IBM signs $135m Watson predictive maintenance deal with US Army

Watson will be used to optimise the repair and maintenance of the army's vehicles

IBM is to provide cloud services to the US Army, including predicitve maintenance courtesy of its Watson cognitive computing platform.

The contract is to last for two years and nine months and is valued at $135m. It is in effect a continuation of an existing managed services arrangement that commenced in 2012 with the US Army's Logistics Support Activity (LOGSA). However new elements have been added to the package including cognitive computing, cyber security and replacing legacy applications.

Under the managed services agreement the army pays only for cloud services consumed, an arrangement that IBM claims has saved it $15m per year in operational costs.

IBM Watson will be used to optimise the repair and maintenance of the army's vehicles, following a recently completed a proof of concept trial with 10 per cent of the fleet of the Stryker armoured vehicles.

By analysing maintenance records and combining them with sensor data from vehicles LOGSA will be able to recommend optimal repair methods and procedures as well as receiving other insights about the way they are performing.

The tools deployed under the contract include IBM Predictive Maintenance and Quality System which is used to monitor and report on information gathered from devices and equipment and recommend maintenance procedures, and Watson Explorer, a cognitive search and content analysis platform for searching and analysing structured and unstructured data to uncover trends and patterns.

"Over the past four and a half years, LOGSA has benefitted from the business and technical advantages of the cloud," said LOGSA commander Colonel John D. Kuenzli in a statement.

"Now, we're moving beyond infrastructure as-a-service and embracing both platform and software-as-a-service, adopting commercial cloud capabilities to further enhance Army readiness."

Earlier this year IBM announced another contract with the US Army, a five-year deal to provide IaaS services and to enable it to migrate legacy applications to the private cloud.