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IBM's Watson & Cloud Now Available to Topcoder Community

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International Business Machines Corporation (IBM - Free Report) has partnered with Topcoder, a global software development community to make its Watson and IBM Cloud services available to more than one million of technology and design experts included in the Topcoder community.

Topcoder conducts online competitive programming competitions called “single round matches” or SRMs fortnightly as well as weekly graphic design and development competitions.

With the partnership, participants of Topcoder-run hackathons and coding competitions can use Watson services such as Sentiment Analysis, Conversation and Speech Application Program Interfaces (API) to develop powerful artificial intelligence and cognitive computing tools.

Moreover, developers will be able to offer their solutions through IBM Marketplace while businesses will be able to access a big pool of talent experienced in Watson.

IBM and Topcoder have been working together on innovative technology since 2008. The new partnership reflects continued commitment of the duo toward developers to help them with artificial intelligence and cognitive computing skills.

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Our Take

We believe that the move will also help IBM boost Watson as it continues to expand its offerings. Last quarter, the company introduced Watson Conversation Service and Watson Virtual Agent for Customer Service. The service has already been selected by the likes of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group.

Additionally, IBM launched Watson for Drug Discovery and Watson Health Core. The company also entered into a partnership with Siemens to help healthcare providers deliver value-based care to patients with chronic conditions such as heart disease and cancer.

IBM's strategic growth initiatives, including its Big Data & business analytics, cloud computing, mobile and social business are expected to drive growth. In addition, the company’s policy of making strategic acquisitions will lead to incremental revenues, strengthening its technology leadership and resulting in a more favorable mix of business.

Zacks Rank and Key Picks

Currently, IBM has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Better-ranked  stocks worth considering in the wider technology sector include Kimball Electronics, Inc. (KE - Free Report) ,  NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA - Free Report) and Stratasys Ltd. (SSYS - Free Report) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

For the current year, the consensus estimate for Kimball Electronics has gone up by 8.1% in the past 30 days. Estimates for NVIDIA and Stratasys have remained unchanged over the same time frame.

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