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HPE vs IBM Watson: Machine learning is 'more than an opportunity for expensive consulting' says software GM

"API to API" rivalry continues

HPE has maintained an aggressive stance on the company's proposed future in machine learning and AI at this week's Discover 2016 conference in Las Vegas. Today, HP Software general manager Robert Youngjohn took another glove off, slyly describing IBM's Watson as "expensive consulting with a smaller technology platform".

Youngjohn's comments came after he pledged to "take [IBM] on" directly "API to API" during yesterday's Discover 2016 keynote, directly comparing Watson with HPE's own Haven OnDemand solution.

When asked to qualify his comments, Youngjohn replied: "There is a lot of publicity about IBM Watson, clearly, and whenever people talk about machine learning and AI they also say 'Well, what about IBM Watson?' and I think our approach is really fundamentally different," Youngjohn began.

"When we say machine learning and deep analytics being embedded into almost every workload, every application that exists, we don't see it as an opportunity to engage with our customers on some very expensive consulting with a smaller technology platform."

Youngjohn said his "API to API" comments were merely made to highlight a "difference in approach" between the two companies, but nevertheless added: "We're convinced of the depth and breadth of the technology we have to win the battle."

Haven OnDemand was launched in 2014 with the tagline "bringing understanding and insight to the cloud" and carefully advertises itself as a series of services, such as speech recognition, image analysis, indexing and search.

That's compared to IBM's general vision of a machine learning and AI "partnership" between people and computers, in which Watson can be made available as an all-in-one "off-the-shelf" package with a personified, market-perceived 'gestalt' intelligence.

HPE CEO Meg Whitman said yesterday that machine learning is "powering the future" of the enterprise.

HPE vs IBM Watson: Machine learning is 'more than an opportunity for expensive consulting' says software GM

"API to API" rivalry continues

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