Cloud Computing: With Watson, Is IBM Riding Right Wave?

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Doug Henschen.

Two big names in technology held events in New York this week to declare the beginning of a third big wave in computing, but they were talking about different waves. On Wednesday, Salesforce.com welcomed in the connected computing era, pointing to mobile, social, cloud, and billions of connected sensors and devices as things that will transform our personal lives, industries, and the ways organizations interact with individuals.

Giving its own spin to the Internet of Things, Salesforce talked up the "Internet of Customers," seeing connected aircraft engines, cars, appliances, tablets, phones, wrist watches, and other devices as ultimately connected to somebody’s customer. On Thursday it was IBM’s turn, and it asserted that the coming third wave will be the cognitive computing era…

IBM’s cognitive technology is Watson, which won its fame beating two grand champions at Jeopardy back in 2011. The key difference between cognitive computing and the programmable computing era that came before it is that it’s not an "if-then" proposition, said IBM chairman, president and CEO Ginni Rometty. "You had to program the computer to tell it what to do, and it is everything that you know [about computing] to this day," Rometty explained…

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