Weekly Watson: The Internet of Things
December 17, 2015
Yep, there is not a buzzword, trend, or wave which IBM’s public relations professionals ignore. I read “IBM Is Bringing Its Watson Supercomputer to IoT.” The headline puzzled me. I thought that Watson was:
- Open source software like Lucene
- Home brew scripts
- Acquired technology.
The hardware part is moving to the cloud. IBM is reveling in a US government supercomputing contract which may involve quantum computing.
But Watson runs on hardware. If Watson is a supercomputer, I see some parallels with the Google and Maxxcat search appliances.
The write up reports:
IBM has announced today it is bringing the power of its Watson supercomputer to the Internet of Things, in a bid to extend the power of cognitive computing to the billions of connected devices, sensors and systems that comprise the IoT.
Will the Watson Internet of Things be located in Manhattan? Nope. I learned:
the company announced that the new initiative, the Watson Internet of Things, will be headquartered in Munich, Germany. The facility will serve as the first European Watson innovation super centre, built to drive collaboration between IBM experts and clients. This will be complemented by eight Watson IoT Client Experience Centers spread across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Why Germany? IBM has a partner, Siemens.
Will the IoT venture use the shared desk approach. According to EndicottAllilance.org Comment 12/10/15, this approach to work has some consequences:
I wouldn’t get too excited about the new “Agile Workspace” in RTP. Basically it is management forcing workers back to the office and into a tense, continuously monitored environment with no privacy. It will be loud, you’ll have no space of your own, and it will be difficult to think. Mood marbles? Better be sure you always choose the light-colored ones! And make sure your discussion card is always flipped to the green side. What humiliation! The environment will be great for loud-mouthed managers, terrible for workers who do all the work. Worse than cubicles.
From cookbooks to cancer, IBM Watson seems to be where the buzzwords are. I wonder if the Watson revenues will reverse the revenue downturns IBM has experienced for 14 consecutive quarters.
Stephen E Arnold, December 17, 2015
Old School Mainframes Still Key to Big Data
December 17, 2015
According to ZDNet, “The Ultimate Answer to the Handling of Big Data: The Mainframe.” Believe it or not, a recent survey of 187 IT pros from Syncsort found the mainframe to be the important to their big data strategy. IBM has even created a Hadoop-capable mainframe. Reporter Ken Hess lists some of the survey’s findings:
*More than two-thirds of respondents (69 percent) ranked the use of the mainframe for performing large-scale transaction processing as very important
*More than two-thirds (67.4 percent) of respondents also pointed to integration with other standalone computing platforms such as Linux, UNIX, or Windows as a key strength of mainframe
*While the majority (79 percent) analyze real-time transactional data from the mainframe with a tool that resides directly on the mainframe, respondents are also turning to platforms such as Splunk (11.8 percent), Hadoop (8.6 percent), and Spark (1.6 percent) to supplement their real-time data analysis […]
*82.9 percent and 83.4 percent of respondents cited security and availability as key strengths of the mainframe, respectively
*In a weighted calculation, respondents ranked security and compliance as their top areas to improve over the next 12 months, followed by CPU usage and related costs and meeting Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
*A separate weighted calculation showed that respondents felt their CIOs would rank all of the same areas in their top three to improve
Hess goes on to note that most of us probably utilize mainframes without thinking about it; whenever we pull cash out of an ATM, for example. The mainframe’s security and scalability remain unequaled, he writes, by any other platform or platform cluster yet devised. He links to a couple of resources besides the Syncsort survey that support this position: a white paper from IBM’s Big Data & Analytics Hub and a report from research firm Forrester.
Cynthia Murrell, December 17, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Weekly Watson: Quotes about Trend App
December 11, 2015
I know. I know. I keep writing about IBM Watson. The product, service, marketing behemoth is the future of IBM. I think it is even though another IBM Watson top dog headed for the greener grass at GE. (Read about the jump in “GE Poaches Key IBM Watson Exec.” I like the “key” word.)
My highlight of the IBM Watson week is a story in Customer Think. I don’t pay much attention to the customer think arena, but I saw a link to Watson and gave the mouse a poke.
Bull’s eye. The write up is an interview under the SEO friendly title “IBM Chief Strategist for Watson Trend App Answers 4 Questions for Marketing Innovators.”
Yikes. Am I allowed to read this interview. I am not a marketing innovator and my questions usually go unanswered; for example, what happened to the goal of $10 billion in Watson revenue in five years? See what I mean.
Here are three highlights from the interview with Justin Norwood, who carries a significant burden with the Watson as a consumer app play.
Mr. Norwood is an innovator. Here’s his response to a question about why the Watson Trend App is important:
I believe that cognitive computing – of which IBM Watson is the leading example – is the missing link to making mass personalization a reality.
Belief, like hope and faith, is a useful characteristic. I personally put a bit more emphasis on revenue. But that’s what makes horse races.
A second quote I circle in Big Blue blue is:
The app has already improved my personal gift giving experience.
Yes, hands on personal testimony. I wonder what the recipients of the gifts have to say. Did the app really hit the gift on the head or were the recipients (Mr. Norwood’s daughters) telling anyone who would listen what they wanted from Amazon, an outfit with some recommendation technology that works okay. It produces revenue by the way.
The third and final gem I circled in red ink red (my Big Blue blue marker gave out on me):
I am also very motivated to see an end to hunger and malnutrition in Africa in my lifetime, so I recently partnered with an organization called Seeds of Action to work towards that.
Good idea. Imagine how much money can be routed to help folks in Africa if IBM Watson generates the much needed billions IBM management presaged a couple of years ago. By the way, there are hungry folks in the USA as well.
Stephen E Arnold, December 11, 2015
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