IBM announced some new Watson-powered cloud apps for the financial services, healthcare, IT services, non-profit, retail, security, and travel industries. This comes as the company opens its new IBM Watson global headquarters in New York.

The company is announced new ecosystem partners across these industries. These include: WayBlazer in travel; Red Ant, Reflexis, and Sellpoints in retail; Findability Sciences in non-profit, LifeLearn in veterinary care; GenieMD, Welltok, and @Point of Care in healthcare; nad SparkCognition and CHIPS Technology Group in IT.

“Built on IBM Cloud with SoftLayer at its base, these apps use Watson’s cognitive intellect in areas as diverse as helping physicians work with patients to better manage their health, assist veterinarians in providing the best possible care to animals, and tapping into personal preferences to help travelers plan the perfect vacation, and many more,” IBM said.

“These innovators, embodying the entrepreneurial spirit, are transforming the ways industry and individuals operate harnessing the power of Watson’s cognitive intellect and creating outcomes once thought impossible to achieve” said Stephen Gold, Vice President of IBM’s Watson Group. “This marks an important milestone for the Watson Ecosystem as we empower organizations to use next generation technology, using information as the cognitive fuel, to help solve formidable challenges across industries.”

For more on what specifically each of these partners is doing, you can peruse the announcement here.

IBM is also extending its cloud-based platform for mobile and web app development, Bluemix, which runs on SoftLayer. New services available include user modeling, machine translation, language identification, concept expansion, message resonance, relationship extraction, question and answer, and visualization rendering. Again, for specifics, click the link above.

All of this follows IBM’s biggest announcement in a decade as an analytics provider – Watson Analytics for businesses to access predictive and visual analytics tools. More on that here.

Image via Facebook