IBM to invest $1B in Watson Group

IBM will establish the IBM Watson Group, a new business unit dedicated to the development and commercialization of cloud-delivered cognitive innovations. The company is part of its strategy to accelerate into the marketplace a new class of software, services and apps that think, improve by learning and discover answers and insights to complex questions from big data

IBM reports it will invest more than $1 billion into the Watson Group, focusing on development and research and bringing cloud-delivered cognitive applications and services to market. This will include $100 million available for venture investments to support IBM’s recently launched ecosystem of startups and businesses that are building a new class of cognitive apps powered by Watson.

As part of the news, IBM will deliver three new cloud-delivered products based on Watson’s cognitive intelligence and capabilities. They include:

• IBM Watson Discovery Advisor—a new cloud service that will help industries such as pharmaceutical and publishing do more with their R&D investments and reduce the time researchers need to formulate conclusions that can further advance their work, from months to days and days to just hours;
• IBM Watson Analytics—a cloud-delivered service that enables users to explore big data insights through visual representations without the need for advanced analytics training, and further removes any obstacles in the data discovery process so that business users can easily and independently uncover new insights in their data; and
• IBM Watson Explorer—a cloud service that will provide a unified view of a user’s information, helping enterprise users uncover and share data-driven insights more easily, while helping organizations launch big data initiatives faster.