to search for evidence from the knowledge base to support hypothetical answers, and to derive the most credible results; with learning, it absorbs new information Improve on the decisions or responses it has made.

Watson's ability is just right for today's Big Data analysis: Past data analysis was static, based on the one-time modeling analysis of existing data, but now is a rapidly changing data age that produces a lot of data every day, such as microblogs and micro-letters, which are valuable information. IBM believes that with the increase in information, in a learning, interactive way, along with the further growth of data to improve cognitive analysis behavior, is "cognitive computing."

Within IBM, "Watson" represents "cognitive computing", and IBM has taken cognitive computing as a strategic direction for future large data and analysis.

Thriving "Watson"

The supercomputer "Watson", which defeated human beings in the "Dangerous Edge" program, is based on the IBM power hardware platform, and in fact "Watson" has a cognitive computing capacity that is not limited to the powers but can be ported to other IBM systems. "Watson" has the ability to artificial intelligence and machine learning, corresponding to their respective functional modules, these modules can be stripped off the hardware and software, thus porting to other platforms. In other words, IBM's Watson Foundations is an open platform, which also enables traditional large data solution users to gain cognitive computing benefits.

IBM believes that "Watson" represents the development direction of large data and analysis, and is willing to invest heavily to build the "Watson" biosphere.

Last November, IBM Watson began to provide partners with technology, tools, and API programming interfaces, hoping to use the cloud services and access tools to help partners develop their cognitive computing software and systems. The first partners include fluid in the retail industry, MD Buyline in the healthcare sector and Welltok in the area of health management. In addition, IBM has created a Watson content repository that vendors can provide to Watson, including general and proprietary information, such as healthcare data.

In addition to the active construction of the ecosystem, IBM announced early this year that it would set up an independent business group for Watson, dedicated to developing and commercializing cognitive computing technology innovations that support delivery models. IBM has invested 1 billion dollars in the new Watson Business group, 100 million of which will be used for venture capital to support the new IBM-built biosphere. The creation of new business groups helped IBM bring new Watson-based software, services and applications to market faster, helping Watson build and commercialize the ecosystem.

Today, IBM has created three broad categories of cognitive computing systems: a new generation of dialogue system, applicable to the insurance industry, to help improve the efficiency of customer calls; a new generation of exploration systems can help telecom companies establish human-computer interactive intelligent systems for their self-healing devices and provide early warning to telecom customers; This is the highest level of application of cognitive computing, and can help customers to provide the best decisions, for example, according to the customer's past shopping situation and real-time shopping situation, forecast what customers want to buy next.

"Watson" is now on the road to commercialization, and IBM works with many medical institutions to change the way medicine practices, payments and teaching are made. This includes collaboration with the Memorial Sloan-Caitlin Cancer Center, WellPoint, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the Lerner Medical School in Cleveland's West Reserve University. In addition to the healthcare industry, leading brands, including DBS Bank and Nielsen, are exploring how to use Watson to better reach customers.

"Watson" is becoming more and more popular, because the "cognitive computing" it represents makes large data and analytics easier, which is what big data users need.