Big news in the marketing technology space last week as industry behemoth IBM moves down into the freemium SaaS marketing technology & analytics space. Whether or not IBM's Watson Analytics is a legitimate, long-term stand-alone strategy for Big Blue is yet to be seen.
The slick promo videos and heavy presence of mobile application screen shots on the company website seem to suggest that this release is more of a branding exercise and lead generation tool for IBM's enterprise level marketing technology solution. So far Watson has been a slinky dress on the degenerating figure of an aging industry giant. No doubt Watson is an impressive technology, and anyone who saw it beat Ken Jennings can speak to the huge leap forward Watson's natural language capability is for the way humans interact with computers, but so far the game changing applications of this tool have yet to materialize. If IBM has the capacity, staff, and attention needed to move down in to the SMB SaaS marketing technology market, companies like Sailthru and AgilOne may have a new competitor.
However showing a Mom & Pop store what their inventory is, using data the store already keeps is one thing; managing and cross-referencing omni-channel transactions and behaviors from hundreds of thousands of customers to achieve true 1:1 marketing is another . Maybe Watson Analytics is another competitor down-market from Good Data and Tableau? My guess is this is a pincer movement meant to squeeze out some of the weaker competition in the mid-market marketing technology and analytics space, expect to see some M&A.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2014/09/16/ibm-hopes-to-lure-new-data-hungry-customers-with-freemium-watson-analytics-tool/
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