US Edition 
IBM supercomputer Watson heads to the UK
IBM is bringing Watson, the supercomputer that became a television star in the US, to Britain to tap demand from companies keen to profit from the growing volume of data they generate in the digital age.
The US technology giant is betting that the ability of the supercomputer to understand human language will allow it to spot patterns in the mass of unstructured data – including emails and Facebook postings – that companies and their customers produce.
The hope is that identifying such patterns will, in turn, allow businesses to ultimately generate greater revenues from their customers.
Watson, developed over two years by scientists at IBM, shot to fame in February last year after beating all human competitors on the long-running US quiz show Jeopardy. Having started selling Watson to US companies in the last few months, Britain is next in line.
"I fully expect the UK to be a serious market. It's not a question of if but when," said Manoj Saxena, the head of Watson Solutions division at IBM in New York. "It's likely we would see Watson in the UK next year." IBM has already been approached by a number of UK companies, he added.
The technology company said its efforts are focused on healthcare and financial services industries because they are data heavy. Earlier this month, the company stuck a deal with Citigroup. The US bank is hoping that by making sense of the mass of unstructured data it produces, including customers' posts on its own Facebook page, Watson will improve its ability to pitch products to customers.
Watson, which IBM claims can understand 200m written pages every three seconds, will also be able to digest news reports and companies' financial statements in a way that might improve a bank's ability to manage risk in its portfolios.
That IBM is turning to a supercomputer judged by some to be one of the most intelligent ever made underlines the lengths that technology companies are going to persuade businesses there is profit in the unstructured data they generate.
That trend was behind Silicon Valley's multi-billion dollar battle for UK analytics company 3Par in 2010. And, more recently, drove Hewlett-Packard's $10bn (£6.3bn) acquisition of Autonomy, the UK's largest software company.
The volume of such data is forecast to grow at more than 60pc a year, according to research firm IDC, as ever more information is digitised and people live more of their lives online.
IBM predicts that Watson will be generating at least $1bn of revenues by 2015. "We realise that the real innovation will come from applying the technology," Mr Saxena said.