For the fifth consecutive year, IDC ranked IBM® the #1 market share leader in AI software platforms for 2019. Whether breathing life into virtual assistants or refining machine-learning models, IBM Watson® shines as one of the company’s crown jewels.

In the IDC report, Worldwide AI Software Platforms Market Shares, 2019: The Battle Has Begun (doc #US46652020, July 2020), IDC valued the AI software platform market at USD 3.5 billion in 2019, a near-30% increase over the prior year. And despite a crowded landscape of competitors, IDC finds IBM leading the field among the largest AI platform players with an 8.8% share.

While COVID-19 forces companies worldwide to reconsider business as usual, the accolades can wait; there’s no time for a victory lap when work remains to accelerate the COVID-19 economic recovery with Data and AI.

With IBM Watson positioned as the business world’s first choice in AI software platforms, four competitive differentiators distinguish it from the competition. Learn how these qualities help IBM support the business community to emerge smarter from the COVID-19 crisis.

A helping hand during a crisis

To stay safe and keep virtual arms around loved ones during the pandemic, communities need accurate information delivered quickly. IBM watsonx Assistant powers virtual agents that deliver critical information to customers, employees and citizens to help restore and preserve community during a crisis.

The IDC market share report recognized IBM watsonx Assistant for its ability to help businesses “deploy, train, and continuously improve their virtual assistants quickly on the cloud of their choice,” capabilities vital for building resilience during challenge and crisis.

Key solution: IBM watsonx Assistant
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Humans and machines work better together

Revenue generated from IBM AI software platforms rose to $303.8 million in 2019, a 25.5% increase over the previous year. IBM’s critical commitment to AI automation technologies – especially AutoAI, its latest feature announcement for Watson Studio – is a major contributor to this growth. The IDC report specifically highlighted the ability of AutoAI “to automate many of the often complicated and laborious tasks associated with designing, optimizing, and governing AI in the enterprise.”  Talent and skill deficits are among the primary obstacles to turning AI aspirations into outcomes. AutoAI with IBM Watson Studio helps workers emerge smarter from COVID-19 by helping simplify AI lifecycle management, empowering the citizen data scientist with tools to get started quickly and accelerate expert data science experimentation time from months and weeks, to hours and minutes.

Key solution: AutoAI with IBM Watson Studio
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Promised trust and transparency

A lack of confidence in AI model accuracy, data quality and integrity, bias management and fairness has proved a significant impediment to AI adoption. IBM offers tools to maintain trust and transparency in the model, the genesis of AI.

IBM Watson OpenScale™ works to optimize the model development and deployment lifecycle, and address bias detection and interpretability to help meet the call for greater explainability of AI technologies. Serving the needs of everyone – not only the privileged few – helps dispel lingering reservations about AI technologies, providing confidence to organizations scaling AI to face COVID-19 challenges.

Key solution: IBM Watson OpenScale
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AI where you need it most

As COVID-19 creates a record number of homebound professionals, Data and AI helps reconfigure the physical conditions of work. IBM Watson with IBM Cloud Pak® for Data “empowers businesses to deploy AI wherever their data resides,” reports IDC. Running on Red Hat® OpenShift®, Watson Anywhere enables companies to position AI near critical pandemic data sources, like Wunderman Thompson, whose COVID-19 Risk, Readiness and Recovery Dashboard is built on IBM Cloud Pak for Data.

Containerized services like IBM Cloud Pak for Data on Red Hat OpenShift allow Watson microservices to run in a variety of environments including on-premises or IBM Cloud, or any public, hybrid, or multi-cloud environment you prefer.

Key solution: IBM Watson with IBM Cloud Pak for Data

See it in action: Explore the iKure story

Learn more about how to accelerate your journey to AI.