TOKYO and NEW YORK, Feb. 10,
2015 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) and SoftBank Telecom
Corp. (hereinafter "SoftBank"), a wholly owned subsidiary of
SoftBank Corp (TYO: 9984) today announced a landmark global
alliance to bring Watson to
Japan, one of the world's largest
economies and technology markets. The alliance, which involves
training Watson to understand
Japanese, represents a major milestone in IBM's efforts to
accelerate the adoption of cognitive computing and a powerful
example of how SoftBank is transforming Japanese businesses and
society.
The goal of the collaboration is for SoftBank and IBM to bring
new apps and services powered by Watson to market in the region, by
establishing a broad local ecosystem of partners, entrepreneurs,
and app developers who will apply Watson in new and innovative ways.
The alliance combines SoftBank's leadership in the Japanese
business and technology markets with IBM's unmatched Watson cognitive computing technologies,
research capabilities and services to help transform entire
industries and professions.
"The alliance with SoftBank, an industry pioneer, will bring new
Watson capabilities to
organizations in one of the most innovative parts of the world,"
said Mike Rhodin, senior vice
president, IBM Watson Group. "Together, we will be able to more
quickly deploy Watson to
enterprises throughout Japan,
while building a rich ecosystem of partners, entrepreneurs,
developers and other third-parties to design and deliver an
entirely new class of cognitive computing apps."
"Through this strategic alliance, we are excited that SoftBank
and IBM will further develop IBM Watson with Japanese language
capability and drive its adoption in the Japanese market," said
Ken Miyauchi, Representative
Director and Chief Operating Officer, SoftBank. "Watson's technology, which analyzes large
volumes of data, and can understand and answer complex questions
posed in natural, is in harmony with SoftBank Group's corporate
mission of 'Information Revolution - Happiness for Everyone.' We
believe the technology will be applied to a broad range of areas,
from enterprise to consumer sectors, and create new value for
people."
"The Japanese language presented IBM researchers with a number
of unique challenges to overcome, most notably the first time the
Watson system has learned a
language that relies on characters not shared by the Western
alphabet," said Paul Yonamine,
General Manager, IBM Japan. "We expect Watson will deliver innovation to the
academic, government services, and various industries, while
improving overall agility and decision making for our clients..
SoftBank and IBM will apply the technology in multiple industries
and business domains to usher in a new era of computing in
Japan."
Watson is the first
commercially available cognitive computing capability. The
system, delivered through the cloud, analyzes volumes of data,
understands complex questions posed in natural language, and
proposes evidenced-based answers. Watson represents a new era in computing where
systems will understand the world in the way that humans do:
through senses, learning, and experience.
As part of the collaboration, IBM and SoftBank intend to deliver
new powered by Watson cloud-based
services. The two organizations will initially target
Japan's education, banking,
healthcare, insurance and retail industries, where companies are
striving to give customers more relevant information about products
and services, and improve overall decision making by analyzing
diverse, high volume data streams.
The alliance builds upon an ongoing, joint technical
collaboration around cognitive computing technology between
SoftBank and IBM Research – Tokyo.
Watson's ability to understand
Japanese is the result of more than two decades of research and
development undertaken by IBM Research in the areas of natural
language processing, both in Japanese and other non-European
languages. The Japanese language uses thousands of characters, many
of which can carry different meanings and pronunciations depending
on the context of conversation, the relationships between
participants, their age and gender. Like any major language, there
are many unique idioms that must be fully understood for natural
human interaction.
To capture new and emerging opportunities, IBM and SoftBank will
focus on the following strategic areas to deliver Watson solutions in Japan:
- Expand Watson's
Knowledge: IBM and SoftBank will work together to further teach
and train Watson in the Japanese
language as well as various industry domains.
- Develop Localized APIs and Development Environments: The
two companies will provide localized APIs and development
environments that can be used to create new powered by Watson apps. This will include new resources
and services delivered through the IBM Watson Developer Cloud.
- Build and Expand the Watson Ecosystem: The two companies
will work together to establish a robust local ecosystem of
partners, developers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and
academics who will advance the adoption of cognitive computing
throughout Japan.
As global demand for cognitive computing increases, the IBM and
SoftBank alliance will accelerate IBM's strategy to deliver the
transformative capabilities of Watson to clients around the world, as well as
the objectives of SoftBank to advance the information and
technology industries through superior business models.
SoftBank will be IBM's preferred technology delivery partner for
Watson solutions in Japan, where the technology could be embedded
into various form factors such as desktop, tablets and mobile
devices, as well as robots, offering both organizations an
opportunity to reach a far broader audience of
users.
Watson will be hosted by
SoftBank's data centers across the country.
IBM Watson: Pioneering a New Era of Computing
IBM Watson represents a new era of computing in which apps and
systems interact with human users more naturally, augment our
knowledge with Big Data insights, and learn to improve how they
assist us.
Fueled by innovation from a mission to transform industries and
professions, Watson is uniquely
positioned at the forefront of the new era of computing, evidenced
by an unmatched demonstration of what cognitive systems can bring
to transform decision-making. IBM is delivering a range of
cloud-based products and services to clients in industries such as
banking, healthcare, insurance, retail and education.
In January 2014, IBM launched the
IBM Watson Group, a new business unit dedicated to developing and
commercializing cloud-delivered cognitive advisors. The move
signifies a strategic shift by IBM to deliver a new class of
software, services and apps that think, improve by learning, and
discover insights from massive amounts of Big Data. IBM is
investing $1 billion into the Watson
Group, focusing on development and research and bringing
cloud-delivered cognitive applications and services to market. This
includes $100 million available for
venture investments to support IBM's ecosystem of start-ups and
businesses building cognitive apps made with Watson.
About the SoftBank Group
The SoftBank Group comprises SoftBank Corp. (TYO: 9984) and its
subsidiaries and associates that offer a comprehensive range of
advanced mobile communications, fixed-line communications and
Internet services around the world. With Sprint joining in
July 2013, the SoftBank Group became
a leading global carrier that now has over 100 million subscribers.
Maximizing synergies across its Group companies worldwide, SoftBank
aspires to realize lifestyle innovation through IT. The SoftBank
Group is also encouraging the adoption of clean and safe energy
through its business activities and recently developed "Pepper,"
the world's first personal robot that can recognize emotions. To
learn more, please visit: http://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/
About IBM Watson and IBM Research
IBM Watson, which made its debut on the TV game show Jeopardy!
in 2011, was developed by IBM Research. Now in its 70th year, IBM
Research continues to define the future of information technology,
with more than 3,000 researchers in twelve labs located across 10
countries on six continents. Scientists from IBM Research have
produced six Nobel Laureates, 10 U.S. National Medals of
Technology; five U.S. National Medals of Science, six Turing
Awards, 19 inductees in the National Academy of Sciences and 14
inductees into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame – the most
of any company. For more information on IBM Watson, visit:
www.ibmwatson.com.
To join the social discussion about Watson, include the hashtag #ibmwatson.
Follow Watson on Facebook and
see Watson on YouTube and
Flickr.
Learn more about today's news on IBM's Smarter Planet blog
http://ibm.co/1Fm8GEg
Media Contacts:
Jay Stankiewicz
IBM Global Media Relations
+1 (203) 722-3301
jstank@us.ibm.com
Takeo Tamagawa
IBM Japan Media Relations
+81 3 3808 5120
ttakeo@jp.ibm.com
Naoyuki Nakagaki
SoftBank Corporate Communications
naoyuki.nakagaki@g.softbank.co.jp
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SOURCE IBM