Enterprise Cognitive Computing Applications: Opportunities and Challenges

Enterprise cognitive computing applications are generating a great deal of excitement for organizations. However their business impact is yet to emerge on a large scale. An important reason for this is a lack of understanding of how such applications can contribute to a company’s business objectives, and of the challenges associated with implementing them. In this article we provide an overview of cognitive computing applications for the enterprise. In particular we provide a classification of opportunities for developing enterprise cognitive computing applications and describe challenges in implementing them. Our findings are based on a study of fifty-one initiatives of enterprise cognitive computing applications across a broad range of industries in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Given the lack of systematic description regarding what is possible from enterprise cognitive computing, we believe this article will be valuable to researchers and practitioners in unpacking the black box of cognitive computing. This paper, © 2017 IEEE, was originally published in the July/August 2017 edition of IT Professional, a journal by the IEEE Computer Society. The content is reprinted with permission from IEEE.