ARMONK, N.Y., Sept. 16, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Making its
biggest announcement in a decade as leader in analytics, IBM (NYSE:
IBM) today announced Watson Analytics, a breakthrough natural
language-based cognitive service that can provide instant access to
powerful predictive and visual analytic tools for businesses.
According to analysts, only a small fraction of business people use
powerful analytics tools as part of their decision making today[1].
Watson Analytics is designed to make advanced and predictive
analytics easy to acquire and use.
The first release of Watson Analytics will include a freemium
version of its cloud-based service designed to run on desktop and
mobile devices. Watson Analytics offers a full range of
self-service analytics, including access to easy-to-use data
refinement and data warehousing services that make it easier for
business users to acquire and prepare data – beyond simple
spreadsheets – for analysis and visualization that can be acted
upon and interacted with.
IBM Watson Analytics uses natural language to make interaction
with powerful, predictive analytics easier with the ability to
understand key questions, such as:
What are the key drivers of my product
sales?
Which benefits drive employee retention the
most?
Which deals are most likely to
close?
Unlike analytics offerings designed primarily for data
scientists and analysts predominantly focused on visualization, IBM
Watson Analytics automates steps like data preparation, predictive
analysis, and visual storytelling for business professionals across
data intensive disciplines including marketing, sales, operations,
finance and human resources.
Three key innovations can greatly reduce the skills required to
engage in advanced analytics:
- Single Business Analytics Experience – Unlike today's
separate analytics tools designed for different kinds of analysis
and data tasks, Watson Analytics is a seamless, unified experience
that brings together a set of self-service enterprise data and
analytics capabilities on the cloud. Business professionals
identify their problem, and Watson Analytics can help them source
the data, cleanse and refine it, discover insights, predict
outcomes, visualize results, create reports or dashboards, and
collaborate with others.
- Guided Predictive Analytics – Watson Analytics features
the use of predictive analytics to surface key relevant facts and
uncover unforeseen patterns and relationships. This process sparks
new questions and better insight, directing users to parts of their
business that matter most.
- Natural Language Dialogue – Watson
Analytics speaks the language of business and people by enabling
someone to simply type in what they would like to see; Watson
Analytics produces results that explain why things happened and
what's likely to happen, all in familiar business terms. And as
business professionals interact with the results, they can
fine-tune questions to get to the heart of the matter.
"Watson Analytics is designed to help all business people – from
sales reps on the road to company CEOs – see patterns, pursue ideas
and improve all types of decisions," said Bob Picciano, Senior Vice President, Information
and Analytics Group, IBM. "We have eliminated the barrier between
the answers they seek, the analytics they want and the data in the
form they need. The combination of Watson-fueled analytics to magnify human
cognition, the vast potential of big data, and cloud-scale delivery
to PCs, smart phones and other devices is transformational."
Designed with simplicity and ease of use in mind, business users
can gain instant access to persona-based business scenarios
specific to their role. Instead of fumbling over data, searching
for answers or testing hypotheses, the user can focus on
understanding the business and effectively communicating results to
stakeholders.
Most analytic offerings assume users have data ready for
analysis, a clear idea of the type of analysis needed, and the
skills and time to build a model for analysis. However, most
business users have none of these things. Finding and validating
data can represent 50 percent or more of the time in an analysis
project.[2] Business users often then struggle with figuring out
what analysis would be relevant and how to tell the story in a
report or diagram. Watson Analytics automates these steps to
accelerate users' ability to get to the answers they're seeking,
quickly and on their own.
Watson Analytics also incorporates natural language processing
so business users can ask the right questions and get results in
terms familiar to their business that can be read and understood or
interacted with. As users interact with the results, they can
fine-tune their questions and the data to surface the most relevant
facts and uncover unforeseen patterns and relationships, which will
enable predictive decision making for all levels of users.
Watson Analytics delivers a unified analytics and data
experience on the cloud. Like other IBM Cloud solutions, it will be
hosted on SoftLayer and available through the IBM Cloud
marketplace.
IBM also intends to make Watson Analytics services available
through IBM Bluemix to enable developers and ISVs to leverage its
capabilities in their applications.
Certain Watson Analytics capabilities will be available for beta
test users within 30 days, and offered in a variety of freemium and
premium packages starting later this year. For more information,
visit: ibm.com/watsonanalytics.
Contact:
Faye Abloeser
IBM Media Relations
1 (908) 770-0762
abloeser@us.ibm.com
Note to journalists and bloggers: You can view and download a
video and photo on Watson Analytics by clicking here. The video is
available in HD, standard definition broadcast and streaming
quality. Screenshots and images are available at
https://ibm.biz/WA-home.
[1] Source: IDC and Computerworld's Annual Business Analytics
Survey, June 2013
[2] Unisphere Research, "Governance Moves Big Data from Hype to
Confidence," 2014
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Video - http://youtu.be/IV7mVOI5Gug
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SOURCE IBM