IBM Watson will clean enterprise data for your AI apps

IBM has announced enhanced AI features for its IBM Watson platform, including the ability for developers to cleanse and classify data using machine learning as well as making it easier to connect, catalogue and share data to inject it into applications.

The company has made the changes to address the growing demands of customers that want to take advantage of data to power their AI tools and services, but are becoming overwhelmed with the data available.

IBM Watson's new Data Catalog and Data Refinery offerings will group together datasets that may reside in different places and formats, cleaning it so it can be integrated seamlessly into AI applications.

To help with data collaboration, IBM's Analytics Engine separates the storage of the data from its core information, speeding up the process of analysis and its ability to be injected into apps. This also means it can be shared faster among data scientists, offering more value, faster.

The refined data can also be tagged with metadata, enabling it to enforce data governance policies across the organisation. Employees can ensure their data complies with both the law and the business's internal policies, securing it when it's shared across the organisation too.

"The key to AI starts with a strong data foundation, which turns the volume and velocity of incoming data from a challenge into an asset," said Derek Schoettle, general manager of IBM Watson Data Platform.

"For companies to innovate and compete with AI, they need a way to grasp and organize data coming in from every source, and to use this complete index of data as the backbone of every decision and initiative."

IBM has also announced an update to its Unified Data Governance Platform, ensuring businesses are better prepared for the incoming GDPR legislation.