Watson in the Cloud

IBM has unveiled three new job assignments for Watson, the iconic natural-language supercomputer that beat the experts at Jeopardy. The new roles are part of IBM's plan for turning Watson into a cloud-based information and data-processing service. The services include:

• Watson Discovery Advisor: a tool designed to "accelerate and strengthen research and development projects in industries such as pharmaceutical, publishing, and biotechnology
• Watson Analytics: big data visualization based on natural language queries
• Watson Explorer: a tool designed to "uncover and share data-driven insights more easily"

IBM is reportedly investing $1 Billion in the Watson Group, including $100 million to support a new initiative for independent development of third party applications.