It comes as no surprise that IBM Watson (the company’s cognitive computing system) is quickly becoming one of the fastest-growing analytics engine in highest demand. However, this success can be attributed to the ease of use for what Alistair Rennie, GM of business analytics at IBM, calls “citizen analytsts” — a new class of customers. Through this consumability, Watson is “giving analytics to people who didn’t know they were available.” Combined with Watson’s data capabilities, the growth is creating a snowball effect.

IBM is continuing its tradition of creating business solutions with this “new generation of tools” as cloud increases profitability and analytics address safety concerns that previously could not be anaylzed. Rennie talked with Dave Vellante and Paul Gillin, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, at IBM Insight 2015 in Las Vegas.

Rennie observed that there is an untapped market for SAS consumed from the cloud.” Rennie predicted that over time the market “will be mostly cloud” particularly as customers get the “get the insight” in “truly repeatable ways.” Businesses want to “consume outcomes,” which will drive SAS to “keep improving every week” as seen with SoftLayer and Bluemix (IBM’s Platform as a Service).

At the time of Waston’s famous Jeopardy victory, it was a collection of maybe five different APIs; today is made up of 30 different APIs, a number Rennie expects to continue growing as Watson expands its abilities. The system can be decomposed to specific categories as it continues to “flourish” in “an ecosystem of developers.” Watson’s services are available via open source.

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Insight 2015. And join in on the conversation by CrowdChatting with theCUBE hosts.

Photo by SiliconANGLE