Oversize #8: Getting weather forecasts spot on, the IBM way
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Editor's note: When IBM announced the acquisition of The Weather Company in 2015, many people joked about whether the company misunderstood what ‘cloud’ meant as other tech majors at the time were transitioning to cloud computing. IBM’s acquisition brought together the company’s advanced artificial intelligence and cloud capabilities with The Weather Company’s high volume of weather data, with the aim of improving responses to the weather’s impact on businesses, and result in better decision-making. Ray Wang, principal analyst of Constellation Research, had stated that IBM was looking to acquire data sources as part of its overall transformation from software to insights. At the time, The Weather Company handled 26 billion inquiries daily—that’s several times more than Google! Its sophisticated weather modelling analyzed 100 terabytes of third-party data daily and generated 4GB of new data every second. The acquisition boosted IBM’s credentials in predictive analytics, which would grow to be a core offering as part of IBM Watson—IBM’s suite of enterprise-ready AI services and tools—as well as in the company’s smart city projects. Half a trillion dollars of economic impact annually is due …
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