September 16, 2014, 11:03 AM — In an ongoing effort to commercialize its Watson analysis technology, IBM is testing a new service that can answer questions business managers might have about their data.
On Tuesday, IBM launched a beta of Watson Analytics, an interactive Q&A service designed to answer questions and highlight trends within sets of enterprise data.
The service "is about putting powerful analytics in the hands of every business user," said Eric Sall, IBM vice president of marketing for business analytics.
Traditional business intelligence tools remain too difficult to use for business managers, Sall said. "It is hard to get the data. It is hard to analyze the data if your not a specialist, and it is hard to use the tools," he said. Watson Analytics attempts to streamline the process.
Natural language systems are becoming increasingly prevalent as a form of human-computer interface. Apple's Siri, Google's GoogleNow and Microsoft's Cortana all act as virtualized personal assistants, able to answer a range of simple questions on behalf of their users.
Watson Analytics operates in a similar manner, in that it can offer responses to questions posed by the user in their chosen language, rather than forcing the user to develop a SQL query, master a complex statistical package or write data-parsing code to better understand some large set of data.
The effort is the latest move in IBM's US$1 billion initiative to commercialize Watson technologies.
IBM Research developed Watson to compete with human contestants on the "Jeopardy" game show in 2011, using natural language processing and analytics, as well as many sources of structured and unstructured data, to formulate responses to the show's questions.
In the years since, the company has been working to commercialize the Watson technology by identifying industries that could benefit from this form of cognitive computing, such as health care, law enforcement and finance.
Earlier this year, IBM launched the Watson Discovery Advisor, which is customized for scientific researchers who need to deeply probe one specific body of scientific knowledge, such as chemistry or cellular biology.
Another service, the company's Watson Engagement Advisor, uses the artificial intelligence technology to aid in customer support.
Watson Analytics is aimed more to answer more general questions for the average business manager. The technology would be a good fit for those working in the marketing, sales, operations, finance and human resources professions, according to IBM.
