UPDATED 15:44 EDT / SEPTEMBER 28 2016

NEWS

The insight economy: IBM demos Watson DataWorks Platform | #DataFirst

We’re moving into an era of cognitive data, moving from being collected and analyzed for a single use to using the data itself to create knowledge and understanding within organizations. While IBM’s mission throughout the years has been to make data simple and accessible to all, the thinking around exactly what that means has been shifting.

Bob Picciano, senior VP of the Information and Analytics Group at IBM, kicked off the IBM DataFirst Launch Event, held at the Hudson Mercantile in New York, NY. The event included a demonstration of the Watson DataWorks platform, IBM’s answer to cognitive data demand.

Moving from a process economy to an insight economy

Picciano spoke of how businesses, including IBM, thought about IT in the past. “[The thinking was], how do you help an organization codify some business process they were doing in the form of an application so it can be repeatable, it can represent the attribute to the brand, and so you can scale it? [That model] served business extraordinarily well,” he explained.

However, the current thinking is on how to use the data itself. “It’s how well we can scale insight, knowledge and raise the level of expertise in the companies we serve. … I call this the shift from a process economy of IT to an insight economy of IT. … It’s the additional value and capability that comes from on top of what we’ve already established in the marketplace,” noted Picciano.

In order to unlock this new data potential, it’s incumbent upon the industry to  rethink everything that’s been done and the processes they have been using, he furthered. What is needed now are platforms that allow inside economies to scale, deliver keen insights and facilitate far more collaboration within individuals in an organization.

Watson DataWorks

What IBM determined was needed was a platform that will expedite open-source based collaborations around great ideas. So, the company created a platform to do just that: IBM Watson DataWorks. And, according to Ritika Gunnar, VP of Data and Analytics at IBM, Watson DataWorks is the first cloud-based data and analytics platform to integrate all types of data, enabling AI-powered decision-making.

DataWorks simplifies the collection, organization, governance and security to gain insights needed to become a cognitive business, she explained. “DataWorks is the industry’s first platform to integrate all data types for AI-powered decision making. The platform automates the intelligent deployment of data products on the IBM cloud using machine learning, cognitive capabilities and Apache Spark,” said Gunnar.

Getting the most value from data

One of the core differentiators of DataWorks is intelligence at all points of the platforms. As data is entered into DataWorks, it is classified, catalogued and cleansed. Additionally, DataWorks allows for users who have very different skillsets; it’s easy to add collaborators, give them permissions and establish an access level, Gunnar explained. Additionally, it’s possible to open projects with an analytics tool, having it run initial exploration and hypothesis; in this way, users are taking that same shared asset and leveraging the data for use across the entire organization.

To demonstrate how this works, Gunnar and Steve AstorinoExecutive Director, DB2 LUW, Warehousing Development, SQLDB Cloud Service at IBM Canada, demonstrated DataWorks for the audience, using the example of a retail client, Great Outdoors.

There are three primary design points on DataWorks: how to connect all users to a variety of data; how they can discover new opportunities; and how to accelerate those insights to operationalize and deploy the data. Gunnar and Astorino walked though those points on screen, showing the audience the quick flows from one step to another.

The bottom line, according to IBM: DataWorks is a great way to get all members of an organization to get behind working with data.

Watch the complete keynote video below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of BigDataNYC 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE

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