SAN FRANCISCO – IBM's bold push of its Watson AI technology to the masses may produce product and services opportunities, but the democratization of AI won't happen overnight. Perhaps the strongest message at the IBM Think 2019 event here was the company's "Watson anywhere" strategy to allow customers to run Watson AI services on any public cloud or in any hybrid cloud environment. "You might call this the democratization of Watson and the effect should find a growing number of organizations leveraging IBM AI technologies across various business processes," said Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT in Hayward, Calif. This "democratization" comes from IBM's services heritage to meet customers where they are technologically. To gain an advantage in the quickening AI race, IBM is giving folks the opportunity to use Watson on any cloud they want.