What next for IBM Watson?

IBM Watson hands down destroyed the two Jeopardy world champs, but what does the future hold for the super computer?

Watson, named after the IBM founder Thomas J, was built upon a cluster of 90 commercially available 750 Express systems and is so powerful that it rivals a humans ability to answer questions with confidence and accuracy.

It's the sheer horse power the system provides that allows it to incorporate a number of IBM exclusive technologies for the particular demands of processing a very large number of concurrent tasks, meaning it has the ability to search through 200 million pages of data in just a few small seconds.

But after it's game show exploits, where could such a clever piece of technology be used next? well, the answer   according to IBM could be the health care sector, after initial discussions with Well Point health plan who have agreed to begin designing suitable apps with IBM.

Imagine how great this could be? the ability to scan thousands of doctors notes at one time, identify vital sign patterns which may otherwise be overlooked by a busy doctor and prevent the next stage of an illness before it even occurs, I should imagine it'd also save a few pounds too.

But it doesn't have to stop at healthcare, I think if it's a success in this field we'll also see many other sectors taking an interest. For instance, technical call centres and help desks would definitely find a use for such analytics.

Testing is due to start early next year, It'll be interesting to see the results.

Reduce the hardware cost of virtualisation with AMD blades

The cost of current generation, 2nd user AMD blades are dramatically cheaper than their Intel counterparts. In many cases offering an average of 70% off their original list price. 

I'm finding more and more clients are taking advantage of the cheaper AMD offerings when purchasing new. They may not have the power or raw speed of some of the intel chips but with less cash available it appears that this is a sacrifice many are willing to take, this in turn has meant more and more creeping into our 2nd user stockholding, offering some very affordable solutions.

The BL685 is our most popular AMD blade across our second user stock holding. The G6 model provides 4 processor performance, perfect for virtualisation and also offers some of our deepest blade server discounts for example, a 2 Processor, Hexcore 2.4GHZ HP BL685 server, with 8GB of base RAM is available at £4,500 GBP, a 4k discount of list price.

If you're considering virtualising on blade hardware, please speak to us, we will reduce your hardware costs and can offer full consultation and design.

VDI without the use of a server?

Virtualization of the desktop simplified further with the use of client-side virtualization.

Desktop virtualization has always relied on the use of a type 1 or type 2 hypervisor to get the ball rolling. The use of said hypervisors means adding a virtual layer across each client which in turn puts a strain on its performance.

Manufacturers spend alot of time nowadays developing products and technologies which aim to simplify the user experience. Everybody is trying to remove a 'pain' , a fine example of this is the idiot proof GUI's we're now used to as standard on every SAN project. Anybody, it now seems, can be a storage admin.

A quite unique technology called Zirtu provides a low cost VDI option which will appeal to both enterprise and small to medium sized businesses. Aiming to expell the high costs and complexity many businesses still associate with VDI; Zirtu was designed from the ground up on the client side. Based on type 0 hypervisor technology, Zirtu will allow much more per-server density and performance comparable to enterprise priced package (at less than 150 USD, this certainly is not)

We'll no doubt see more and more of solutions based on type 0 hypervisors, let's have a look at this technology further in coming weeks.