Follow IBM Watson -
A
combination of capabilities makes Watson unique, including natural language
processing, hypothesis generation and evaluation, and dynamic learning. Watson
is about bringing these capabilities together in a way that’s never been done
before resulting in a fundamental change in the way businesses look at quickly
solving problems
- Solutions that learn with each iteration
- Capable of navigating human communication
- Dynamically evaluating hypothesis to questions asked
- Responses optimized based on relevant data
- Ingesting and analyzing Big Data
- Discovering new patterns and insights in seconds
Before we talk about what Watson can do, let us understand today’s scenario in a better manner thru below facts and figures -
- “90% of the world’s
data has been created in the last 2 years.”Source: GigaOM, By Nicole Solis Mar. 23, 2011
- “80% of the world's
data is unstructured.” Source: Multiple reports reinforce this point IDC, Gartner Jan 2010, IDC 2012, McKinsey
- “In 15 of the US economies 17 sectors, companies with more than 1,000 employees store, on average over 235 terabytes of data -- more data than is contained in the US Library of Congress.”
Source: McKinsey & Company -
Are you ready for the era of big data?
October 2011
- Natural Language
Question Answering is a transformational benefit that will be adopted by
the mainstream in the next 5-10 years.Source: Gartner July 2011 priority matrix for emerging technologies.
- “Total amount of global data is expected to reach 2.7 zetabytes in
2012, up 48% from 2011.”Source: IDC, December 2011 press releaseThis is equivalent to….
- ~750 Trillion Hours
of Video
- 50M times the amount
of information contained in all the books ever written
- Every person on earth
receiving 240 newspapers per day
- Loading up CD’s that
would stack from the moon and back 5.5 times
- Total amount of global data is expected to reach 35 zetabytes by 2020, growing 44X over the decade.
- Social media and the
web has been a catalyst in the information explosion
- 220 Billion pieces of
user generated content exists on the web today
- 200M tweets are sent
daily
- 249B e-mails
(2.8M/sec)
- 35 hours video uploaded to YouTube per minute
- “1 in 2 Business
leaders don’t have access to data they need.”Source: MIT Sloan Management / IBM IBV Study, New Path to Value
- “83% of CIO’s cited BI
and analytics as part of their visionary plan.”Sources: The Essential CIO 2011 Report / IBM Global CIO Study
- “5.4X more likely that
top performers use business analytics.”Source: MIT Sloan Management / IBM IBV Study, New Path to Value
- “Analytically
sophisticated organizations are 260% more likely to be top performers than
analytic beginners.”Source: MIT IBV study
Above points indicate that the data is growing at an astounding rate. It is growing so fast that we often lack the ability to use it to its full potential. The highly unstructured nature of this data makes the challenge even more difficult. This is a real problem for business to make informed decisions. Business leaders need a way to find hidden patterns and isolate the valuable nuggets that they need to make business decisions.
Challenges
are real and Watson has the answers. Watson use cases
can be broadly be broken into three classes – Ask, Discover, and Decide. Lets see the details about each class and figure out under which class your application/solutions falls in.
- Users can ASK Watson direct questions in natural language
the same way they ask friends or colleague’s questions. This is in contrast to reducing an
inquiry to a set of keywords and receiving a set of links to sources where
their answers may or may not lie.
People who saw Watson’s victory on the quiz show Jeopardy! will be
familiar with this simplest use case. Think of this as next generation
chat.
- Users can DISCOVER new insights with Watson. Examples of this could be use of Watson
as a research assistant such as a biotech investigator looking for the
best way to treat a disease in a specific cohort of patients.
- Finally, users might use Watson to help them DECIDE on the best course of
action. This would be for
situations where users are looking for confidence-based recommendations
for their next action when they have many options to choose from such as
what course of treatment to prescribe to a patient or what investment
choice to make.
- Diagnosis and action - Assistance for knowledge workers dealing with a single case for a single client to pinpoint a condition from among many possibilities and make resultant decisions
- Contact center support - Personalized self-service experience for clients by dynamically developing personal profiles from unstructured data
- Research and discovery - Identification of rare studies and information sources while building a case for original research
- Process optimization - Identification of areas for improvement in business processes by analyzing unstructured data that documents and describes process steps and output
- Fraud and risk management - Identification of early signs of fraud and management of risk in order to lower overall liability and costs of doing business
Next: Watson for ISVs/Partners and entire Ecosystem (Part 4 of 5 Series)
References -
Watson is ready for Business
http://www.ibmwatson.com/IBM Watson
www.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/index.shtml
Watson YouTube channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/IBMWatsonSolutions/feed
Watson in Google News
https://news.google.com/news/search?hl=en&gl=us&q=ibm+watson
IBM Journal - This is Watson
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?reload=true&isnumber=6177717
Ventana Research: The Potential of Cognitive Computing Platforms
http://www.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/pdf/ventana_research_perspective_cognitive_platforms_ibm.pdf
Join Watson Community @ IBM developerWorks
No comments :
Post a Comment