Made with IBM: where are IBM technologies used?

Not so long ago, several articles were published on the IBM blog that showed the capabilities of the Watson supercomputer and the scope of practical application of these features. Here is the first post on this topic, and here is the second .

Both the first and second entries mentioned not only Watson, but also other technologies of the corporation, including IBM Cloud. Now we want to show areas of application and other services / technologies. And of course, such a demonstration of opportunities will be carried out on practical examples.

Cancer Center M.D. Anderson

Genetic information decrypted by a gene is Big Data in the truest sense of the word. There is a huge amount of data, and in many cases they need to be structured, as well as to find something in common in different data sets. All this, like no other, is understood by oncologists who say that there are no two identical cancerous tumors.

The fight against cancer must be individual, so all methods of fight are selected separately for each person. And resources of the IBM Watson supercomputer already mentioned many times on Habr help with it.

Its capabilities are used by the MD Anderson Cancer Center, where they developed using a supercomputer a tool called the MD Anderson Oncology Expert Advisor. This tool, using the resources of IBM Watson, allows you to diagnose a variety of cancer while indicating possible ways to treat cancer in a particular person.

To select the best option, MD Anderson Oncology Expert Advisor analyzes the patient’s genetic map, thousands of pages of specialized medical literature, diagnoses and examples of successful cures in similar cases.

An oncologist is simply not able to do the same job for any sane time. IBM Watson completes all tasks in minutes and hours.

Game World Kuma Games

Kuma Games has been operating in the gaming industry for many years, and since 2007, this company has been using IBM Cloud resources. As a result, the Kuma Games team more efficiently develops game services / applications based on such a powerful platform as IBM Cloud.

The company creates many projects, so it needs an environment that allows it to maintain the simultaneous presence of thousands of players and millions of game downloads. Plus, this entire environment must be scalable to provide ever-increasing resource requirements.

Macy Retail

Macy's is one of the largest and oldest retailers in the United States. It was founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. As of 2010, the network includes more than 800 department stores of non-food products. The stores of the network are focused on the sale of clothes and shoes, and also stores sell furniture, household goods, bedding, jewelry, and cosmetics.

Using IBM services, including IBM Big Data & Analytics, the company was able to develop a personalized virtual adviser for customers, My Macy. This service tracks the purchase history for each person, and on the basis of individual information gives personalized advice and makes personalized offers. One should think that this service is unlikely to recommend “smart leather shoes” to opponents of using genuine leather / wool for making clothes and shoes. But chic leatherette shoes - please.

Wine retailer Millesima

Millesima has been selling wine for many years. The IBM Big Data & Analytics service helped the company establish personalized work with customers. Now wines are offered to customers based on the history of their previous purchases.

In addition, when creating a recommendation, facts such as the geographic location of the buyer, time of year, and much more are taken into account. As a result, the company offers each person wine not just that which is pleasant, but also that which is suitable for the current event (for example, it can be a buyer's birthday, or some kind of national holiday).

The seller is unlikely to be able to analyze all these data, especially if you take into account the number of Millesima customers, in the tens of thousands.

Wimbledon

This is more than a sports tournament; Wimbledon is a world-wide sports and cultural event. Of course, not everyone loves tennis, but Wimbledon collects tens of thousands of visitors and tens of millions of spectators.

Of course, most tennis fans watch the tournament remotely. Who is on TV, who is in the online broadcast. And just in the latter case, it is necessary to be able to predict how many viewers will watch the broadcast in order to accordingly scale the online broadcasting infrastructure.

This used to be a big problem, especially during an unexpected influx of spectators. Now the IBM Cloud tool helps predict the increase in the number of viewers, which, in turn, allows you to adapt the infrastructure of online broadcasting on the fly.



Of course, only some of the most interesting examples of using IBM services and technologies were given above. In fact, the range of their application is much wider, and a little later we will publish other examples that can be considered indicative. Now both large and small businesses can rely on the computing resources of the corporation.