6 ms·

If anyone even uses it at all! I have a friend who works in a sales role for IBM. He told me that part of his bonus is contingent on being able to prove that t

If anyone even uses it at all! I have a friend who works in a sales role for IBM. He told me that part of his bonus is contingent on being able to prove that the customer has actually installed the software which they bought. The policy apparently arose because certain public sector entities had refused to consider new deals since they still hadn't got round to installing the software for which they had paid millions of dollars, years before.

dmix 7y ago
I’d bet good money Watson got sold to a bunch of companies who wanted “AI” then they didn’t do anything useful with it. It was a smart play by IBM, the sales guys want to say AI and machine learning, so give them some generic crap which gets loosely integrated into parent projects and they can have a field day on the phone selling it. Watson would be a perfect study on modern big business software that these billion dollar consultancy companies engage in. Plus IBM makes even more doing the “integration” than the original sale.
- blantonl 7y ago
  I'm almost certain that Watson was a series of Python and Prolog "scripts" that were packaged together with big black boxes, blue lights, tagged as AI, and run through the IBM sales and marketing machine. The result was huge margins for IBM and customers scratching their heads afterwards.
  - jimbokun 7y ago
    Watson was the World's Greatest CS PhD Thesis. Not so great as an actual business.
  - pgwhalen 7y ago
    Watson isn’t software, it’s a brand.
wpietri 7y ago
And I'm sure the problem is now that a lot of places installed it but never used it. One of the things I like about SaaS software is that a subscription revenue stream is more closely aligned with actually delivering value than a long-term sales model is. It's still not perfect, but I'll take what I can get.

6 ms·

If anyone even uses it at all! I have a friend who works in a sales role for IBM. He told me that part of his bonus is contingent on being able to prove that t

by ocfnash 7y ago

dmix 7y ago
I’d bet good money Watson got sold to a bunch of companies who wanted “AI” then they didn’t do anything useful with it. It was a smart play by IBM, the sales guys want to say AI and machine learning, so give them some generic crap which gets loosely integrated into parent projects and they can have a field day on the phone selling it. Watson would be a perfect study on modern big business software that these billion dollar consultancy companies engage in. Plus IBM makes even more doing the “integration” than the original sale.
- blantonl 7y ago
  I'm almost certain that Watson was a series of Python and Prolog "scripts" that were packaged together with big black boxes, blue lights, tagged as AI, and run through the IBM sales and marketing machine. The result was huge margins for IBM and customers scratching their heads afterwards.
  - jimbokun 7y ago
    Watson was the World's Greatest CS PhD Thesis. Not so great as an actual business.
  - pgwhalen 7y ago
    Watson isn’t software, it’s a brand.
wpietri 7y ago
And I'm sure the problem is now that a lot of places installed it but never used it. One of the things I like about SaaS software is that a subscription revenue stream is more closely aligned with actually delivering value than a long-term sales model is. It's still not perfect, but I'll take what I can get.