IBM is busy reshaping itself for the future, moving out of commodity hardware and chip manufacturing and further into higher end, value-added services. At the heart of the new strategy is the artificial intelligence machine Watson, around which IBM now intends to build a business in cognitive computing.
The vision of the 105-year-old company is that Watson works in tandem with users, doing the heavy-lifting analytics, but ceding the judgement to humans. In particular, it wants to help make sense of the data now pouring out of the Internet of Things (IoT).
As part of the remodelling, the IBM is making some large investments in Europe, in areas including cloud computing, artificial intelligence and data analytics.
“We have changed. We now focus on cloud and the internet of things and quantum computing a lot more,” Alessandro Curioni, Director of IBM Research in Zurich and vice president for Europe, told Science|Business.
The centrepiece of the strategy is the global headquarters of a new IoT business unit, which opened in Munich last December. Here, IBM says it will bring the power of cognitive computing to bear on the billions of connected devices, sensors and systems that comprise the IoT.
The centre, home to 1,000 developers, consultants, researchers and designers, will be an innovation lab for building the intersection between cognitive computing and the IoT, with the aim of allowing people to easily make sense of the growing volume and variety of data automatically acquired by devices connected to the internet.
According to IBM, IoT will soon be the largest single source of data on the planet. However, as yet almost 90 per cent of this resource is never acted upon. Watson’s ability to sense, reason and learn, will make it possible to harness this data in real-time.
Munich was chosen as the global headquarters of the IoT initiative because Germany manufactures and deploys so many of these internet-connected devices. “We really believe the dynamics of this country make it the best in the world for the internet of things. There is probably no other place with such a high concentration of manufacturers,” Curioni said.
So for example, Siemens Building Technologies announced at the opening of the Munich IoT centre that it is teaming with IBM to develop advanced analytics for improving the energy management and sustainability of buildings.
Cognitive computing in health
In addition to the Munich IoT centre, IBM also has plans to set up a new €135 million centre in Milan, specialising in applying cognitive computing to health analytics.
IBM predicts that every decision a person makes in the future will be done with the aid of cognitive-based systems. Its Watson supercomputer is the best recognised – if not also the best – commercial cognitive machine, becoming world famous in 2011 when it beat two humans on American quiz show Jeopardy!
According to Curioni, Watson is the fastest growing part of IBM’s analytics business, with hundreds of companies now selling products that were built using the Watson developer platform.
IBM is not alone in investing in IoT. However, Curioni claims, nobody has anything like Watson on which to build applications. “Its creativity is like nothing else out there. It’s our differentiator,” he said.
In addition to winning at Jeopardy! Watson has attracted attention for its use in cancer diagnosis and treatment, where its ability to read and comprehend peer-reviewed medical journals by far outpaces human counterparts.
With so much new health data being created every day, demand for Watson will only increase. “In 1950, you needed around 50 years to double the world’s medical knowledge. If you go to 1980, to double it you needed only seven years. In 2015, less than three years,” Curioni said.
Quantum leaps
If Watson and cognitive computing is here and now, Curioni said IBM expects to play a prominent role in the EU’s quantum computing research flagship, set to begin in 2018. “Europe needs its own quantum computer. The US is more advanced in basic quantum technology than us because they made huge investments years ago. Europe has some very good groups and needs to close the gap.”
IBM recently made a functioning quantum processor available to the public over the internet, with the aim of encouraging more people to get interested in the technology, which has the potential to dramatically increase the speed of computer processors.
Plaudits for ERC
IBM is involved in many EU research projects, including some 50 in Horizon 2020. “In spite of the [fall] in the programme’s success rate, we’re doing very well,” said Curioni.
Big companies find EU research projects are a good way to reuse old proprietary knowledge, with Curioni giving the example of technology originally designed to lower the temperature of supercomputer chips being re-purposed to cool down concentrated photovoltaic units.
He is also a fan of the European Research Council, the basic research funding body. “We have nine grantees in Zurich. I like how the Council simply says, ‘This person has a good idea, we should bet on it and measure the results afterwards’.”
He added, “And I like that money is associated to the person – if the scientist moves, the money moves with him or her. A very good way to finance research.”
Receive the Funding Newswire [full access requires a subscription] each Tuesday, our Policy Bulletin each Thursday, and news about bridging Europe’s east-west innovation gap twice a month in The Widening. 
A unique international forum for public research organisations and companies to connect their external engagement with strategic interests around their R&D system.
