The Cloud Punch

The Cloud Punch

- Ibrahim Ahmad

As the cloud rat race heats up in the tech industry, IBM is talking of cognitive technologies and how its cloud is intelligent and agile. So let’s begin with cognitive. What according to you are the key components of this cognitive era?

IBM’s tryst with AI goes back in time- almost 5 decades ago. Our scientists used to work on a language called LISP, so AI as a discipline is not new to IBM. Over the years computing power has grown in leaps, we have accumulated humongous amounts of data, and we have many path-breaking technologies from deep learning to analytics et al. Today it is all about a technology ecosystem. We are manifesting AI via Watson and augmenting lives in more ways than one - our cognitive play stitches together multiple technologies, yet thinks like a human and constantly improvises it. In 1956, if IBM had built a cognitive platform, it might have resembled a mainframe at that point of time. With all the capabilities that we have today, Cognitive is also morphing to the new normal-like Watson on a cloud. This has opened up new frontiers and hence available anywhere to anyone. It’s a platform to develop a technology ecosystem. If we go back in our history, the System 360 was probably the first core platform that fostered this ecosystem approach. There were people who did the networking for the mainframe, software for the mainframe and then we saw a whole lot of companies doing services for the mainframe. This was one ecosystem build up, but fast forward again to the 21st century, this ecosystem is going to look very different, because in those ecosystems you need to have synchronized relationships. There are multiple things - and that is why we call this a cognitive era.

Look at the programming era that lasted for 5 decades. We are taking Watson to the mainstream.