IBM’s Watson Analytics platform is now open to everyone

So the first link is an exploration in learning how to extract more money from "women with families" using targeted offers, just by dropping an Excel spreadsheet onto a website.

Excellent work IBM.

stonogo2• 12 years ago

Were you under the impression that IBM was a non-profit? What exactly do you think corporations purchase IT resources to accomplish?

jsprogrammer3• 12 years ago

Open to everyone who will sign up for a trial account with IBM?

Or did they post the code somewhere?

blaze33• 12 years ago

"Watson Analytics is Now Open For Business", doesn't say open source. Also the submitted title doesn't match the linked page title.

audioburn• 12 years ago

This is amazing. I feel like I'm dreaming. I'm wondering what the input spreadsheets look like, though

nl• 12 years ago

Does this actually have anything to do with the technologies used in Watson-the-Jeopardy-winning-system?

I've read much of the published papers on Watson and I don't really understand how this relates?

Is it that the "Watson" brand encompasses all IBM's semi-intelligent systems work?

htns• 12 years ago

Yeah, this appears to be just online statistics. The only "AI" thing about it is that it can match natural language queries to your spreadsheet column names.

cyorir• 12 years ago

Watson refers to the technologies used in the Jeopardy system, yes. Specifically, it refers to the Watson API, which consists of all the NLP and AI algorithms used in the Jeopardy system repackaged (with additions) and hidden under a simpler, query-based system. The Watson API is becoming the basis for most of IBM's Bluemix services which are described by IBM as "cognitive" (as you phrase it, "semi-intelligent systems" - referring mainly to NLP and related applications).

IBM is working on a number of applications to use the Watson API, as well as inviting other developers to use the API. Watson Analytics is just one of these applications, but it doesn't run on Watson alone. It is probably better to think of these applications as fitting within the overall framework of IBM's bluemix services, which includes Watson but also other technologies less geared towards NLP.

https://console.ng.bluemix.net/

spydum• 12 years ago

So, just another BI/decision support system, which uses this spiral visualization? It is sorta neat it tries to find some patterns for you, but I imagine once your data exceeds simple spreadsheets it becomes far less cool.

gesman2• 12 years ago

I signed up and tried to upload data and Watson blew up on me with errors:

DB2 SQL Error: SQLCODE=-964, SQLSTATE=57011, SQLERRMC=null, DRIVER=4.16.53

Apparently it's very sensitive to data input formats and essentially it wants you to do the data babysitting work first by properly preparing and structuring the data before it'll do anything.

These are cool demos on "friendly" pre-baked spreadsheets but way early for any practical production deployments, until IBM will start supporting raw datasets.

mark_l_watson• 12 years ago

I have been using IBM Watson, and it is also sensitive to clean input data.

I think that both IBM and Microsoft are doing a good job at "reinventing themselves", BTW.

edit: by 'clean' I really meant data that is in a regular structure with good example questions specified for each paragraph in input documents.

gesman2• 12 years ago

The world need more serious analytical tools.

I driving an effort for a major bank to combine all sources of different data (traffic logs and external treat intelligence feeds - all of different formats) to create a comprehensive fraud alerting and security investigation system. And we got pretty impressive results utilizing Splunk as a data swiss army knife.

IBM is certainly capable of offering a competitive solution to this industry although they need to move faster.

WatsonAnalytics is a good start even at it's current "teaser preview" stage.

michaellosee• 12 years ago

It seems that error code may not involve data input format but rather indicates DB2 is out of resources[1].

Honestly this release might be a little early for IBM as well. Any sort of verbose error message is at least a low risk information disclosure finding on a pentest and a verbose database error message is a strong indicator the application is vulnerable to SQL injection. Even if not vulnerable, it's blood in the water and should be fixed before hitting production.

[1]http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSATW2_7.3.0/c...

dustinupdyke• 12 years ago

I signed up and my account has been pending for weeks. When I login, I get an xml error, it isn't even handled nicely in html.

Not a great first impression by any means.

Napoleon1963• 12 years ago

I find the "Stories" section at the bottom to be particularly distasteful.

As far as I can tell, they've just taken stock photographs, labeled them with plausible names, and made them seem like testimonials without actually being real testimonials.

I don't expect marketing efforts to always be completely honest, but these "stories" seem like a really condescending sham to me.

I wouldn't mind it if they discussed how this technology could benefit certain business roles, but to attach fake (as far as I can tell; please let me know if I'm wrong!) personae to these stories comes off as deceitful to me.

Marketers, please, stick with actual testimonials very verifiable people, or don't even bother!

larrymcp• 12 years ago

Haha, yeah when I saw the stock photos of the Tina Fey lookalike and the hipster bearded IT manager, I said "okay, um this part of the site doesn't appear to be targeted at me".

orasis• 12 years ago

Is there any word on pricing?

ha292• 12 years ago

This Watson Analytics effort is flawed. It has a very limited market. It takes massive investment to run. Very few people will ever try it. They will also get very questionable benefits.

Bottom line, it is hard to see IBM getting anything close to a positive return from it.

Judging by how IBM has gone on to destroy itself in the last few years, I predict that this will be another nail on their coffin.

We won't be talking about Watson Analytics past Summer of 2015. Of course they will have 1000 people still working on it.

yourad_io• 12 years ago

With your opening, I can't help but `s/Watson Analytics/Personal Computing/g` in my head.

stonogo2• 12 years ago

"I think there is a world market for maybe five Watson Analytic efforts" --Thomas J. Watson

njx• 12 years ago

looks similar to https://vimeo.com/107544632

IBM’s Watson Analytics platform is now open to everyone

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