As IBM Builds a Channel Ecosystem for Watson, Will Partners Come?

At the recently concluded Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, IBM (IBM) chief executive Ginny Rometty, in a move to breathe more life into the vendor’s $1 billion commitment last January to build a business around its Watson advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system, challenged developers to build applications that could best take advantage of Watson’s technology.

Rometty dangled some persuasive rewards—the 25 finalists will be awarded their own Watson API sandbox to build a prototype and the three winners will be awarded IBM mentoring support and sandbox access to build the next Watson-powered application. The idea, of course, is to kickstart Watson’s makeover into a revenue- and profit-generating business, extending its AI natural language capabilities beyond that of a novelty or showpiece.

There’s more, however, to IBM’s overtures than a developer challenge or populating an app store. Quietly, IBM is looking to quasi-mainstream Watson by building a wide network of third-party cloud-focused partners, perhaps including developers, ISVs, SIs, channel partners, MSPs and others. Compared to the Watson developer challenge and other, more publicity-grabbing headlines, it’s a move overshadowed and soft-peddled but it’s equally as important, if not more so.

The vendor’s still cautious about its words around the program, but Sandy Carter, IBM Ecosystem Development general manager, wrote in a recent blog post that the vendor is slowly making available the supercomputer’s “powerful capabilities to Business Partners using cloud technologies.”

Carter said IBM intentionally has limited access by its business partners to Watson but it is “gradually expanding the program and access to the Watson Developer Cloud and experimenting with different ways to give access to ISVs that want to build a Powered by Watson application.”

Last fall, IBM declared that it wanted to build a Watson app store along the lines of what Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL) and others have done with mobile apps. So far, some 1,500 entities of one sort or another have responded to the clarion call, according to IBM. That’s a start but not a network.

Rometty has plans for Watson to be a $10 billion business in four years but last fall the platform had generated sales of less than $100 million. Now, there’s a snag that might slow Watson’s business model even further, as Manoj Saxena, the unit’s head who’s been with IBM for seven years, has exited to join a venture capital fund called The Entrepreneurs’ Fund. Michael Rhodin, an IBM senior vice president, now is managing the Watson business.