Weakly Watson: IBM Doubles Down on Its Smart Software Future
October 20, 2015
InfoWorld ran a remarkable article about Watson, IBM’s TV game show winning search and retrieval system. Since the victory, which may or may not have required some post production touch ups, Watson has gotten chubbier. The Watson moniker now embraces applications, APIs, Bob Dylan, analytics, and 100 million lines of code. (Yep, that’s a lot of code. No word on the number of bugs in that code, however.)
The write up “First Jeopardy, Next the World: IBM’s Plans for Watson.” Spoiler alert: Watson is going to give IBM “a new lease on life.”
IBM’s plan is to generate $1 billion in annual revenue. I am not sure when the accountants at IBM will finish their work to roll in content management, i2, and other lines of business to hit this magical number. I would point out that IBM is in the $100 billion range, so the goal for Watson is modest, a mere one percent of IBM’s annual revenue. True, IBM has tallied a stunning record: more than 12 consecutive quarters of declining revenue. But Big Blue is giving Watson the ball and a chance to score a touchdown in the revenue game.
The InfoWorld story reveals some gems which I did not have in my “weakly Watson” file. Permit me to highlight several of these informational nuggets.
First, Watson has created “a 2,000-person business unit that will draw on the expertise of consulting pros who bring backgrounds in machine learning, advanced analytics, data science and development, and industry and change management.” Staff additions are good, particularly when one tracks the commentary in Alliance@IBM.
Second, Watson wants developers. Presumably these folks will use the APIs like F____d. I kid you not. This is IBM lingo for face detection. Here’s the icon from the multi page ads which ran in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal on October 14, 2015.
Look closely. The acronym for face detection is F____d. I like the happy face and the hexagon. Very techno-geodesic.
Third, Watson is no longer encumbered with “mini-van” sized IBM computers. Watson resides in the cloud. The mini van sized computers are there, just not in the licensee’s computer room.
Fourth, IBM Watson has “launched about 100 new applications.” I did not know that.
Fifth, I learned that IBM Watson “released new and enhanced Watson cognitive services across four areas: language, vision, speech, and data insights. They’re meant to reduce the time required to combine Watson APIs and data sets, as well as to embed Watson APIs in mobile devices, cloud services, and connected systems.” Interesting. I thought the point was for IBM to sell consulting and engineering services. Guess not. Those are higher margin lines of business. Getting big money for APIs may be a bit more challenging.
Sixth, IBM rolled out “Expert Storybooks.” I heard about this, but I am not sure I understand the concept. I learned: “An Expert Storybook built with the Weather Co. is designed to help users incorporate weather data into revenue analysis; a Twitter Expert Storybook helps analyze social data to, among other things, measure reputational risk.” Okay, Twitter. Maybe not the most stable social content source, but I still am not grasping the cognitive computing / analytics thing via Expert Storybooks. Doesn’t one need to be an expert to create an Expert Storybook?
I put double red boxes around the paragraphs explaining to me that Watson is the future of IBM. Here’s the passage that caused me to chuckle:
How big is Watson? IBM CEO Ginny Rometti has said it could be a $10 billion business. John Kelly, IBM’s senior vice president in charge of Watson and related businesses, told a Bloomberg reporter that he expects it to be a $1 billion business fairly soon. When I asked [Stephen] Gold [Stephen Gold, vice president of the Watson group] the same question, he didn’t want to touch it.
I like that “didn’t want to touch it” comment. No kidding. I wouldn’t want to be cheerleading for a $1 billion from what is essentially open source software, home brew code, and acquired technology cranking out $1 billion. Maybe Watson can be an Endeca sized $100 million? After some years of travail, Watson might nose into Autonomy’s $700 million range. The $1 billion number strikes me as a long shot without some Fancy Dan shuffling of lines of business and a bit of accounting effort.
And, I wish to note in ending, that the InfoWorld story worked in curing cancer. All in a day’s work for Watson.
Stephen E Arnold, October 20, 2015
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