IBM Offers IT Services Platform With Watson AI

IBM has announced that it has already delivered the ‘first cognitive services platform’ to help businesses obtain improved operational insights from growing amount of unstructured data.

IBM said the first IBM Watson-based services platform has been fully built on the IBM Cloud.

According to Big Blue, it “augments human intelligence to help improve service provider operations via cognitive technologies and freeing up professionals to focus on driving higher value results.”

Business Insights

The first customer of the IBM Services Platform with Watson is Danske Bank, which signed on the dotted line as part of a new 10-year IT infrastructure service contract.

Essentially, IBM says this platform will provide businesses with artificial intelligence capabilities that will combine with human intelligence and technology infrastructures, in order to predict and identify potential problems and self-heal.

This, claims IBM, will help reduce business disruption and strengthen a highly secure IT environment.

“In a world where always on is the new norm for businesses of all kind, clients expect from their services partners the ability to deliver operational excellence at any time, at any place for any system,” explained Martin Jetter, IBM Senior VP of Global Technology Services.

“The IBM Services Platform with Watson will redefine service delivery and quality and provide significant competitive advantages to our clients,” he added.

According to company, the IBM Services Platform with Watson’s cognitive capability will be able to predict problems, as well as direct automation to improve quality. IT personnel will be provided with critical information to help them make data-driven decisions in a more timely manner.

Unstructured Data

It comes as businesses struggle to adapt to the growing amount of data from multiple sources such as IoT and mobile. IBM cited a recent survey found that approximately 50 percent of CEOs plan to adopt cognitive computing by 2019, and they expect a 15 percent return on their investment.

The solution comes with automation tools execute simple instructions, as well as run diagnostics and execute actions to address the root causes of issues. Additionally, unstructured emails and chats can be read in natural language and resulting insights used to resolve problems without manual intervention.

“After successfully testing the cognitive monitoring solution (IBM Operations Analytics Predictive Insights) that is part of the new platform, we saw a significant reduction of server incidents “said Jan Steen Olsen, CTO of Danske Bank. “That is why the new agreement elevates our partnership with IBM. Thanks to it we will have a platform that can help us act before an incident occurs and move us closer to an integrated, automated and always-on environment.”

Earlier this year an IBM executive revealed that IBM’s Watson technology was being used to catch rogue traders at large financial organisations.

IBM Services Platform with Watson however is made up of a number of elements. For example as a foundation, the platform utilises IBM’s Data Lake that has been built on operational data from IBM’s years of experience dealing with data intensive industries such as banking, airlines and retail.

A dashboard will provide customers with real-time access and visibility to their IT environment, which is continuously learning and improving.

Another element is a set of automated service delivery capabilities, which support the design, management and optimisation of IT environments.

And Watson is at the core of this continuous feedback loop, as it gathers, analyses and reacts to structured and unstructured data.

In April Watson’s cognitive capabilities were integrated into IBM’s Workplace Support Service, in order for it to predict existing and future tech support requirements, helping save the time and resources of IT departments.

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