IBM unveils new platform for tech, business evolution

CEBU, Philippines – Technology trendsetter IBM announced the entry of its "Cognitive Business" strategic initiative to the Philippines, including Cebu.

According to Thomas Niel Wagan, IBM Philippines external relations head, this new platform is IBM’s vision for the next evolution of technology and business.

"We will be creating a 2,000-person consulting unit devoted exclusively to cognitive business and reveal new data discovery and question and answer capabilities for Watson Analytics that will put cognitive computing technology in the hands of business users to help them understand, reason and learn from their data in new ways," Wagan said.

The "Cognitive Business" initiative is the successor of e-Business and Smarter Planet.

"With e-business, it was about the internet transforming business, Smarter Planet was based on new opportunities created by the world becoming instrumented, interconnected and intelligent," he said.

"We spotted the cognitive phenomena first with Watson, which is now delivered as digital services in the cloud," Wagan added.

Cognitive business is a huge business opportunity -- IDC predicts that by 2018, half of all consumers will interact with services based on cognitive computing on a regular basis.

However, 80 percent of data is invisible to computers, and current IT systems can’t see or make sense of it. A cognitive business uses systems that can understand, reason and learn to tap into all that data.

IBM Cognitive Business Solutions extends the exclusive cognitive leadership of IBM Watson and the company's established market leadership in business analytics.

Cognitive represents an entirely new model of computing that includes a range of technology innovations in analytics, natural language processing and machine learning. Industry analyst firm IDC predicts that by 2018, half of all consumers will interact regularly with services based on cognitive computing.

A survey of more than 5,000 C-suite executives by IBM's Institute for Business Value (IBV) finds that executives from the highest-performing companies place significantly greater priority on cognitive capabilities than peers in market-following enterprises. (FREEMAN)