IBM has opened The Watson Centre in Singapore billing it as 'an incubator designed to bring together organizations of all sizes, business partners and IBM experts to co-create business solutions that leverage IBM's cognitive, blockchain and design capabilities.'
According to IBM, in less than five years, disruptive technologies such as cognitive computing and blockchain will drive dramatic shifts in every industry.
IBM's new Watson Centre, at Marina Bay, will act as a center of expertise for almost 5,000 IBM cognitive solutions professionals in the Asia Pacific region. These will include researchers, IBM Watson specialists, data scientists, software engineers, agile developers and analytics experts.
IBM says the center will 'play host to Asia Pacific clients looking to lead in a variety of markets and industries, using Watson technologies that reason, improve through learning, and discover insights hidden in large amounts of complex data.' It will offer education, hackathons and customized workshops for a broad ecosystem of innovators including software companies, startups, developers and systems integrators.
Asian financial services group DBS Bank will work with the center to develop new use cases based on disruptive technologies, and to assist in its strategy to support FinTech startups in the region.
Parkway Pantai, one of Asia's largest integrated private healthcare groups, is working with IBM to enhance the quality of patient care and improve patient outcomes in its intensive care units at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, Singapore.
IBM says it will use Watson technologies to help provide proactive patient monitoring and early intervention through real-time data analysis and notifications to nurses in anticipation of critical and life-threatening events.
IBM also plans to help accelerate the design, development and commercialization of Singapore blockchain applications through the IBM Garage and the IBM Global Entrepreneur program. At the IBM Garage, 'experts collaborate with clients, developers and entrepreneurs to test-drive tools, processes, and procedures to make blockchain real,' IBM says.
The garage 'creates a bridge between the scale of enterprise and culture of startups and supports the development of an open standards based blockchain ecosystem and creates new work opportunities in Singapore.'
IBM's Global Entrepreneur Program 'helps startups and entrepreneurs who are building new generation of distributed ledger applications on the blockchain harness the power of IBM Cloud, as well as deeply connect and embed them into IBM's vast global network of enterprise clients, consultants, innovation centers and more to rapidly build, scale quickly and accelerate growth.'
The Watson Centre at Marina Bay will also host IBM Studios '“ Singapore, a new center that will blend experience design and digital expertise to support customer innovation. IBM says it will 'help Asia Pacific clients analyze business challenges and develop solutions grounded in more individualized digital experiences through a combination of IBM's research technology, cognitive capabilities and experience design.'
