IBM Collaboration Solutions cognitive and roadmap update :: September 2016
by Volker Weber
Ed Brill has been travelling with this presentation last week. I really hope that IBM can close the gap between aspiration and delivery.
Comments
Maybe the deck really comes alive when it's presented. Just reading the slides I was left underwhelmed.
Cognitive.
Yup. Cognitive is the marketing drum de jour. Following in the footsteps of "A New Way To Work" and "Smarter Work for a Smarter Planet". I want to see it. Code talks.
Yes - agreed. I have a developer background and I would really want to see how it is implemented and how it can be used and customised to fit with specific domains and existing application landscapes.
It's complicated. I get a Watson briefing a couple of times a year. I go into these briefings with a simple question: how does 'mail that understands' you work, given that my mailbox has messages in two languages, often mixed. I come back with answers that explain that Watson understands German just fine and that IBM does big projects with insurance companies that want to classify their incoming paper mail into distinct buckets like insurance claim, complaint and so forth. When I ask 'how do you apply this to collaboration' they come up blank.
Giving IBM the benefit of the doubt, I can see what Microsoft is doing with Cortana or Google with Now. IBM claims that their Cognitive is better than Microsoft's AI. I want to see it. So far I haven't.
You highlight an interesting point. Google, Microsoft and Amazon and Apple all have AI/Cognitive offerings in the consumer space, either in home or mobile or browser. Because these are spaces where people can readily and easily experience the current state of play I suggest that people have a confidence in their capability.
Does IBM have that level of confidence?
From what they are showing in Verse, they don't.
