IBM’s Watson Analytics service has entered into open beta

IBM Watson, apparently not content with its Jeopardy winnings, is looking for work. After a lot of buildup, Watson Analytics, the natural language business intelligence tool based on Big Blue’s famed AI, is now available in beta under a freemium model where it’s free to get started, but the really powerful analytics are going to cost you. That “natural language” part is the key to how IBM sees Watson Analytics differentiating itself in a crowded cloud-delivered BI market defined by startups and big players like Birst, Anaplan, Tidemark, Salesforce Wave and Microsoft.

IBM’s Watson Analytics service is now in open beta. The natural language-based system, born of the same programme that developed the company’s Jeopardy-playing super computer, offers predictive and visual analytics tools for businesses. Early this summer, IBM announced it is investing more than $1 billion into commercializing Watson. Watson Analytics is part of that effort. The company promises that it can can automate tasks such as data preparation, predictive analysis and visual storytelling. IBM will offer Watson Analytics as a cloud-based freemium service, accessible via the Web and mobile devices. Since it announced the programme in the summer, 22,000 people have registered for the beta. The launch of Watson Analytics follows the announcement two months ago that IBM has teamed up with Twitter to apply the Watson technology to analysing data from the social network.