IBM Watson supercomputer will be a separate division of the corporation with a budget of $ 1 billion

Most recently, an article has been published on Habré stating that IBM is opening the tools of the IBM Watson supercomputer for third-party developers. Now the company went further, and allocated IBM Watson to its own division, with an additional investment.

Of course, this refers not only to the supercomputer itself, but also to the team of its developers, support staff and all the rest. For the development of such a division, the company decided to allocate $ 1 billion, of which a tenth, $ 100 million, will go to create an “ecosystem” of applications and services for IBM Watson.
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Actually, these 100 million are allocated for the formation of a venture fund that provides investments to start-ups and companies that will develop applications / services for a supercomputer . The corporation does all this for a reason, and with an eye to the forecast of the research company Gartner. According to the company, in the near future, "smart" machines will become a key factor in the breakthrough in information technology, helping people to "do the impossible" and work more efficiently.



The seriousness of IBM’s intentions is not only the sum of 1 billion dollars, but also the planned number of employees of the new department of 2000 people. Workers will include both IBM direct employees and industry experts who will help evaluate individual areas of work, including health care, financial services, retail, tourism and telecommunications.

The new division will be called: IBM Watson Group. The head of the unit will be Michael Rhodin, senior vice president of the IBM Software Solutions Group.



Among other things, the task of IBM Watson Group will be the support and development of three new services.

1. IBM Watson Discovery Advisor . This direction is primarily aimed at supporting pharmaceutical research. The service will help companies developing new pharmaceuticals to analyze large amounts of research data with the establishment of logical links. Probably, all this will help to conduct research in this area much faster.

2. IBM Watson Analytics . The second direction is the visualization of large data arrays. The service will help companies process arrays of data much faster than in the normal case. The supercomputer will establish logical connections between the analyzed data files, presenting the result in a simple visual form.

3. IBM Watson Explorer . The service offers uniform standards in the development of information-oriented applications that provide a comprehensive context-sensitive overview of any topic relevant to business users and data processing specialists.

Actually, all this will be tied around a business incubator, in which, according to the plan, technologies, development tools and personnel potential will appear to create and launch new solutions based on the Watson cognitive system in a cloud environment.



For the participants of the project, the Watson Group division will conduct trainings, seminars, and working meetings in which scientists, businessmen, and politicians will participate. IT specialists. The scale of such meetings is great - according to the plan, it is planned to involve more than 1000 academic organizations to participate in them.

It is also worth recalling that the IBM Watson Developers Cloud project continues to work and develop, now within the framework of a new division. As before, an application should be submitted for participation in the project, which will then be considered by the “jury” of the project.

Now all these projects are only at the beginning of the journey, and each participant, both the company and the developer or scientist, is valuable for their development. So everyone who is interested in working with IBM Watson and its expanding “ecosystem” is invited to cooperate.