Elementary Watson: IBM Opens Watson Mobile Developer Challenge to Create Cognitive Computing Apps

The power of IBM’s Watson is definitely not elementary and now app developers can create mobile consumer and business apps powered by IBM’s iconic Watson computing power. IBM has launched the Watson Mobile Developer Challenge a global competition. The program is part of a promotion to increase the exposure of the newly formed IBM Watson Group.

IBM's Watson cognitive computing innovation initiative is a push to establish a new class of services, software and apps that analyze, improve by learning, and discover answers and insights to complex questions from massive amounts of disparate data. 

Through this initiative, mobile developers can take advantage of Watson’s ability to understand the complexities of human language, "read" millions of pages of data in seconds and improve its own performance by learning. 

Over the next three months, the challenge invites mobile developers and publishers to share their best ideas to build and develop mobile apps into prototypes. Three winners will join the Watson Ecosystem Program and will work with IBM's recently launched global consulting practice, IBM Interactive Experience to receive design consulting and support from IBM experts to develop a viable commercial app.

Developers can submit proposals at the IBM Watson Group website. Once a proposal is submitted, a panel of judges will conduct two phases of judging. The first phase will narrow the field to 25 finalists. Those finalists will receive access to the Watson API and sandbox so they can build a prototype to be judged in the second phase. From there, the top 5 finalists will pitch their concepts to a panel of IBM judges in a live session. The judges will then determine three winners who will have IBM mentoring support and sandbox access to build the next Watson-powered app.

The deadline to submit a proposal is March 31 and the winners will be announced on May 31.

IBM offers a single source for developers to conceive and produce their Powered by Watson applications.

The Watson Developer Cloud will offer the technology, tools and APIs to ISVs for self-service training, development, and testing of their cognitive application. The Developer Cloud is expected to help jump-start and accelerate creation of IBM Watson applications.

The Watson Content Store will bring together unique and varying sources of data, including general knowledge, industry specific content, and subject matter expertise to inform, educate, and help create an actionable experience for the user. The store is intended to be a clearinghouse of information presenting a unique opportunity for content providers to engage a new channel and bring their data to life in a whole new way.

The Watson Talent Hub will provide staffing and talent organizations with access to in-demand skills like linguistics, natural language processing, machine learning, user experience design, and analytics will help bridge any skill gaps to facilitate the delivery of cognitive applications. These talent hubs and their respective agents are expected to work directly with members of the Ecosystem on a fee or project basis.

Watson is currently in pilots with leading healthcare and financial services organizations and will be expanding to production-level deployments in new use cases and industries going forward. Getting ready to deploy a Watson solution takes thoughtful planning and selection of where and how to apply its power. Laying the groundwork often involves building strong big data and analytics capabilities which are complementary to Watson itself. Doing so on project-by-project basis ensures that each step is justifiable on its own from a financial and business value perspective and also brings you closer to readiness to apply the transformative power of Watson to your business.

The IBM Watson Mobile Developer Challenge is part of the IBM MobileFirststrategy to help businesses of all sizes adopt mobile technology to better engage with customers and extend their businesses to new markets. The IBM Watson Group is part of that strategy with a goal of creating an ecosystem of developers, start-ups, tech companies and venture capitalists building Watson powered apps as part of the Watson Developers Cloud. 

Using natural language processing and analytics, Watson processes information akin to how people think, representing a major shift in an organization's ability to quickly analyze, understand and respond to Big Data. Watson's ability to answer complex questions with speed, accuracy and confidence is transforming decision making across a variety of industries, including health care, financial services and retail.

IBM has advanced Watson from a game playing innovation into a commercial technology. Delivered from the cloud and able to power new consumer and enterprise apps, Watson is 24 times faster; smarter, with a 2,400 percent improvement in performance; and 90 percent smaller than the original system.

Named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, Watson was developed in IBM's Research labs and is now being accelerated into market by the new IBM Watson Group.  As part of the group, IBM is investing $1 billion to introduce a new class of cognitive computing services, software and apps, and investing $100 million to spur innovation for software application providers to develop a new generation of Watson powered solutions.  

For more information or to apply to participate in the Challenge, visit the link below.