IBM and Salesforce have announced a strategic partnership to ‘seamlessly join’ its own Watson and Einstein artificial intelligence (AI) goods to get an ‘unprecedented understanding of clients’.
The firms mused in the AIs that were combined on potential new offerings. One interesting example was through retail ; via integration of weather and industry data — together with The Weather Company being officially acquired by IBM in the beginning of 2016 — through Watson using customer-specific shopping data and preferences in Salesforce, retailers can automatically send more personalised and localised email campaigns.
Another example is through insurance; combining Lightning on the Salesforce AppExchange together with The Weather Company will enable insurers to send policy and security data to customers that are at risk of being impacted by weather.
IBM will invest in its Global Business Services capacities for deploying Salesforce Service Cloud across the company, as well as Salesforce within the partnership.
The quotes that are related were breathless. “Within a few years, every significant decision — private or company — will be made with the assistance of AI and cognitive engineering,” said IBM CEO Ginni Rometty in a declaration. “With today’s announcement, the energy of Watson will serve the millions of Salesforce and Einstein clients and developers to provide an unprecedented understanding of consumers.”
“The combination of Einstein and Watson will make businesses smarter and our clients more effective,” added Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO. “I’m thrilled to form an alliance with IBM — no company’s core values are as near Salesforce’s as IBM’s. It is the best of both worlds.”
Salesforce announced the unveiling of Service Cloud Einstein, a customer service platform that aims to add intelligence ‘to every service discussion’. At the time, the company cited an Accenture study which found that for almost four in five IT business executives, AI will ‘help accelerate technology adoption throughout their businesses’. Meanwhile, IBM has been looking further afield with a new API because of its quantum computing arm’s release, promising it’ll be the upcoming technology breakthrough following AI and blockchain.
Thus this is the missive which confirms the way in which the wind is currently blowing for entrepreneurs in 2017. Composing for this novel earlier this week, Marcus Taylor, CEO of Venture Harbour, mused that “as [AI] tech continues to gain credibility and becomes progressively available…it is very likely that we’ll start to see adoption break out of the early-adopter market.”
The Watson and Einstein offering is anticipated to become available in the next half of 2017 when pricing will be announced.
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