IBM has opened a new research centre in Singapore as it aims to expand its cognitive computing offering Watson into the Asian markets.
The Watson Centre will be located in IBM’s current office at Marina Bay Financial Centre will help commercialize the cognitive, blockchain and design capabilities through partnering with local organizations and co-creating new business solutions. The company claims the new centre will act as a hub for almost 5,000 IBM cognitive solutions professionals in the Asia Pacific region.
Although countries like Japan and China would be considered more mature in their adoption of cloud and next generation technologies, there are numerous others who are in the early stages of adoption. Countries like India and Indonesia have economies which are demonstrating healthy GDP growth at 7.3% and 4.7% respectively, as well as being the third and fifth most populous countries worldwide. Cloud adoption is beginning to accelerate in countries such as these representing a lucrative opportunity for companies such as IBM.
“Watson and blockchain are two technologies that will rapidly change the way we live and work, and our clients in Asia Pacific are eager to lead the way in envisioning and creating that future,” said Randy Walker, CEO IBM Asia Pacific. “Here they can leverage the latest in customer experience design, use cognitive technology to draw insight from vast quantities of data, and draw on IBM’s huge investments in research and development. In partnership with our clients we are nurturing local talent and building an ecosystem to accelerate the development of cognitive solutions and blockchain platforms.”
It would appear the IBM team will be focusing on the financial services, healthcare and tourism industries in the first instance, and the team already have a number of wins in place including Parkway Pantai, DBS Bank and ZUMATA Technologies. The Asian markets have seemingly been a target for Big Blue, and is one of the areas the company has been seeing positive results in recent months. Despite reporting its 16th consecutive quarterly revenue decline in April, the Asian markets were one of the few areas the team saw growth.
Watson has seemingly been the focal point of the company’s efforts to redefine their market position, as the team aim to position itself firmly in the cloud space. Last month the team announced it would teach Watson Korean in an effort to increase the usage and adoption of cloud computing within the region, and acquisitions over recent months have been geared more towards the IoT business unit.
“So where are we in the transformation?” said Martin Schroeter, CFO at IBM during the quarterly earnings call. “It is continued focus on shifting our investments into those strategic imperatives, it is making sure that the space we’re moving to is higher margin and higher profit opportunity for us and then making sure we’re investing aggressively to keep those businesses growing.”