IBM and Cisco snuggle up to add Watson AI and edge analytics to the IoT

Internet of Things big data — IBM and Cisco want to put Watson smarts onto the edge of the IoT

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IBM’S ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) will be mixed with Cisco’s data analytics to help make sense of the data hoovered up by the Internet of Things (IoT).

The partnership will use the IBM Watson AI with Cisco’s ability to carry out data analysis on at the edge of IoT networks rather than waiting for all that information to be pushed back to a central point.

The companies explained that this will make data analysis in the IoT faster and allow customers to act on the information as soon as possible.

Organisations are trying to make better use of data as devices become more intelligent and connected to corporate networks, and one of the problems is the process of actually gathering the data, according to IBM.

"Today, in a typical industrial deployment, only one per cent of IoT data is actually analysed. Legacy processes and drawbacks in current IoT platforms make it too expensive and slow to analyse the other 99 per cent," said Chris O'Connor, general manager for IoT at IBM, on the firm's blog.

O'Connor cited an offshore drilling platform as an extreme example of how it can be difficult to get data back to a central location for analysis. But other industries also have distributed infrastructure where the cost or limited bandwidth make it difficult to retrieve data to drive decisions.

The solution is edge-based analytics, whereby the analytics processing is also distributed to the edge of the network, or very close to it, and this is the focus of the IBM and Cisco collaboration.

"Together, Cisco and IBM are positioned to help organisations make real-time, informed decisions based on business-critical data that was often previously undetected and overlooked," said Mala Anand, senior vice president of Cisco's Data & Analytics Platforms Group.

"With the vast amount of data being created at the edge of the network, using existing Cisco infrastructure to perform streaming analytics is the perfect way to cost-effectively obtain real-time insights.

"Our powerful technology provides customers with the flexibility to combine this edge processing with the cognitive computing power of the IBM Watson IoT Platform."

Another use is in telecoms networks, and Cisco and IBM are working with Bell Canada to deliver IBM Watson IoT and Cisco Edge over the firm's 4G LTE network to enable customers to collect data in real time.

"Many of our largest customers operate remote systems, requiring continuous availability and access to data to monitor critical performance factors and avoid downtime," said Stephen Howe, chief technology officer at Bell Canada.

IBM and Cisco have long been in cahoots, teaming up to create tech over a decade ago and more recently joining forces to fight issues like net neutrality. You could call them the Batman and Robin of the IT world. µ