After announcing in February that it would take core Watson machine learning technology to mainframe clients, IBM Corp. is doubling down on the initiative with recent news that it will open another machine learning hub in Böblingen, Germany. The new hub, which will be the first in Europe, joins four other machine learning centers previously opened by the company and is designed to help IBM increase availability in the face of significant demand.

“These previous hubs have been completely booked, so we wanted to launch them in other areas to expand the capacity,” said Seth Dobrin, Ph.D. (pictured), vice president and chief data officer for IBM analytics at IBM.

Dobrin spoke about this and other topics during a visit to theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, and answered questions from hosts Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and James Kobielus (@jameskobielus) during IBM Fast Track Your Data in Munich, Germany. They also discussed recent announcements at the conference, including new initiatives involving Apache Atlas for governance. (* Disclosure below.)

Opportunity to solve problems in team environment

In addition to the new hub in Germany, IBM had previously opened machine learning centers in California, India, Canada and China. According to Dobrin, the centers provide customers with the opportunity to bring their problems and interact with IBM’s data scientists and machine learning engineers.

“This is where clients can come and learn how to do data science,” Dobrin said. “They bring problems and data to our facilities and learn how to solve a data science problem in a more team-oriented way.”

Dobrin also provided additional details about IBM’s announcement of an Open Data Governance Consortium for Apache Atlas, which involves Hortonworks Inc. as a partner. IBM will be setting up Apache Atlas as a virtual translator dictionary between proprietary metadata platforms.

“For a governance platform to be truly unified, you need to be able to integrate metadata,” Dobrin said. “Proprietary metadata platforms all want to be the master, and when everybody wants to be the master, you can’t get anything done.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of the IBM Fast Track Your Data event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for IBM Fast Track Your Data. Neither IBM nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE