Watson becomes a Sherlock

ibm-officeIBM formally announced Watson Analytics and, somewhat modestly, said it was its biggest announcement in a decade in analytics.

The software is a natural language based service that gives access to predictive and visual analytic tools for business.

The first version of Watson Analytics includes a version of its cloud service for desktops and mobiles.  The service allows access to data warehousing services.

IBM said Watson brings together self service analytics capabilities on the cloud and refine it, discover insights, predict outcomes, visualise results, create reports and allow collaboration with other people.

The company claims that using natural language lets people ask the right questions and get results that can be read and manipulated.  They can then refine their questions.