IBM Watson Workspace

August 6, 2018

I read “What Is Watson Workspace?” I have been assuming that WW is a roll up of:

IBM Lotus Connections
IBM Lotus Domino
IBM Lotus Mashups
IBM Lotus Notes
IBM Lotus Quickr
IBM Lotus Sametime

The write up explains how wrong I am (yet again. Such a surprise for a person who resides in rural Kentucky). The write up states:

IBM Watson Workspace offers a “smart” destination for employees to collaborate on projects, share ideas, and post questions, all built from the ground up to take advantage of Watson’s cognitive computing abilities.

Yeah, but I thought the Lotus products provided these services.

How silly of me?

The different is that WW includes cognitive APIs. Sounds outstanding. I can:

Draw insights from conversations
Turn conversations into actions
Access video conferencing
Customize Watson Workspace.

When I was doing a little low level work for one of the US government agencies (maybe it was the White House?) I recall sitting in a briefing and these functions were explained. A short time thereafter I had the thankless job of reviewing a minor contract to answer an almost irrelevant question. Guess what? The “workspace” did not contain the email nor the attachments I sought. The system, it was explained to me by someone from IBM in Gaithersburg, was that it was not the fault of the IBM system.

I understood perfectly.

My recollection of the manual work I had an opportunity to perform is still fresh in my mind if the particulars of the IBM system problem someone else created has dissipated.

I assume that cognitive APIs will make this type of error improbable. The downside is that some billable hours may not be required.

The write up identifies some WW competitors; for example, RingCentral Glip, Avaya Equinox, and ALE Rainbow. I wonder if Slack or Microsoft offer options as well. Maybe WhatsApp or Telegram in a pinch. Oh, probably not.

WW is the Lotus eater or digital lotusphagi.

Stephen E Arnold, August 6, 2018

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Feature, IBM Watson

Comments

Comments are closed.

Search the site
Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive

Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.