Dive Brief:

• IBM announced new Watson-based solutions designed to allow organizations across sectors to integrate cognitive capabilities into their businesses.
• The solutions are designed to give businesspeople a "virtual personal data analyst" to boost their analytic capabilities and allow them to make more informed business decisions.
• The new cognitive solutions are intended for professionals in marketing, commerce, supply chain and human resources. 

Dive Insight:

IBM is heavily invested in Watson and the future of advanced cognitive computing. In the coming year, businesses are expected to more rapidly adopt artificial intelligence and machine learning tools. So expanding Watson capabilities to different business units will likely boost it's adoption. The new Watson-based offerings are designed to find insights hidden in data to help businesses learn more about their customers. 

For example, for marketers, the Watson-based service can help target the right audiences based on customer behaviors and "create the ideal combination of campaign assets to drive conversion and build brand loyalty," according to IBM's announcement. Meanwhile, for those in retail, IBM Watson Customer Experience Analytics taps behavioral data to understand which customers are the right target for a campaign.

IBM has high expectations for artificial intelligence growth and has set a revenue target of $1 billion annually by 2018.