IBM Thailand, the local operating unit of the global technology giant, is shifting toward artificial intelligence (AI) and the cloud platform to serve rising demand from businesses.
IBM previously offered hardware, software and services, but now has shifted its focus toward AI with Watson, a cognitive computing engine for analytics and self-learning ability.
Watson can "see" better than any other AI system by automatically describing the contents of an image.
"The technology enables businesses to make decisions better and faster, with improvements in customer experience engagement," said managing director Parnsiree Amatayakul.
IBM has also helped numerous industries such as healthcare and financial services benefit from speech recognition technology. The ability to maximise data in the digital world remains a key challenge, as 80% of it is still unsearchable.
Cognitive computing will allow firms to integrate data from their existing systems with other types of information on the cloud.
Globally, it is expected that Watson cognitive computing will touch 1 billion people this year. It has already reached 20 industries spanning 45 countries with 8.2 million developers and over 500 partners.
Cognitive computing has been applied in energy, healthcare, travel, banking, insurance, music, fashion, wine, telecom, aviation and education.
Mrs Parnsiree said businesses are interested in using cognitive computing in new areas like cognitive human resources, cognitive fraud detection, client experience engagement and deep personalisation.
"In Thailand, the potential targets of cognitive computing are healthcare, oil and gas, banking, insurance and local startups," she said.
Mrs Parnsiree said cloud technology enables more businesses to embrace new advanced capabilities like cognitive computing at lower costs.
IBM also makes the ONE Architecture technology comprising cloud, data, AI and applications.
"Cognitive computing has already run a pilot programme and conducted numerous tests over the past several years. Over the next 6-7 months, local enterprises will choose one platform to launch their new services rather than run different technologies from several vendors," Mrs Parnsiree said. "We are still in the early stages of the journey to modernising technology architecture for digital transformation."
In the first half of 2017, IBM's global cognitive and cloud platforms accounted for 43% of total revenue, up from 22% in 2013.
