ARMONK, N.Y., Dec. 4, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Watson Analytics, a breakthrough natural language-based cognitive service that can provide instant access to powerful predictive and visual analytic tools for businesses, is available in beta. See Vine (vine.co/v/Ov6uvi1m7lT) for a sneak peek now. IBM Watson Analytics automates the once time-consuming tasks such as data preparation, predictive analysis, and visual storytelling for business professionals. Offered as a cloud-based freemium service, all business users can now access Watson Analytics from any desktop or mobile device. Since being announced on September 16, more than 22,000 people have already registered for the beta. The Watson Analytics Community, a user group for sharing news, best practices, technical support and training, is also accessible starting today.

This news follows IBM's recently announced global partnership with Twitter, which includes plans to offer Twitter data as part of IBM Watson Analytics.

To view today's news and access a video to be shared, visit the Watson Analytics Storybook: https://ibm.biz/WAStorybook.

Learn more about how IBM Watson Analytics works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NU6DA_cZtc

In its biggest announcement in a decade as leader in analytics, IBM announced Watson Analytics, a breakthrough natural language-based cognitive service that can provide instant access to powerful predictive and visual analytic tools for businesses. Offered as a cloud-based freemium service, Watson Analytics offers a full range of self-service analytics, including access to easy-to-use data refinement and data warehousing services that make it easier for business users to acquire and prepare data – beyond simple spreadsheets – for analysis and visualization that can be interacted with and acted upon. And unlike analytics offerings designed primarily for data scientists and analysts predominantly focused on visualization, IBM Watson Analytics automates steps like data preparation, predictive analysis, and visual storytelling for business professionals across data intensive disciplines including marketing, sales, operations, finance and human resources.

As part of its effort to equip all professionals with the tools needed to do their jobs better, Watson Analytics provides business professionals with a unified experience and natural language dialogue so they can better understand data and more quickly reach business goals. For example, a marketing, HR or sales rep can quickly source data, cleanse and refine it, discover insights, predict outcomes, visualize results, create reports and dashboards and explain results in familiar business terms.

To access the beta, visit: watsonanalytics.com

SOURCE IBM

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