For the past several years, the IT industry has been re-ordering, driven by simultaneous developments in data, analytics, cloud, mobile, social media, and the Internet of Things.
“Becoming Digital” is now a top priority for leaders everywhere, from CEOs to heads of state. But “Digital” is not the destination. Instead, it is the foundation for a new era of business.
The marketplace is awash in data. Over the next two years, Healthcare data will grow by 99%. But 88% of all that data will be unstructured, coming from Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), test results, medical images, video, patient sensors such as wearables, bedside devices and implants. To make this more relevant for you, media industry data will grow by 97%, with 82% being unstructured. Every single month, 27.5 petabytes of Internet video data are generated. (This is equivalent to 343 years of HD video)
The world is being “rewritten” in software code, and cloud is the platform on which the new digital builders are using it. They are reimagining everything from banking, retail and healthcare to transportation, supply chains and waterways. More precisely, they are composing writing code, connecting to pipelines of data and integrating Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). By some estimates, there will be one million APIs before the end of the decade including cognitive APIs. Of the 18.2 million software developers in the world, 1.2 million are now publishing APIs for external use and 4.7 million are limited to their partners or registered associates. By 2020, it is estimated that 26 billion devices will be using one trillion applications.
To make sense of all this, cognitive systems must be deployed to ingest unstructured data in all its forms. And business leaders across all industries are acutely aware of the need to address this phenomenon. Cognitive Systems understand unstructured data, through sensing and interaction. These systems use reasoning to analyze the data, generating hypotheses, considering arguments, and making recommendations. The also learn from training by experts, from every interaction, and from continually ingesting data. In fact, they never stop learning.
“We believe the convergence of these major shifts will fundamentally change companies, industries, professions and global society.”
Watson is IBM‘s solution. It applies its cognitive technologies to help change how we approach and understand information. Everything that is digital has the potential to become cognitive, and, in a sense, be able to “think”. Watson can bring cognition to everything and everyone. To evolve in this data-driven culture, every business will need to become a cognitive business.
“At IBM, we have been undertaking one of the most significant transformations in our history to lead these shifts and to help our clients take advantage of these new capabilities. We call it “Cognitive Business”.
Overnight, at the Gartner Symposium in the US, CEO, Ginni Rometty, announced IBM’s “Cognitive Business” initiative as the vision for the next evolution of technology and business. John Kelly, Senior Vice President, IBM, has also just posted a blog about this strategic move for IBM http://www.ibm.com/blogs/think/
A cognitive world can help us know, think and do what we couldn’t before. We can outthink.