Watson Does Big Data Plus Game Shows

November 3, 2011

And why not? Watson is IBM’s magical solution to Lucene’s unexciting key word search functionality. Oh, Lucene is under the hood, but the Watson system is much, much more sophisticated. And Watson can do “big data.” We are not sure what that means, but it is a game show system, right?

A new software initiative has IBM cheerleading for  Watson and analytics. Yahoo! News reports that “IBM Unveils New ‘Big Data’ Tools.” The new tools, aimed at the healthcare, marketing, and other industries, are built partially around components IBM acquired with its purchases of Netezza and Cognos. The healthcare analytics, though, were grown from supercomputer Watson’s legendary artificial intelligence. IBM’s Watson, of course, became famous for beating Jeopardy!’s  all-time biggest (human) winner in February 2011.

Of the new applications, writer Barry Levine explains:

The new software tools are intended to make a difference in a business environment that is awash with data. IBM said 90 percent of the world’s data, including information generated by sensors, mobile devices, online transactions and social networks, has been created within the past two years. . . . [The software] allows users to analyze unstructured data from such sources as social networks, mobile devices and sensors, as well as structured data in databases.

Based on Hadoop, IBM InfoSphere BigInsights will be accessed via the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise. A basic free version is available, but the company hopes businesses will subscribe to the priced-by-the-hour enterprise version.

An added twist is the availability of a location-aware analytics tool, IBM Cognos Mobile, that will be available for free to mobile devices. I think that might just turn out to be the most exciting part. Will IBM tackle another game show or just stick with demonstrations to future Harvard MBAs.

Cynthia Murrell   November 3, 2011

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One Response to “Watson Does Big Data Plus Game Shows”

  1. Presentation on Big Data Analytics and Watson at IBM’s Information on Demand Conference on November 3rd, 2011 6:51 am

    […] Watson Does Big Data Plus Game Shows (arnoldit.com) […]

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