IBM has launched Watson Analytics, offering what is claimed as instant access to powerful big data visualisation and analytics capabilities to anyone in the business.

Instead of using programming languages or complex algorithms on the front end, Watson interacts with the user in natural language and comprehends key questions, including ‘What are the key drivers of my product sales?’, ‘Which benefits drive employee retention the most?’ and ‘Which deals are most likely to close?’

“Watson Analytics produces results that explain why things happened and what’s likely to happen, all in familiar business terms,” a press release explains. “And as business professionals interact with the results, they can continuously fine tune questions to get to the heart of the matter.”

A freemium version of the service is being mooted, running off the cloud and on to desktop and mobile devices. Users can input a certain amount of data for free before the collection plate is shoved under their nose – and it’s not being restricted to IBM customers, either.

“You don’t have to be an existing customer of IBM to use Watson Analytics,” Gene Villeneuve, European predictive & business intelligence sales and brand leader at IBM, told CloudTech. “We’re not constraining it by any existing customer commitments or relationship with IBM.

“Our target is to target any line of business user across large, medium, and small organisations, who want to be able to benefit from this great new capability,” he added. “We really want the whole world to be able to bask in this.”

That last quote tells you plenty about how proud IBM is of this release. Villeneuve said  in dispatches this was a ‘big day’ for the 102 year old company. A press release calls it the ‘biggest announcement in a decade as leader in analytics’. Oliver Oursin, global predictive and business intelligence solutions, told CloudTech it was a ‘breakthrough’.

Watson has lived a varied and interesting life having come to attention through beating Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings. Having been utilised in medical diagnosis to great success in the past, Watson’s capability is finding a new home – or, at least a home that’s been refurbished.

Technologies such as this, with lots of fanfare but a relatively nomadic existence – SAP’s HANA database comes to mind – could be criticised as being a ‘solution looking for a problem’. Watson Analytics blows that out of the water, according to Villeneuve.

“For us, what we’re doing with Watson Analytics is very pertinent to a market problem out there,” he said, adding: “It’s hard for the average person to be able to really fully grasp the benefit and power of the average BI product, because the products don’t necessarily guide them, or make sure that they use the right way of visualising…for representing and telling the story around data.

“Many of the tools today on the market start you off with a blank screen,” he continued. “The average business person has normal, everyday questions. Show me sales, show me top 10, show me bottom 10, show me contributions, show me growth.

“We’ve built it so it has the ability to have that natural language dialogue – and because we’ve been partnering with customers all along, we’ve got lots of customer validation [and] lots of customer input.”

IBM is currently accepting applications for Watson Analytics beta, which is expected to go live later in Q4. You can sign up here.