It's Cognitive Cloud as IBM’s turns 106

Today is IBM's 106th birth anniversary. The company today is nowhere what it started as - Computer Tabulating Recording Corporation that was formed on June 16, 1911, or to International Business Machines, renamed to IBM later. In a free-wheeling discussion with Dataquest, Vanitha Narayanan, Chairman, IBM India, talked in detail about the IBM of today, and how it is betting on its cognitive cloud platform to transform businesses models, customer experiences, and eventually industry dynamics.

The IBM Watson platform is based on artificial intelligence, many other analytical software, and related research. Customers ranging from startups to large enterprises to government, for example, can use Watson APIs to embed cognitive computing components into their applications. The company also offers products with built-in cognitive capabilities including IBM Watson IoT Platform and IBM Watson Analytics for Social Media. IBM plans to leverage its cloud technology in a big way as it rolls out Watson-related products.

IBM's onslaught with its cognitive cloud is complemented and supplemented by a range of technologies and solutions. These include server hardware z Systems product line as enterprise infrastructure for its customers' cognitive business for solutions including analytics, blockchain, cloud and DevOps. Its Power Systems enterprise servers aim at big data and analytics applications. Power Systems run IBM's AIX and IBM i OSes as well as Linux. In another nod to open source, IBM introduced its LinuxONE system as a hardware platform.

For storage hardware side, IBM offers products including its FlashSystem all-flash arrays, Storwize systems and other hybrid arrays, Fibre Channel storage-area network hardware, storage media, and tape products. The company is making a push into software-defined storage with its Spectrum Storage suite and Cleversafe object storage technology.

The company's software includes analytics offerings such as IBM Cognos Analytics, IBM SPSS, IBM Maximo Asset Management and DB2. Many of IBM's products in this field came through acquisition - Maximo in 2006, Cognos in 2008 and SPSS in 2009. IBM also provides IT infrastructure software including its WebSphere Application Server and MQ messaging middleware. In the mobile and social space there is IBM Verse, a business email offering and the IBM Notes for collaboration. In security there is MaaS360 for mobile device security and IBM QRadar Security Intelligence Platform, a security information and event management product.