IBM stamps its pedal to the metal: Spark flies onto Big Blue's Bluemix

IBM has made its planned Apache Spark service available on its Bluemix cloud platform. The service was announced in June, when IBM pledged 3,500 staffers to Apache's analytics project, with Spark also becoming the basis of IBM's analytics and commerce platforms and its Watson Health Cloud. Spark-as-a-service will be available …

[SecretSonOfHG]

IBM can win data scientists as an alternative to... Excel?

Seems that IBM is clouding (no pun intended) the product segmentation: Excel is used by data scientists and by almost everyone as a presentation tool. But anyone buying Spark as a sort of up-scaled Excel is a making a big, big mistake, similar to the ones that bought MS SQL Server as an up-scaled Access. These are very different beasts and in the best case, you'll be merely wasting a lot of money in Spark.

[elDog]

Bbbbut - analytics is where it's at, right? And now it's all becoming Machine Learning

I actually think this quote is right on:

Analytics isn't a friendly world for users. The apps are pricey, there are lots of high-priced consultants, and it's a bit like ERP or CRM in that the final software never quite lives up to original expectations. The second you deploy it, it's out of date.

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh!

Look, IBM is grasping at straws here.

Yes, they still have some smart people, however... they really don't have 3500 bodies who can add value to spark based analytic work.

IBM is still hurting and they have to try to turn things around. The only problem is that they are attacking the problem using the same methodologies that they always have. The one lesson that they haven't learned is that their old way of doing things is part of the massive problem and why they will still not be successful.

Posted Anon for the obvious reasons.