IBM will make Pitney Bowes’ location intelligence solutions available on its “BlueMix” platform-as-a-service development environment. This will make it easier for developers to embed Pitney Bowes’ location information and services in their own mobile products.
BloomReach, a machine learning-based e-commerce recommendation platform, announced it has purchased Hippo, a personalized Web content management system. Clearly they complement each other. But in a world where everything is supposed to plug into everything else via APIs, it’s interesting to see what looks suspiciously like old-school product integration. Are they telling us that API integrations aren’t quite as smooth as promised?
The Weather Company launched Watson Ads today, the first-ever consumer use of IBM Watson technology for advertising purposes. Watson Ads let consumers interact with a brand via IBM Watson, by allowing them to ask questions via voice or text and receive highly personalized information about the brand’s advertised product or offering.
Do not confuse Snow Software, which helps companies track IT costs, with Snowflake, a cloud database often used for CDP-ish solutions. Do take note that Snow has just been sold to Flexera, which also helps companies optimize their return on tech investments. It’s a helpful reminder that cost-conscious IT departments are more than happy to “help” marketers who are doing a poor job of controlling tech spend.