What are the impacts of Watson's success
in IBM's Jeopardy Challenge?
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Top IBM and Press
News
IBM fires back at Oracle in
middleware fray: IBM is returning
fire to Oracle in an increasingly heated battle over who has the faster
stack of middleware. Big Blue released new SPECjEnterprise 2010 benchmarking
statistics on Friday that it said "demonstrate how businesses using
IBM WebSphere middleware on Power 7 hardware can get the lowest cost for
performance in the industry." IBM also claimed that it "has proven
76% higher performance than Oracle overall." In addition, IBM
has launched a new website that lays
into Oracle on a number of fronts.
"Are you overpaying for Oracle
Database? Hint. You're overpaying for Oracle Database," one barb reads.
An Oracle spokeswoman could not immediately comment. Computerworld/IDG
Netezza: IBM's Most Disruptive
Acquisition of 2010:"….Exadata's
positioned solely as technology, not as a business solution....Oracle wants
it to be all things to all people. The problem is, it's not a one-size-fits-all
world out there. And if you try to build a one-size-fits-all solution like
Oracle's done, all you're really going to do is create an extraordinarily
complex environment..." – Jim Baum, president and CEO of IBM’s
Netezza InformationWeek
"....IBM's been on the workload-optimized
path for a long time, IBM has elected to keep the Netezza name to hammer
home that commitment to the outside world."
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The Human vs. Machine Jeopardy!
Challenge with IBM Watson
The IBM Watson Jeopardy! challenge garnered
widespread coverage in all major news outlets and market analyst firms.
Beyond generating unprecedented visibility for the company, Watson’s
participation in Jeopardy! defined the art of the possible and delivered
on the vision of what can be achieved. As it applies to Information
Management, real-time information analysis resulting in an informed action
or business insight sets IBM apart from competitors.
The potential for this technology is enormous.
Powerful analytics can be applied to vast quantities of data and
real-world human behavior in medicine, government, commerce, finance and
beyond. The technology underlying Watson can bring rapid answers
to vital questions affecting people’s lives. Already work has begun
on applications in healthcare, banking and more. This is truly a
game changer.
Watson Jeopardy Win a Victory
for Mankind:
“Watson represents…how humans will use
computers to attack all sorts of problems, backed by the power to process
masses of recently acquired, unstructured information” – Anjul Bhambhri,
IBM VP of Big Data InformationWeek
IBM Watson Wins Jeopardy! Next
Up: Fixing Healthcare
“With the Watson technology, we're going
to look at creating a commercial offering in the next 24 months that will
help empower doctors to do higher quality decision making and diagnoses."
– Dave Ferrucci, the principal engineer behind Watson
PC
Magazine
Tonight's Jeopardy! IBM Challenge:
Why it Matters “What might
really excite people across the economic landscape about Watson's breakthroughs
is what new foundational technologies always mean: new applications, new
industries, new investment, new companies, new products, new infrastructure,
new jobs, a new interactive computing economy.” – IBM’s Rod
Smith, VP of Emerging Internet Technologies – SWG Tech
Goes Strong |
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Top Analyst News
From the Forrester
Wave on Enterprise Data Warehousing,
in which IBM is a leader: "...IBM’s comprehensive analytics product
portfolio, coupled with its formidable GBS Business Analytics & Optimization
professional service organization, gives it a competitive advantage. Expect
IBM to leverage these strengths, plus its formidable global R&D organization,
to deliver its solutions in every conceivable enterprise data warehousing
market segment going forward."
From a Forrester
report entitled "Your Enterprise Data Archiving Strategy: "...IBM
continues to lead the industry with the most comprehensive data archiving
solution and the largest installed base. ...IBM’s customers spoke
highly of the Optim solution’s reliability and strong performance..."
Watson Coverage:
More than 20 analysts were hosted
at events across the U.S. to watch the contest, and more than 120 analysts
were briefed in the week leading up to the Jeopardy! challenge. The
results of these activities and the success of Watson have led to some
incredible insights within the analyst community.
Gartner (Dale Kutnick),
on Watson: "You have a
great advancement here -- and it's a general purpose machine. You should
play up the message that clients can use this today. For analytics, this
is a huge step forward; Old style BI is just not going to work when you
have many data sources."
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IDC (Henry Morris): "We
are tremendously impressed – especially with the opportunities this presents
-- call centers, medical/healthcare... interesting applications as a 'system'...
we like how you present this a 'decision-making' problem. This fits very
well with Smarter Planet... This is an interesting area – decision
making and decision management is a great way to frame it."
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Analysts have posted many positive reports
and blogs in response to Watson:
Mesabi Group
called it a "watershed event for information technology" and
further wrote "...Watson is more than just an impressive computing
system. In fact, in the future after Watson’s technology is used and deployed
in multiple ways, we expect this week’s Jeopardy! matches will be seen
as a historic event in information technology and big data and analytics
that also portends much for society in general…”
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Pund-IT:
"…We expect that IBM Watson's natural language enabled Jeopardy!
appearances will remain firmly in the memories of many people.....and could
even fundamentally change the relationship between people and machines..."
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Top Customer News
RealPlus accelerates online
real estate listings service
Gains 20 percent performance improvement
with IBM Informix 11.5
RealPlus, LLC, provides an online real estate
listings service covering residential properties in Manhattan. With
more than 300 real estate firms using RealPlus’ online application to
access listings from a collective client list, RealPlus wanted to accelerate
response times of online real estate listings service. RealPlus had
a trouble-free 25-year history running its applications on IBM Informix.
Working with IBM Business Partners One Point Solutions and Unique
Systems, RealPlus today uses Informix11.5 for high performance, reliable
and hassle-free delivery of its real estate services. This resulted
in an estimated 20 percent increase in performance; seamless 15 minute
upgrade to Informix 11.5; hassle-free administration for users and RealPlus
staff. “With Informix running on the Linux operating system,
we have a product that’s very marketable, truly allowing us to provide
our customers with information on demand.” – Eric Gordon, Managing
Director, RealPlus. RealPlus
Premier Healthcare Alliance
Picks IBM over Oracle
The Premier
Health Alliance and its
members serve more than 2,400 U.S. hospitals and 72,000-plus other healthcare
sites, with a focus on delivering a platform
to support Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). IBM leveraged its
core competencies around the Health Integration Framework with underlying
software and hardware technologies and delivered an integrated Software
as a Service (SaaS) offering that will deployed to more than 6,000 users.
This resulted in reductions in costs and waste from healthcare delivery,
easier access to population health data and empowered hospitals to obtain
better payer reimbursements based on evidence and outcomes. Premier
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