Westchester IBM-ers have the right to feel territorial about Watson, the cognitive computing system that was developed at IBM’s Armonk headquarters and launched in 2011. After making its debut on the quiz show, Jeopardy!, famously beating two of the show’s human champions, Watson became an instant celebrity. And Westchester was proud.
In 2014, we couldn’t help but be miffed when IBM decided to launch the IBM Watson Group to build out an ecosystem around Watson—but moved it into an East Village office in Manhattan.
Today IBM maintains a whole Watson unit, aimed at helping companies tap into cognitive computing to transform their industries. Its suite of offerings includes Watson Engagement Advisor (a Software-as-a-Service that understands context and dialog); Watson Explorer (a solution that combines content and data from many different systems and delivers relevant data, analytics, and insights); Watson Discovery Advisor (makes connections and draws relationships between data sets); Watson for Oncology (helps oncologists make more informed treatment decisions); Watson for Clinical Trial Matching (helps doctors narrow down a wide pool of available cancer trials and quickly identify potential matches for patients); and Watson Knowledge Studio (a beta offering where developers and subject matter experts can teach Watson).
|
|
IBM’s Armonk headquartersApparently, the move out of Westchester is paying off for the Watson team.
John Kelly, the company’s senior vice president for solutions portfolio and research, recently told Crain’s New York Business that IBM’s Watson unit is the fastest-growing part of the company’s analytics business, and that it could reach $1 billion in sales in the near-term.
“We feel the urgency not only to turn around the business of IBM and help the business of IBM, but help our clients transform their industries,” Kelly said in the Crain’s article.
Top photo by Clockready used under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 unported license
