More Watson Cheerleading from a Former IBMer
December 20, 2016
I love content marketing. It seems so fresh, insightful, and substantive. Consider a write up about IBM Watson by a former IBMer turned consultant. I wonder, “Is Frank Palermo working for IBM Watson now as a rental?” I know that when you read “IBM Watson Points the Way to Our Cognitive Business Future”, you will realize how darned wonderful IBM Watson is. I believe that Watson is ahead of its time. On the other hand, perhaps Watson lags Google DeepMind by a teeny tiny bit.
In the write up, which strikes me as a touchstone of intellectual and journalistic integrity, I learned:
In the five years since Jeopardy, Watson has become pervasive in the world around us.
Yes, pervasive. Just like Android or Amazon. Well, almost.
I learned:
IBM has invested more than $15 billion in Watson. IBM is betting its 105-year-old future on Watson.
Okay, that’s quite a bit of money. In order for IBM to recover that money, Big Blue will have to crank out the $15 billion, plus interest, plus the ongoing costs of staff, infrastructure, consultants, PR professionals, etc. That works out to IBM’s need to have Watson deliver something on the order of 2.5 the $15 billion in the next year or two to get within sniffing distance of a pile of break even cash before stakeholders lose patience. How close is IBM to having a $6 or $7 billion dollar per year revenue stream from Watson? I don’t have any idea, and IBM does not offer a fully loaded Watson cost and revenue breakdown in its remarkable financial reports.
I learned that the president of IBM who wants to assist President Elect Trump apparently said at the WOW conference (oh, wow, WOW, is World of Watson):
IBM president and CEO Ginni Rometty opened her World of Watson keynote proclaiming that, “in five years, there is no doubt in my mind that cognitive computing will impact every decision. Bringing cognitive capabilities to digital business will change the way we work and help solve the world’s biggest problems.”
Perhaps. But I think the focus will be on IBM Federal Systems and its ability to retain its government work. IBM, like several other big time technology outfits, is involved with many projects; for example, the DCGS Army search and discovery system. Mr. Trump may make some changes to that program, which might add some urgency to the Watson making money thing.
I learned:
Everywhere you turn, Watson is now impacting and — in many cases — transforming businesses. Hundreds of millions of people are now impacted by Watson. By the end of next year, it will hit 1 billion people. Watson is interacting with 200 million consumers in shopping, insurance, banking services, education and let’s not forget: the weather.
What’s “everywhere” is IBM Watson PR. I am not sure it has had much, if any, impact here in Harrod’s Creek. IBM had an operation in Lexington, but that went south and now the new owners are from a foreign land. IBM used to make hardware, but that too has gone away. Now IBM generates wordage about IBM Watson.
I remember Jeopardy. I wonder if IBMers know much about post production and the scandal that tarnished TV game shows. That’s a $64,000 question, isn’t it.
Now the author of this piece is described as a person who:
brings more than 22 years of experience in technology leadership across a wide variety of technical products and platforms. Frank has a wealth of experience in leading global teams in large scale, transformational application and product development programs.
I liked the fact that the bio did not mention this factoid:
Frank worked at IBM in the Advanced Workstations Division, and took part in the PowerPC consortium with IBM, Motorola and Apple. He was also involved in the design of PowerPC family of microprocessors as well as architecting and developing a massive distributed client/server design automation and simulation system involving thousand of high-end clustered servers. Frank received several patents for his work in the area of microprocessor design and distributed client/server computing.
Objectivity? Nope, just the stuff that dreams are made of. I cannot wait until my content management system is powered by Watson. That will be a dream, a treat, a great day, and highly useful.
Stephen E Arnold, December 20, 2016
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