IBM is opening up its Watson Assistant and Watson OpenScale to everyone for the first time, enabling businesses to take advantage of conversational AI and smart platform management, even if they’re not using IBM Cloud.

Although the services have been available for IBM cloud customers to use in the past, the move means that enterprises can now use the services within their own data centres too, opening up the tech to a much larger range of businesses.

The company explained it decided to open up parts of its AI ecosystem to enable businesses with data stored across multiple cloud environments to better analyse their information.

«Businesses have largely been limited to experimenting with AI in siloes due to the limitations caused by cloud provider lock-in of their data,» said Rob Thomas, general manager of IBM Data and AI.

«With most large organizations storing data across hybrid cloud environments, they need the freedom and choice to apply AI to their data wherever it is stored. By breaking open that siloed infrastructure we can help businesses accelerate their transformation through AI.»

Rather than businesses having to move their data to the right platform for AI analysis, which can often prove costly, they are now able to take the AI tools to their cloud environment.

To take advantage of IBM’s Watson Assistant and Watson OpenScale tech, firms will first need to use IBM Cloud Private to containerise the data so it can then be supported by Watson services.

The tools can then be deployed to automate business processes, helping customers identify patterns in their data to inform business decisions.