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IBM Creates a 2,000 Employee Strong Cognitive Business Unit

International Business Machines Corporation IBM has formed a new consulting unit, Cognitive Business Solutions based on its artificial intelligence computer system, Watson.

The unit will be spearheaded by Stephen Pratt and will have about 2,000 employees. IBM also stated that it will be training nearly 25,000 consultants and practitioners across the company on cognitive computing this fall.

Watson is known for its incredible data crunching technology, as well as using artificial intelligence to answer questions in set languages instead of programming them. It lets users analyze huge quantities of data, providing answers based on evidence and discovering patterns that are potentially invisible to the human eye. It works on IBM’s DeepQA software and the Apache UIMA (Unstructured Information Management Architecture) framework.

In 2011, it famously won the game show Jeopardy. Since then Watson has been implemented in health care and financial services and IBM is trying to introduce Watson to other crucial verticals like retail.

Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president of IBM Global Business Services, said that cognitive computing is the next big business opportunity. As per IDC, about 50% of all consumers will start to interact with cognitive computing services by 2018.

Kralingen further added “clients know they are collecting and analyzing more data than ever before, but 80 percent of all the available data -- images, voice, literature, chemical formulas, social expressions -- remains out of reach for traditional computing systems. We're scaling expertise to close that gap and help our clients become cognitive banks, retailers, automakers, insurers or healthcare providers.”

Watson is a part of IBM’s $17 billion analytics business but the company has refrained from disclosing its share in the business. Also, IBM has struck partnerships with Apple Inc. AAPL, Facebook, Inc. FB and Twitter, Inc. TWTR, with the aim of “unlocking new data sources to the advantage of clients” on a global scale.

IBM at present is a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock.

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