Leader: IBM

IBM services span all segments of the cloud AI developer services CAIDS market, ranking third for vision and fourth in execution on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based company has consolidated its AI offering under the Watson brand, and refined its requirements for products and services to clarify Watson’s positioning.

IBM has strengthened the integration between its industry-leading research division and its product organizations to ensure that IBM innovations are added to products in a timely fashion. IBM leads with a true hybrid cloud strategy that appeals to most customers.

Strength: IBM’s language services are especially strong. Developers can integrate IBM Watson Assistant, Watson Natural Language Understanding and Watson Discovery to streamline discovery and creation of intents and entities.

Weakness: Although IBM’s offerings are comprehensive, it is lacking in some areas, such as image labeling and image generation. Additionally, some customers have stated that IBM’s pricing is excessive, with high transaction costs.