Lucidworks Integrates IBM Watson into its Enterprise Discovery Platform

Enterprise search software provider Lucidworks is leveraging the IBM Watson Developer Cloud platform in its Fusion platform, an application framework that helps developers to create enterprise discovery applications.

Lucidworks' Fusion is used for creating apps that can help organizations access their information to make better, data-driven decisions. By integrating Watson, Lucidworks says that Fusion can help deliver insights within seconds and can process high volumes of structured and multi-structured data in context, including voice, text, numerical, and spatial data. In addition, the company says, Fusion's platform upgrade with Watson can help to reduce the work and time it takes to create enterprise discovery apps from months of in-house development to only weeks with Watson.

According to Lucidworks, knowledge workers are facing challenges due to constantly expanding quantities of data and documents. With this product update, Lucidworks is bringing next-generation capabilities to enterprise discovery by embedding cognitive computing technology into the Fusion platform and transforming how customers create discovery applications for their data-rich, fast-paced work environments, said Will Hayes, CEO of Lucidworks.

Fusion applies Watson's machine learning capabilities to an organization's proprietary mix of structured and unstructured data so each app gets smarter over time by learning to deliver better answers to users with each query. Fusion also integrates several Watson services such as Retrieve and Rank, Speech to Text, Natural Language Classifier, and AlchemyLanguage to bolster the platform's performance by making it easier to interact naturally with the platform and improving the relevance of query results for enterprise users.

For example, the company says, a Fusion app could use Watson's Speech to Text service to convert the end user's natural language spoken query into text, sending it to the application. As the results are served back to the end user, Fusion can use Watson's Retrieve and Rank service to assess those results for relevancy based on the user's persona, demographic, or previous behavior. Moreover, the vendor says, embedding Watson, a cloud-based cognitive system, bridges the gap between on-premise and cloud based solutions by enabling customers to seamlessly query data in both locations.

For more information, visit http://lucidworks.com/products/fusion/watson.

For more information on IBM Watson, visit ibm.com/watson.