IBM to offer marketing cloud service in India, powered by Watson AI

Global technology giant International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) has said it will offer its marketing cloud service in India, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), through its Chennai data centre.
 
Called Watson Customer Engagement, WCE will let Indian enterprises host their marketing data on IBM’s cloud data centre.

IBM said the service will make sure that enterprises have more control over their marketing data in line with privacy regulations, especially in highly regulated sectors such as banking and insurance.

“India is one of the fastest-growing digital economies and is poised to become a trillion-dollar digital economy in the coming few years. Businesses are increasingly looking at data-driven insights to engage with their customers and create personalised experiences,” said Karan Bajwa, managing director, IBM India.
 
Ever since winning game show Jeopardy!  in 2011, IBM’s Watson seems to have found employment in a range of sectors. But now, Watson carries very little of the technology that it used to win that game show, going by MIT Technology Review. However, its name has been deployed for a wide range of AI techniques and related applications—from natural language processing to medicine, voice recognition, sentiment analysis, business analytics, and more.

For example, in January 2018, VCCircle reported that IBM’s Watson and Salesforce’s Einstein were expanding their strategic partnership by bringing together their artificial intelligence and cloud computing platforms.

Besides Watson, IBM has also ventured into other technologies. For example, in April it partnered a gold and diamond consortium for a blockchain project that will trace the finished pieces from the mine right up to the jewellery store, helping consumers see whether the product includes blood diamonds and conflict metals.

In the same month, IBM joined a private, non-profit organisation called Sovrin Foundation that is seeking to build a global decentralised identity system based on blockchain.

In March, IBM came out with a cheaper alternative for startups and medium-sized companies to build new projects or applications on blockchain.

In December 2017, IBM unveiled a processor specifically built to compute intensive artificial intelligence workloads and support deep learning.