IBM and Watson: A More Focused Journey to Rediscover Relevance and Find More Revenue
May 21, 2021
Nope, this is not an episode of “Star Trek.” Think of “IBM’s CEO Says It’s Leaving Consumer AI Like Facial Recognition to Other Companies, As It Doubles Down on Pitching Watson to Business” as a new version of the 1904 film “Le Voyage à travers l’impossible.” Here’s the idea: A vendor of services, mainframes, and intellectual property like a two nanometer chip concept blasts off to a new world. The mission is:
enterprise AI. Watson will be “learning from small amounts of data” and utilizing natural language processing to answer specific business questions for
customers.”
IBM will continue to embrace Watson. Granted Watson has an interesting track record. The write up states:
IBM shut down its AI tool for drug discovery in 2019 after sluggish sales, and reportedly encountered hesitancy from banks when trying to sell into the financial sector.
Learn from one’s mistakes, my grandmother used to say.
The article points out:
Using natural language processing to understand communications like chat and email, building an AI that is trustworthy and free from bias, and automating business
functions like customer service and IT operations.
With the cloud propelling Watson to the Land of Enchanted Revenues, Big Blue will rely on innovations like Turbonomic and Instana. If you don’t know, Turbonomic is one of the leaders in AIOps. You don’t need to wait for Forrester or Gartner to explain this very advanced concept of Artificial Intelligence Operations. Turbonomic is one of the leaders in this nova like market, and IBM acquired the company. Instana, now swallowed by a Big Blue gulp delivers APM. Okay, I will clue to you in: APM means Application Performance Monitoring. The idea is that when smart software behaves in a stupid way and the cloud centric app won’t work, IBM can help you out. The idea makes sense for the IBM cloud, but I am not sure how some of IBM’s cloud competitors will perceive this change. Thunderstorms perhaps?
When will the revenues be discovered? Yeah, probably in a Rometty (that’s a unit of time used by a former Big Blue pure bred to describe Watson’s earlier pursuit of revenues in Houston, pardner. No tar and feathers from the cancer docs in them there parts, but it was suggested that some of the IBM Watson leave town before sundown. And what about using IBM Watson to discover drugs applicable to the Covid pandemic? (Cough, cough.) Is there a metaphor to describe the bold new direction in which the IBM Watson starship is headed? Yes, there it. Electrification, specifically “at the turn of the last century” electrification.
Will stakeholders wait for 19th century time to mark what has to happen in the zip zip real time world of the 21st century? Sure. Keep in mind the plot of the 1904 film which told the story of a journey through mountains to the sun and ended up under water. Yikes. Underwater! This is not a good word for shareholders and stakeholders to hear in a metaphorical context.
Stephen E Arnold, May 21, 2021
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