{"id":36871,"date":"2019-10-23T08:12:44","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T00:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=36871"},"modified":"2019-10-23T08:12:39","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T00:12:39","slug":"ibm-advances-watson-anywhere-with-new-clients-and-innovations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2019\/10\/23\/ibm-advances-watson-anywhere-with-new-clients-and-innovations\/","title":{"rendered":"IBM advances \u2018Watson Anywhere\u2019 with new clients and innovations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recognizing that organizations are slow to adopt AI, due in part to rising data complexities, IBM announced new innovations that further advance its Watson Anywhere approach to scaling AI across any cloud, and a host of clients who are leveraging the strategy to bring AI to their data, wherever it resides.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\ncollaborate with clients every day and around the world on their data and AI\nchallenges, and this year we tackled one of the big drawbacks to scaling AI\nthroughout the enterprise \u2013 vendor lock-in,\u201d said Rob Thomas, General Manager,\nIBM Data and AI. \u201cWhen we introduced the ability to run Watson on any cloud, we\nopened up AI for clients in ways never imagined. Today, we pushed that even\nfurther adding even more capabilities to our Watson products running on Cloud Pak\nfor Data.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Increasing\ndata complexity, as well as data preparation, skills shortages, and a lack of\ndata culture are combining to slow AI adoption at a time when interest in AI\ncontinues to climb. Between 2018 and\n2019, organizations that have deployed artificial intelligence (AI) grew from 4%\nto 14%, according to Gartner\u2019s 2019 CIO Agenda survey. Those figures contrast with the rising\nawareness of the value of AI. According to the 2019 MIT Sloan Management Review\nand Boston Consulting Group study, Winning\nwith AI<\/em>, 9 out of 10 respondents agree that AI represents a business\nopportunity for their company. Adding to growing enterprise complexities, a 2018\nIBM Institute for Business Value study said that 76% of organizations surveyed reported\nthat they are already using at least two to 15 hybrid clouds, and 98 percent\nforecast they will be using multiple hybrid clouds within three years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ninnovations announced today are designed to help organizations overcome the barriers\nto AI. From detecting \u2018drift\u2019 in AI models to recognizing nuances in the human\nvoice, these new capabilities can be run across any cloud via IBM\u2019s Cloud Pak\nfor Data platform to begin easily connecting their vast data stores to AI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\nevidence of the growing appeal of this approach to enable AI to run on any\ncloud, IBM today announced a number of clients that are leveraging Watson\nacross their enterprises to unearth hidden insights, automate mundane tasks and\nhelp improve overall business performance. Companies like multinational\nprofessional services firm KPMG, and Air France-KLM, are leveraging Watson\napps, or building their own AI with Watson tools, to facilitate their AI\njourneys. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIBM\u2019s strategy for developing AI tools that enable\nclients to run AI wherever their data is, is exactly the reason we turned to\nOpenScale \u2013 we needed multicloud scalability in order to give clients the kind\nof transparency and explainability we were talking about,\u201d said Steve Hill,\nGlobal and US Head of Innovation at KPMG. \u201cSupporting the client\u2019s environment,\nwhatever it may be, reflects the understanding that IBM has not only about AI,\nbut about the expanding enterprise.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

KPMG, the multinational professional services\nnetwork and long-time IBM alliance partner, for years has integrated the latest\ncognitive and automation capabilities into services across its businesses from governance,\nrisk, and compliance to taxes and accounting. Earlier this year KPMG turned to\nIBM to collaborate on a new service that would provide KPMG clients greater\ngovernance and explainability of their AI, no matter where that data resides,\nno matter what cloud and no matter what AI platform the company was using. KPMG\ndeveloped the KPMG AI in Control solution leveraging the Watson OpenScale\nplatform, to give clients the ability to continuously evaluate their machine\nlearning and AI algorithms, models and data for greater confidence in the\noutcomes. Last month, KPMG teamed with IBM to release a joint offering of\nthis solution to clients called KPMG AI in Control with Watson OpenScale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nto help accelerate customer service and improve the passenger experience, Air\nFrance-KLM and its customer service team developed a voice assistant called MIA\n(My Interactive Assistant), which uses IBM Watson Assistant with Voice\nInteraction. Air France-KLM collaborated with IBM to develop the voice\nassistant to improve the customer experience by reducing file processing time.\nSince the beginning of the pilot in July in a single country, MIA has responded\nto 4,500 calls from people needing additional information about their flights\nor their travel plans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

MIA\nasks the customer for his reservation reference number (PNR) and extracts from\nthis PNR all information relating to the passenger, including name, flight\nnumber and telephone number. If\nneeded, the voice assistant can quickly pass the call to a human agent who can\ntake over. The agent will already have all the necessary information on\nthe screen in the background and will therefore be positioned to resolve the\nrequest. By design, the higher the number of requests handled by MIA, the more\nintelligent it will be over time. Other use cases are also under study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Capabilities Come\nto Watson Apps and Tools<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

IBM\nrolled out an array of new features and functionality to several of its key\nproducts today, including the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watson OpenScale \u2013 <\/strong>With rising data\nprivacy regulation and growing concern for how AI algorithms are reaching their\nresults, bias detections and explainability are becoming critical. Last year,\nIBM launched OpenScale, the first AI platform of its kind to do just that \u2013\nprovide organizations the ability to look for bias and govern their AI and\nquery it to understand how it arrived at its results. With such insights,\nclients can gain greater confidence in their AI and in their results. Today we\nannounced a new capability called Drift Detection which detects when and how\nfar a model \u201cdrifts\u201d from its original parameters. It does this by comparing\nproduction and training data and the resulting predictions it creates. When a\nuser-defined drift threshold is exceeded, an alert is generated. Drift\nDetection not only provides greater information about the accuracy of models,\nbut it simplifies, and hence, speeds model re-training. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watson Assistant \u2013 <\/strong>Building on IBM\u2019s\nleading position in enterprise AI assistants, IBM today announced several new key\nfeatures to the conversational AI product that allow users to deploy, train and\ncontinuously improve their virtual assistants quickly on the cloud of their\nchoice. For example, the new Watson Assistant for Voice Interaction is designed\nto help clients easily integrate an AI-powered assistant into their IVR systems.\nWith this capability customers are able to ask questions in natural language.\nWatson Assistant now can recognize the nuances of the way people speak and will\nfast-track the caller to the most appropriate answer. Clients can also blend\ntexting and voice at the same time, allowing instantaneous information\nexchange. IBM also announced that Watson Assistant is now integrated with IBM\nCloud Pak for Data which enables companies to run an assistant in any\nenvironment \u2013 on premises, or on any private, public, hybrid, or multi-cloud. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watson Discovery \u2013 <\/strong>IBM announced several\nkey updates to Watson Discovery, the\ncompany\u2019s premier AI search product that leverages machine learning and natural\nlanguage processing to help clients find data from across their enterprises. New\nto the platform is Content Miner, which allows for the searching of vast\ndatasets for specific content types, such as text and images. A new simplified\nsetup format helps non-technical users to can get up and running quickly, while\na new \u201cguided experience\u201d dynamically recommends next steps in configuring\nprojects. All of which results in a more agile data discovery process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cloud Pak for Data \u2013 <\/strong>IBM advances its\nfirst-of-a-kind, integrated data analytics platform, with key new features and\nsupport. The platform, which has supported Red Hat OpenShift, one of the\nleading Kubernetes-based container orchestration platforms, since its launch 18\nmonths ago, is now certified on OpenShift. With full certification brings added\nconfidence to clients knowing that all the components came from a supported\nsource, container images contain no known vulnerabilities and most importantly\nthat the containers running throughout are compatible across Red Hat Enterprise\nLinux environments, regardless of the cloud, and whether private, public or\nhybrid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\naddition to certification, this latest version now comes with a host of\ncapabilities standard as part of the base platform. Among the new capabilities\nis Db2 Event Store, for storing and analyzing more than 250 billion events per\nday, in real-time, and Watson Machine Learning, equipped with AutoAI. AuoAI is\nIBM\u2019s innovative automated model building program that enables data scientists\nand non-data scientists alike to build machine learning (ML) models with ease.\nAs its name suggests, AutoAI automates such tedious and complicated tasks of\nML, including data prep, model selection, feature engineering and\nhyperparameter optimization, to truly speed clients\u2019 adoption of AI. Now these\ntools come standard with Cloud Pak for Data to be used and scaled across any\nhybrid multicloud environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\naddition, Cloud Pak for Data now features open source governance in the base\nplatform, enabling users for the first time to set policy for, and govern the\nuse of open source tools and programs within the enterprise to enable more\nefficient model building, testing and deployment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To\nempower developers to take advantage of the IBM Cloud Pak for Data platform,\nIBM also announced the Cloud Pak for Data Developer Hub. Here, developers\nhave step-by-step tutorials, code patterns, ongoing support and information on\nin person workshops taking place in their area for hands-on labs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OpenPages with Watson<\/strong> \u2013<\/strong> IBM also announced new features and capabilities to OpenPages with Watson in version 8.1. This governance, risk and compliance (GRC) platform, helps clients as they set and manage operational risk, policy and compliance, financial controls management, IT governance, and internal audits. Version 8.1 comes integrated with a new rules engine, new intuitive views, visualizations, advance workflow features, and a personalized workspace, all of which is designed to enable users to be more productive and effective in managing their risk. One result of the additional engagement and automation features is a more risk-aware culture that empowers more people to participate in managing important risk and compliance activities. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IBM announced new innovations that further advance its Watson Anywhere approach to scaling AI across any cloud, and a host of clients who are leveraging the strategy to bring AI to their data, wherever it resides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1542,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[853,1130,214,6941],"class_list":["post-36871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cloud-technology","tag-ibm","tag-watson-anywhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}