What impact will cognitive technologies have on enterprise IT?

For enterprises at the forefront of digital transformation, it's hard to underestimate the value that cognitive technologies bring to data-driven business processes. More than just automation, cognitive computing kicks things up to the next level by attempting to mimic human thought, both in terms of perception and the ability to make informed, even intuitive, decisions. There are many forms of cognitive computing--some of them familiar, some bordering on the esoteric. Machine learning is probably the most common form today, powering much of the search and e-commerce services available on the web. But more advanced forms of artificial intelligence are well along the development path, and these are already uniting with speech recognition software and other technologies to produce in ways that can revolutionize business throughout the next few years.