IBM is releasing new offerings to its Watson Data Platform, introducing data cataloging and data refining capabilities designed to make it easier for developers and data scientists to analyze and prepare enterprise data for AI applications.
By improving data visibility and helping to better enforce data security policies, users can now connect and share data across public and private cloud environments.
“The analogy we use is: what Spotify does for music, that’s really what we’re doing for data,” said Rob Thomas, GM, IBM Analytics. “It’s really simple, point and click organization of data regardless of where that data is. All of this is really about simplicity in terms of helping clients have a singular data strategy.”
This expansion includes new Data Catalog and Data Refinery offerings, which bring together datasets that live in different formats on the cloud, in existing systems and in third party sources; as well as apply machine learning to process and cleanse this data so it can be ingested for AI applications; the ability to use metadata, pulled from Data Catalog and Data Refinery, to tag and help enforce a client’s data governance policies; and the general availability of Analytics Engine to separate the storage of data from the information it holds, allowing it to be analyzed and fed into apps at much greater speeds.
To further help companies grasp control of all of their data no matter where it resides, IBM is also announcing a series of new features to its Unified Governance Platform.
These bring greater visibility and management of clients’ global data, including new capabilities that help clients as they better prepare for impending data protection regulations such as GDPR.
Built on open source technologies and fueled by IBM Cloud, the Watson Data Platform brings together IBM’s cloud infrastructure, data services, and decades of experience helping clients across industries solve their data challenges.
Business users will benefit the most from this, enabling organizations to be compliant with regulations and gives enterprises more self-service access to data, according to Thomas.
IT also benefits from these updates now that Watson will offer more automated capabilities.
“It really augments the role of these IT professionals so they can spend time on the more interesting stuff, building models or data science,” Thomas said.
IBM will continue to integrate more automation through AI and machine learning as well as extending its data science platform, and more, Thomas said.
“We have really focused on data as a strategic asset,” Thomas said. “IBMs policy around data is: It’s your data, we don’t use your data, and we help you get value out of your data. That’s why we focus a lot on why we help clients become compliant.”
For more information about these updates, visit www.ibm.com.