Augmented Intelligence: The story of IBM Watson… 6 years on

As organizations work to make more data-driven decisions – 2.5 billion gigabytes of data being created every single day, they need advanced systems that are able to crunch massive amounts of structured and unstructured data and deliver actionable insights within seconds. Deloitte estimates the cognitive computing market will expand in five years to US$50 billion in the U.S. alone.

IBM Watson’s triumph on the television quiz show Jeopardy! in 2011 where it faced off two Jeopardy legends, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, was akin to a “watershed” moment for the era of AI. Why? Watson had to decipher complex and nuanced English, hunt down possible answers, choose one, and then decide if it has enough confidence to bet on it…. doing all these in a mere 3 seconds.

At a recent IBM Watson summit in Malaysia, IBM Malaysia’s managing director, Chong Chye Neo, said Watson is already in use in more than 45 countries and across 20 different industries.

“IBM’s Watson has been put to the test to diagnose cancer, detect autism, advance early childhood education, transform banking practices, improve farming practices and invent new recipes,” she said.

Applications of IBM Watson in Partners Solutions Showcase

IBM demonstrating Watson’s flexibility and capabilities in a range of business fields powered by its “Design Thinking” philosophy

IBM demonstrating Watson’s flexibility and capabilities in a range of business fields powered by its “Design Thinking” philosophy

 IBM Bluemix

• A cloud platform that helps customers solve real problems and drive business value with applications, infrastructure and services.
• Weaves together the services, infrastructure and data to rapidly bring ideas to production.
• Simplifies the process of building systems that use data to understand, reason, and learn.

IBM Watson Analytics

• IBM Watson Analytics is a smart discovery service available on the cloud that guides data exploration, automates predictive analytics and enables effortless dashboard and infographic creation.
• The system provides new insights quickly and easily with automated data analysis, automatic visualization and predictive analytics.

IBM Watson Talent

• IBM Watson Talent expands human expertise, empowering HR to improve and speed people’s impact on the business.
• IBM Watson Talent uses cognitive technology to understand proficiency and speed tasks to gauge employee capability to help companies find the right talent.
• Watson Talent solutions keep learning and optimizing internally to help drive productivity and boost business performance.
• Watson Talent Insights
• Explore virtually any workforce data by simply asking questions.
• Watson Recruitment
• Increase recruiter efficiency and improve candidate quality.
• Watson Workspace
• A collaboration tool that leverages the cognitive computing capabilities of IBM Watson.

Watson APIs

• Watson APIs enables cognitive computing features to be added to a client’s app using IBM Watson’s language, vision, speech and data APIs.
• Watson Chatbot with Telegram and Slack
• Using Telegram as the front-end, this solution will invoke Watson Chatbot to call third party APIs to trawl public sources for information such as weather data, etc.
• Using Slack as the front-end, the user can interact with Watson to get movie information from listed cinemas.
• Augmenting Alexa with IBM Watson
• Using Alexa Echo Dot as the front-end, this demo will invoke Watson “live” capabilities.
• Watson IoT solution
• Using the wearable access point, this solution will be able to track crowd movement and can route them to designated areas.

Case Study: Skymics Sdn Bhd

• Skymics Sdn Bhd is a Malaysian MSC status company, an official IBM Business Partner and an industry solutions provider with more than 10 years of experience in the field of IT and Internet of things (IoT) as well as developing customised solutions for corporations and the government.
• Skymics Sdn Bhd provides solutions for industry problems and challenges based on cloud computing as well as provision of e-learning and mobile learning solutions.
• IBM Watson is integrated in the following Skymics solutions to improve performance:
  • Smart Energy Monitoring System
  • Smart Farming Solutions
  • Smart Environmental Monitoring Solutions

Smart Energy Monitoring System

• Skymics Smart Energy Monitoring System, powered by Watson, utilizes a building’s existing powerlines to monitor energy usage in real-time using a measuring device to access all power usage in individual circuits and rooms.
• Data collected is collected on the receiving unit which stores and tracks actual use of energy data which is then analysed by Watson’s processing capabilities.
• The system provides more intelligent understanding of power usage and provides more tools to take better control of cost management.
• This solution can also be deployed to IBM’s Bluemix Cloud Platform, which enables organizations and developers to easily create, deploy and manage applications on the cloud.

Smart Farming Solutions

• Watson-powered farming solution that ensures optimal growing conditions for different varieties of crops on a large scale through the intelligent management of water supply and nutrition.
• Solution is primarily catered to large agricultural industries and has previously been applied to palm oil plantations.
• Solution utilises IoT through the use of affordable, easy-to-install sensors and data collected from them to provide visibility and better management into:
  • Soil and crop health
  • Machinery in use
  • Storage conditions
  • Animal behaviour
  • Energy consumption levels
• This solution can also be deployed to IBM’s Bluemix Cloud Platform, which enables organizations and developers to easily create, deploy and manage applications on the cloud.

Smart Environmental Monitoring Solutions

• System primarily collects environmental data in different parts of the city.
• Data is collected, stored on the cloud and analysed by Watson to improve prediction quality for forecast of weather status, measurement of air pollution and so on.

Case Study: MDT Innovations

• MDT Innovations specialises in component engineering, strategic consulting services, software design, mobile information technologies and embedded intelligent wireless sensor focusing on IoT.
• MDT Innovations provides products and services primarily to clients in the field of telecommunications, aviation, education and retail.
• IBM Watson is integrated in the following MDT solutions:
  • SchoolTrac – School Security Surveillance System
  • Linotag Solutions

SchoolTrac – School Security Surveillance System

• SchoolTrac utilizes wireless sensor technologies to accurately detect children’s movement in and out of school area and send notification of movements to parents and teachers to ensure safety and security of children.
• SchoolTrac tags with unique IDs and are provided to all students and used in conjunction with SchoolTrac readers located at school entrances to record all students’ arrival and departure.
• Watson is utilized to power the tracking of student movement and management of data storage from all unique SchoolTrac tags to provide immediate notifications.

Linotag Solutions

• Linotag is a cutting-edge design RFID tag used in the apparel industry that can be attached to different clothing and used to uniquely identify each apparel.
• The system provides clear visibility for stores to understand apparel stock levels at any one time.
• Through analysis of the apparel stock levels, the system is able to identify trends of apparel sales amongst consumers.
• The solution is able to enhance the customer engagement in stores through understanding of the customer purchasing habits and preference.

RAPITA Connected Healthcare

• Solution deployed in the field of healthcare that allows healthcare facilities to monitor healthcare assets and fixtures.
• The system provides real time visibility of all asset inventory in a given facility to ensure efficient maintenance on a day-to-day basis.
• System also utilises cloud servers to store all information while also allowing remote access.

Case Study: Sunline-i 

• Sunline-i is the largest banking software and technology services company in China with over 3000 employees that are serving more than 400 banking and finance customers both in China and globally.

Sunline has over 15 years of experience in developing core banking systems, digital banking systems and analytics & strategic management systems for clients that help in driving business growth and provide better management of customer service.

• Watson is utilised by Sunshine-i to power their digital banking solutions provided to their clients.

Digital Banking Solutions

• Sunline-i offers a range of digital banking solutions that are designed based on a customer centric and marketing oriented concept with a full range of technical characteristics and business functions to improve service quality in a comprehensive and secure manner.
• Full range of different FinTech modules within Sunline’s solutions consists of Online Banking, P2P, Online Microcredit, Financial Management, Crowdfunding, Asset Securitization and others.
• Sunline digital banking is able to offer a highly scalable platform that operates 24×7 which delivers comprehensive support for large volumes of incoming data utilising Watson’s data processing capabilities.
• In addition, Sunline is able to speed up integration of new financial products through classification of the product based on attributes.

Case Study: Silverlake Axis

• Silverlake Axis creates and provides technologies that enable the digital economy in the South-East Asian region and is most well-known for their core banking solutions.
• Over 40% of the top 20 largest banks in South-East Asia run the Silverlake Axis core banking solution.
• Silverlake Axis is currently the core system platform partner of choice for 3 of the 5 largest ASEAN super regional financial institutions.
• Watson is applied by Silverlake Axis on the Growth Accelerator eXchange (GAX) financial technology system.

Growth Accelerator eXchange (GAX)

• GAX is a fintech enabler that can easily be plugged-in into a bank as a financier within the digital ecosystem such as e-commerce, marketplace for online retailers, etc.
• The system is used to provide ASEAN micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME), which account for 96% of all businesses in the region, with financing, payment and logistics solutions through a simple and affordable all-in-one platform, powered by partner ecosystems, such as Watson.
• The data from these ecosystems are used to provide unique insights into the business to understand a business’s performance and growth prospects.
• The system is able to assess, score and rate businesses based on the data obtained from their ecommerce platform or industry data from relevant associations to complement a financier’s existing credit assessment and risk evaluation to provide innovative financing based on their respective needs.