IBM has made Watson portable across any cloud as well as on-premise enterprise infrastructure.
In opening Watson beyond its own cloud, IBM said its goal is to provide businesses with a simpler, faster way to build, deploy and run AI models and applications across any cloud.
Highlights:
- Introducing the ability to run IBM Watson services, including Watson Assistant and Watson OpenScale, on any cloud. Through their integration with IBM Cloud Private for Data (ICP for Data), Watson and Watson OpenScale can now be run any environment – on premises, or on any private, public or hybrid-multicloud – enabling businesses to apply AI to data wherever it is hosted. Businesses will be able to infuse AI into their apps, regardless of where they reside. The flexibility this affords can remove one of the major obstacles to scaling AI, since businesses can now leave data in secure or preferred environments and take Watson to that data.
- Deploy AI software that automates business processes for improved efficiencies and performance. New AI digital automation software is designed to enable clients to discover patterns in their business processes and then create AI-embedded programs to automate certain workflows.
The announcements leverage a series of new Watson microservices built for ICP for Data that are based on Kubernetes, enabling these new Watson microservices to be run on IBM Cloud, and other public, hybrid or multi-cloud environments.
“Businesses have largely been limited to experimenting with AI in siloes due to the limitations caused by cloud provider lock-in of their data,” said Rob Thomas, General Manager, IBM Data and AI. “With most large organizations storing data across hybrid cloud environments, they need the freedom and choice to apply AI to their data wherever it is stored. By breaking open that siloed infrastructure we can help businesses accelerate their transformation through AI.”