Look for cognitive systems in IT services marketplace

A cognitive system is not just a machine-learning algorithm, though training it to see patterns in data and understand it in context is a big part of it, Hurwitz said. These are huge, complex systems comprising many parts, all resting on the foundation of a public cloud, private cloud or on-premises infrastructure. Layered on top of that are internal and external data sources -- unstructured data, such as text, video and images, and structured data, such as database records -- and data access and management services. Another key component of cognitive systems is ontologies. These are databases of knowledge on specific topics the systems churn through and learn from.