A lot of the big, flashy work in Artificial Intelligence (AI) happens in the B2C world. You can’t go a few hours without reading another story of how AI is working on huge problems with huge datasets.
But in a recent article in Harvard Business Review, authors Thomas Davenport and Stephan Kudyba point to the role that artificial intelligence tools can play in B2B success.
In case you missed it, here’s a recap of last week’s webinar, New Modules in the Attivio Platform, presented by Attivio’s Director of Solution Architecture, Brian Flynn.
During the session, Brian reviewed two new modules that are included in the Attivio platform: Query Frames and the Search UI Toolkit, or “SUIT” for short.
Query Frames
As you may know, the Attivio platform includes a patented capability called Query-time JOIN. This combines indexed structured & unstructured data dynamically to answer questions like “What are the customers in my region saying about the new products they bought in the past 90 days?”
We’re delighted to announce today that we’ve formed a partnership with MC+A, a Chicago-based search technology innovator and systems integrator.
Not only will MC+A act as a reseller of the Attivio platform, they will assist companies in upgrading from legacy search applications, such as Google Search Appliance (GSA). MC+A’s connector bridge solution simplifies the transition to Attivio’s modern, machine-learning-based platform.
We’re delighted to be working closely with the team over at MC+A and look forward to helping our mutual customers’ employees get the answers they need at the moment they need them.
Even as the press is filled with stories of artificial intelligence and cognitive technologies, the market isn’t entirely sure what to make of these advances. As with any emerging technology, the question arises of whether it’s all hype or if it’s truly transformative.
According to a Deloitte survey of early adopters, things are looking quite positive. In fact, cognitive technologies are already showing their worth by providing value to businesses, even they aren’t yet burning up the world.
In a recent post, we looked at the reasons why so many cognitive computing initiatives fail. And that leads to the next obvious question, “So, how do you avoid failure and plan for success?”
At Attivio, we think of cognitive computing as a set of building blocks with AI capabilities such as machine learning, NLP, text analytics, and so on. Cognitive search uses many of the same building blocks, which makes it a good place to start any cognitive computing project.
We used to think of knowledge workers as a few librarian-like employees responsible for managing all kinds of information. But information has become like currency: the more you have, the more you can do with it. And that means everyone has the potential to leverage information to perform their jobs better and increase the quality – and speed - of their decisions.
At the 2107 Sohn Conference, Social Capital CEO and founder Chamath Palihapitiya declared, “Watson is a joke, just to be completely honest.” Of course, this quote got a lot of play. But another quote from the same interview is actually more revealing about why so many cognitive computing initiatives eventually circle the drain — and why they take so many resources with them. Palihapitiya noted, "I think what IBM is excellent at is using their sales and marketing infrastructure to convince people who have asymmetrically less knowledge to pay for something."
In terms of cognitive search, IBM has the lion's share of failures at this point, so it's easy to throw stones at them. And, since they approach cognitive search as a services engagement, the reasons behind the failures are instructive.
Replacing an enterprise search technology, regardless of what it is, can disrupt an organization’s normal operations. Even if employees are dissatisfied — complaining every other day to IT about how slow it is or user unfriendly — the old system is familiar, and change can be difficult.
Of course, sometimes a search solution must be replaced because the vendor stops supporting it. And that’s the case now with Google Search Appliance (GSA). License renewals will end in 2018 and support will only last as long as your license. Finding a GSA replacement should now become a priority.