IBM Official Alumni Group: The Greater IBM Connection

Watson at Your Service: IBM Unveils the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor

greateribm — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:48:21 +0000

Watson will now be taking your calls: the IBM Jeopardy!-winning supercomputer is getting a job in customer service.

IBM has unveiled the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, which uses cloud-delivered mobile and online chat technology to assist customers anytime and anywhere. (Jon Simon/Feature Photo Service for IBM)

The IBM Watson team is pleased to announce the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, designed to revolutionize how companies and their customers interact with each other over the lifetime of their relationships.

The IBM Watson Engagement Advisor is a smart assistant whose services can be used in many industries, especially those that receive many customer service calls, including retailing, banking, insurance and telecommunications. It will help customer service agents and customers get the answers to their questions via an “Ask Watson” feature available through mobile devices, online chat sessions, email, and other means.

The Watson Engagement Advisor will be able to quickly address customers’ questions, offer advice to guide purchasing decisions, and troubleshoot problems. In other words, when you need customer service, you might soon be interacting with Watson.

More:

Video: Announcing the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor

.PDF: IBM Watson Engagement Advisor – Transforming the way people and organizations interact over the lifetime of their relationship

Learn more about Watson

Follow Watson on Facebook

For more insights on this story, please visit the Smarter Planet Blog

Learn more about Smarter Commerce

Join the conversation about Watson by including the hashtag #ibmwatson

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- Posted by Regan Kelly

IBM’s Ginni Rometty Reveals Watson’s Future

greateribm — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:01:21 +0000

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty (photo, Fortune Magazine)

In this interview from Fortune Magazine, IBM’s Ginni Rometty reveals what’s next for the company’s talking supercomputer Watson, including its future service.

In addition, she discusses what it means for IBM to be an innovation company at a scale of more than 400,000 employees, the five key pieces of continuous transformation, and more.

Fortune senior writer Jessi Hempel interviewed the IBM CEO last week at the National Venture Capital Association’s 40th anniversary conference, VentureScape.

Read the interview.

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What did you think of this story? Let us know in the Leave a Reply field below.

- Posted by Regan Kelly This post is part of The Greater IBM Connection’s May 2013 theme of emerging trends.

Watson Goes to Washington, Shows Off Latest Health-Care Work to Lawmakers

greateribm — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:28:17 +0000

- by Emi Kolawole, in The Washington Post

IBM supercomputer Watson was in Washington, D.C. late last week to show lawmakers what it’s learned about health care. The Watson team has been collaborating with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and health-care insurance provider Well Point to teach Watson everything there is to know in the medical world.

Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), right, receives a demonstration from IBM’s Michael Holmes of new proposed capabilities for the Watson supercomputer on Capitol Hill Thursday, May 16, 2013. (photo, Emi Kolawole)

Members of the team were in Washington to showcase some of the supercomputer’s new health-care related features, including the ability to ingest patients’ medical information and synthesize thousands of medical journals and other reference materials along with a patient’s preferences to recommend treatment options.

Watson, IBM representatives made sure to emphasize, does not offer do-this-not-that instructions to doctors or diagnose patients on its own. Get the full story.

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IBM Watson for Health Care: The Voice of the Doctor (video)

Central Bank of India Picks IBM’s Analytics Solution

Khalid Raza — Fri, 17 May 2013 09:15:36 +0000

Technology giant IBM said Central Bank of India is leveraging its analytics solution to transform its financial management processes.

The deal size was, however, not disclosed. This deal includes activities ranging from budgeting to forecasting to liquidity management, IBM said in a statement.

As a result of IBM’s solution for corporate performance management, the Bank is now able to gain better insight into branch and regional office performance, allowing for further flexibility and quicker shifts in strategy to drive improved results while also maintaining regulatory compliance, it added.

Read the complete article on Times of India.

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What is Big Data?

Smarter Analytics Transforms Big Data into Big Results

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty Touts Watson, New ‘Golden Era of Technology’

greateribm — Fri, 17 May 2013 01:36:16 +0000

Watson, IBM’s Jeopardy!-winning supercomputer, is about to become an advisor to research-oriented industries, says IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty.

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty

Speaking in San Francisco this week to the annual meeting of the National Venture Capital Association, she said that Watson is part of a third era of technology, in which computers learn.

In fact, given today’s confluence of cloud, mobile, social and big data technologies, future historians may regard this era as “a golden era of technology,” she said, because the vast amount of information being generated will change how individuals make decisions and how companies work. Read what else she had to say, in this article by Deborah Gage at The Wall Street Journal.

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What did you think of this article and what’s next for Watson? Let us know in the Leave a Reply field below.

What Should You Tell Cloud Adopters? Five Key Messages

greateribm — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:58:28 +0000

By Frank De Gilio, Smarter Computing blog

Recently I was part of a video debate panel on cloud computing. Actually rather than a debate, it was more of a discussion on the roles of public and private cloud in an enterprise. Larry Carvalho, Kevin Jackson and I talked about issues in a discussion moderated by David Linthicum. While these discussions were hardly the arguments that make for entertaining video, they leveraged different perspectives to provide a good thumbnail sketch of what enterprises are experiencing when it comes to cloud infrastructure.

David kept the conversation rolling and there were some very interesting topics that are important to businesses trying to create hyper-efficient IT services. You can see some great clips, as well as the full replay in a blog post here.

The topics discussed by the panel deserve a little more discussion than was possible in the hour allotted. I plan to dedicate a post to each topic in the near future, but for the time being, there are a few messages that came out very strongly. What are those five key messages?

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Greater IBMers, what would you add to this list? Is anything missing?

- Posted by Regan Kelly. Part of our May 2013 theme of emerging trends.

The Center for CIO Leadership Launches New Blog

greateribm — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:16:30 +0000

The Center for CIO Leadership is an international, cross-industry peer community solely focused on the advancement of business competencies for technology professionals through peer insights and connections, education, and research. It provides CIOs from around the world with access to a global community of academic and practitioner experts, peer CIOs, and business leaders with a common goal of advancing the CIO profession and providing professional development.

And now it has its own brand new blog – check it out!.

Focused on advancing the CIO profession through global thought leadership, research, education, and outreach, the Center develops practical insights, sponsors a global learning community, promotes peer-to-peer mentoring, and fosters greater understanding of IT among business leaders and executive influencers. It was founded by IBM to achieve these goals as an open, collaborative network of executives and institutions from around the world. The world’s leading CIOs are actively taking a role to shape their future in this unique, collaborative community. Explore the new blog!

And then let us know what you think, in the Leave a Reply field.

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The CIO Leadership and Innovation

The CIO Innovation Lab

Connect:

- Posted by Regan Kelly. This post is part of our theme of Emerging Trends for the month of May, 2013.

IBM’s Culture of Service: Finding Time to Participate

greateribm — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:58:44 +0000

The author with her protégé Tamara, a fourth-grader in Orlando.

In this essay at Citizen IBM, IBMer Kathy Pham shares what she’s learned about finding the time to forge connection and community while spending most of her weekdays traveling as an IBM “road warrior”.

See how Kathy – a Business Analytics and Optimization Senior Consultant with IBM Global Business Services – navigates the mobile lifestyle while still finding the time to be engaged in personally fulfilling projects. She’s happy to be part of a company that provides “so many unique opportunities for service,” said Kathy. Find out how she does it.

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Related:

IBM: A Culture of Service

Greater IBMers, whether or not you are a current IBMer, how do you participate? Tell us YOUR story in the Leave a Reply field.

- Posted by Regan Kelly

Must Read: What Makes a Leader? One Crucial Factor

greateribm — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:53:58 +0000

Most people in the workforce know a story (or two) about a highly intelligent, highly skilled candidate who was promoted into a leadership position only to fail. Many also can tell a story about someone with solid—but not extraordinary—intellectual ability and technical skills who was promoted into a similar position and then soared.

In other words, it can seem like identifying individuals with the right stuff to be leaders is more art than science, says author Daniel Goleman. After all, different leaders’ personal styles vary widely: some are subdued and analytical; while others spend more time promoting their agendas and themselves. Just as importantly, different situations of course call for different types of leadership.

In this classic piece from Harvard Business Review, Mr. Goleman explains that the most effective leaders are all alike, however, in one crucial way. What is it?

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About the author:

Daniel Goleman is an internationally known psychologist who lectures frequently to professional groups, business audiences, and on college campuses. Emotional Intelligence remained on The New York Times bestseller list for 18 months. The Harvard Business Review called emotional intelligence “a revolutionary, paradigm-shattering idea”. The book was named one of the 25 “Most Influential Business Management Books” by TIME Magazine. In addition, The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and Accenture Insititute for Strategic Change have named Goleman among the most influential business thinkers.

Kenya News: IBM Opens Innovation Centre

greateribm — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:38:08 +0000

- from IT News Africa

As part of its ongoing expansion in Africa, IBM has opened its first IBM Innovation Center in East Africa. Located in Nairobi, Kenya, the center will help fuel growth and innovation in the region. It is co-located with a new IBM Client Center that brings IBM’s expertise to clients in the region.

The new IBM Innovation Center aims to nurture and grow regional IT innovation and help startups and new business IT solutions get to market faster. Read more.

(Image source: PR Newswire)

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A Smarter Planet: How to Build Innovation Ecosystems

- Posted by Regan Kelly