​IBM Australia unveils Watson client experience centre

IBM has opened a Watson client experience centre in Melbourne so that enterprises can try out the vendor’s cognitive computing technology and tools.

Watson technology is cognitive computing, which involves systems that interact naturally with humans, learn from their experiences and generate and evaluate evidence-based hypotheses, according to IBM.

The new centre may also serve as a collaboration hub for enterprises, government, startups, developers, partners, venture capital groups and academia.

In Australia, Watson’s cognitive computing capabilities have been used by a number of organisations.

ANZ Global Wealth is using Watson Engagement Advisor at its Sydney Grow centre to help answer customer questions. The idea is that the bank can then better understand what questions are being asked, so they can be answered more quickly.

ANZ's goal is to shorten and improve the process of providing financial advice, by a matter of weeks, by matching client requirements to market offers.

Meanwhile, Deakin University has used Watson to answer questions from the school's 50,000 students, by way of Web and mobile interfaces.

The platform is embedded in DeakinSync, a digital hub which provides students with their information needs from any location at any time of the day.

The Australian Customs and Border Protection announced in April this year that it would use Watson to help analysts within the portfolio draw further insights from unstructured data sources such as news feeds and government reports.

"We are hoping that Watson will allow us to more effectively manage the information overload problem by detecting signals in the very noisy world of unstructured, open source data," acting deputy secretary, intelligence and capability, Randall Brugeaud, said in a statement.