IBM has launched a spate of new services and offerings, including industry-specific Watson IoT solutions, as it continues with its focus on the Internet of Things (IoT).
The company, which last month announced a $200m investment in its global Watson IoT headquarters in Munich, Germany, as well bringing more of Watson’s capabilities to its IoT products and services, has now developed this further with new industry-specific offerings, including separate IBM Watson IoT solutions for manufacturing, automotive, electronics and insurance. The new capabilities, include the ability for assets to sense, communicate and self-diagnose issues to improve machinery performance and reduce downtime.
IBM is also launching what it claims is the first global IoT solutions practice, which will feature 1,500 experts across nine of its IoT centres across Asia, Europe and the Americas.
The firm said it would employ a global network of skilled consultants, data scientists and design and security experts with specific domain and industry expertise to help clients with their IoT adoption challenges. Global technology firm Ricoh will be teaming up with IBM’s IoT consultants in a bid to help IBM’s clients to collaborate and share information more seamlessly.
Through its partnership with Coursera, IBM is also introducing new IoT educational courses. The tutorials will include an introduction to programming a Raspberry Pi; how to use Natural Language Processing (NLP); and how to use Node-Red, the open source visual programming tool. Its first course, ‘a developer’s guide to the IoT’, which launched several months ago, has more than 22,000 registrants.
IBM is also providing open and free access to the IBM Watson IoT Platform for start-ups and developers, so that they can test out new ideas and use cases for IoT.
Last month, IBM announced a new set of IoT security solutions, Watson IoT Blockchain, and a new natural language interface for IBM Watson IoT. It also released a new ‘cognitive IoT cookbook’ which supposedly contained the code and best practice approaches for solving cognitive IoT challenges using Watson’s natural language application program interfaces.
Related: IBM invests $200m in IoT HQ
More analysis to come…