MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — (Marketwired) — 11/14/13 — , the leading online work marketplace, today announced a strategic partnership with IBM to fuel creation of a new generation of apps for the enterprise, powered by the IBM Watson cognitive computing platform. IBM has tapped Elance as their inaugural talent partner to build a Watson Talent Platform.
The move comes as a part of that it is opening up IBM Watson as a development platform for entrepreneurial software application providers — ranging from start-ups to established technology leaders such as — to create apps in the cloud infused with Watson-s cognitive computing intelligence.
“We chose Elance as the ideal inaugural talent partner for the IBM Watson Ecosystem because of their agile, enterprise-ready solution and large community of high-quality freelancers that can be hired on demand,” said Claudia Fan Munce, Managing Director, IBM Venture Capital Group and Vice President, IBM Corporate Strategy. “Our partners can now accelerate time to market by accessing Watson-certified professionals through the Elance Private Talent Cloud.”
As part of this initiative, IBM will connect its app development partners with talent providers who offer freelance professionals specializing in a range of skills needed for creating Watson-powered apps. Elance was selected as an inaugural partner for its breadth of high-quality talent and enterprise-ready talent platform that are key to gaining critical mass for the new initiative.
IBM will leverage the Elance Private Talent Cloud solution in order for IBM-s app development partners to easily find, hire and collaborate with IBM-certified talent who have specialized skills, including:
Big Data and Analytics: information management, data ingestion, data mining, curation, statistics and artificial intelligence
Computational Linguistics: natural language processing, taxonomies
Mobile Application Development & Deployment
User Experience and Design
“Elance is proud to partner with IBM to help fuel an ecosystem that leverages the ingenuity of smart people all over the world, to bring to life a myriad of Watson-powered applications,” said Fabio Rosati, CEO of Elance. “We are also excited to build our own Watson-powered applications to better serve all our clients.”
To ensure that the new IBM Watson-fueled ecosystem comprises the highest-quality freelance candidates, IBM will provide and manage a certification program for Watson-powered app building. View the brief IBM Watson video for more information on the new IBM Watson program: .
For more information on Elance-s enterprise Private Talent Cloud offering, visit . For more information on IBM Watson, please visit .
Elance is where people Work Differently. A pioneer in today-s freelance revolution, Elance is the world-s leading marketplace for online work.
Today over 800,000 businesses and over 3 million freelancers use Elance in 170+ countries. Innovative global enterprises, small businesses and startups tap into the Elance talent pool, building teams from software engineers, application developers and web and graphic designers to copywriters, market researchers, data scientists, social media marketers, customer service agents and other business professionals. More than 1.2 million freelance jobs are posted through Elance annually.
Headquartered in Mountain View, California with offices in Oslo, Norway, Elance is a privately held company. For more information, visit .
For more information on IBM Watson, please visit
To join the social discussion about Watson include the hashtag #ibmwatson
Follow Watson on Facebook:
For more insights on this story please visit the .
Lauren Schulte
Director, Marketing Communications
Elance
Phone: +1 650 316 7433
Email: lschulte (at) elance dot com
You must be logged in to post a comment Login