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IPsoft, a provider of autonomic and cognitive technology solutions, has announced a partnership with consulting services firm Deloitte to bring IPsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology to bear in Deloitte engagements.
Deloitte will use IPsoft’s autonomic and cognitive computing offerings—IPcenter and Amelia—to deliver solutions and services to its customers.
IPcenter is IPsoft’s autonomic IT management platform that helps organizations automate their IT operations. The platform features a library of more than 20,000 automations and more than 1,000 “Virtual Engineers” to help automate IT service delivery. IPsoft’s Virtual Engineers are automated agents that use AI to mimic the work of human engineers to automate the interaction between all of the different tools and people in an IT environment.
Meanwhile, Amelia is a cognitive agent that communicates with customers in natural language and is able to take on service desk roles such as helping customers open new bank accounts, processing insurance claims or registering patients for hospital entry. Like IBM’s Watson cognitive computing system, Amelia emulates human intelligence and continues to learn and improve with each new engagement.
Deloitte projects that the cognitive computing market in the United States will continue to grow to more than $50 billion by 2018.
“By collaborating with IPsoft, we’re building solutions to solve real client issues and create new opportunities for cost savings and operating efficiencies,” said Ranjit Bawa, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, and Deloitte cloud and infrastructure leader, in a statement. “The industry is at a great inflection point in autonomics—and together, we’re able to bring our deep-sector knowledge and IPsoft’s innovative solutions to the forefront.”
Chetan Dube, president and CEO of IPsoft, said he believes the market lacks expertise in advanced automation.
However, “Deloitte understands the value of advanced autonomic and cognitive solutions in delivering end-to-end digital services that help clients differentiate themselves in hotly contested global markets,” he said.
This is not IPsoft’s first alliance with a major consulting company involving its AI technology. In May, IPsoft announced a deal with Accenture, which launched an Accenture Amelia practice to bring the digital employee to clients in the banking, insurance and travel industries.
Paul Daugherty, Accenture’s chief technology officer, called the Accenture Amelia practice an important step forward in advancing the business potential of artificial intelligence.
In a related alliance, in March, IBM announced a partnership with KPMG, a tax, audit and advisory firm, to use Watson on KPMG’s professional services offerings, including auditing services. On its own, KPMG had already joined the cognitive era, where systems have begun to “think” for themselves. KPMG has implemented several projects that tap into cognitive technologies.
For instance, KPMG has developed a secure, online due diligence platform called Astrus, which harvests and analyzes vast amounts of data to identify integrity and reputational risk issues on third parties around the world, Steve Hill, U.S. head of innovation at KPMG, told eWEEK.
“The insights we’re deriving from Astrus technologies are built on top of IBM Watson and have made us more efficient and are improving every day,” Hill said. “IBM Watson technologies improve the quality of insights and reduce the amount of time we need to spend in primary research. In just a matter of minutes, analysts have access to material that helps them delve more deeply and effectively into analysis of a subject.”
More recently, KPMG engaged IBM Watson to build a prototype of how to use cognitive technologies in auditing a financial institution’s various credit rating processes, Hill added.
“As part of that program, the IBM Watson tool will ingest large quantities of credit file materials and be taught to make judgments that will augment our auditors’ ability to test our clients’ controls around credit risk,” he said. “Watson technology will allow application of the judgments to a much larger portfolio of credit files than we ever could perform manually, and will deliver a list of exceptions on which we can follow up. The results have been very impressive, which lead us to a large scale adoption.”