<story><title>Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/13/jefferies-gives-ibm-watson-a-wall-street-reality-check/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway9980</author><text>IBM vastly over promises with their marketing. It is so frustrating to have to answer questions from the CEO about why we don&amp;#x27;t solve all our problems with magic beans from IBM&amp;#x27;s Watson.&lt;p&gt;I understand that this is what they want. They want to drive executives&amp;#x27; interest in the product, but I believe they do so at the expense of their goodwill with the tech community.&lt;p&gt;Am I the only one who cringes when these ads air?&lt;p&gt;Edit: &amp;quot;magic beans&amp;quot; is harsh and it isn&amp;#x27;t that I don&amp;#x27;t think their tools are good. My point is that they put you in a position where it seems very unlikely to meet expectations.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wmccullough</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m happy to be harsh because I&amp;#x27;ve had years and years of experience dealing with IBM.&lt;p&gt;Their tools are trash for the cost they want. The majority of their offerings are overengineered and prone to failure in a production setting.&lt;p&gt;They are pros at selling to non-technical management, all the while IT employees get stuck dealing with the aftermath.&lt;p&gt;We ended up getting stuck with the IBM version of work item management, called Jazz Team Concert. From the &amp;quot;source control&amp;quot; to the actual setup and configuration, the product was a nightmare. The worst part was when we looked at license renewal. They wanted three quarters of a million dollars for something that was essentially dog shit wrapped in cat shit.&lt;p&gt;In case you thought I might be on the fence with IBM, I&amp;#x27;ll add one final clarifying point:&lt;p&gt;Fuck IBM.</text></comment>
<story><title>Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/13/jefferies-gives-ibm-watson-a-wall-street-reality-check/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway9980</author><text>IBM vastly over promises with their marketing. It is so frustrating to have to answer questions from the CEO about why we don&amp;#x27;t solve all our problems with magic beans from IBM&amp;#x27;s Watson.&lt;p&gt;I understand that this is what they want. They want to drive executives&amp;#x27; interest in the product, but I believe they do so at the expense of their goodwill with the tech community.&lt;p&gt;Am I the only one who cringes when these ads air?&lt;p&gt;Edit: &amp;quot;magic beans&amp;quot; is harsh and it isn&amp;#x27;t that I don&amp;#x27;t think their tools are good. My point is that they put you in a position where it seems very unlikely to meet expectations.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>_delirium</author><text>&amp;quot;Watson&amp;quot; made more sense to me when I realized it was just a branding term for any AI-related product, API, or service offered by IBM, which vary widely in functionality. That fact is not &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; hidden [1], but their marketing doesn&amp;#x27;t exactly emphasize it. If you view it that way, &amp;quot;Watson&amp;quot; should just be compared against any other similarly broad AI-as-a-service offering with strengths and weaknesses, not treated as some integrated Intelligence that will solve all your problems.&lt;p&gt;[1] E.g. they&amp;#x27;re pretty open about renaming existing things to fit under the Watson brand: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ibm.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;bluemix&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;predictive-analytics-renamed-watson-machine-learning-service&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ibm.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;bluemix&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;predictive-analyti...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>