IBM redefines business intelligence with watsonx BI

IBM announced the general availability of watsonx BI, a business insights agent that helps unlock the value of data and transform it into clear, actionable insights to drive smart, fast decisions.

Watsonx BI integrates the power of generative artificial intelligence (AI) with a governed semantic model to deliver consistent, enterprise-grade insights, according to IBM.

By capturing business logic in a centralized semantic layer, it enables organizations to define metrics that align with their unique standards and definitions. This ensures every insight is grounded in business definitions, not generic AI assumptions, fostering trust, accuracy and alignment across teams.

Watsonx BI boosts the productivity of data and analytics teams

“Watsonx BI is more than a business intelligence tool. It’s a conversational insight agent that understands your business and delivers instant, actionable insights,” stated Bruno Aziza, VP, data, AI and analytics strategy at IBM.

The tool analyzes all data to reveal what’s happening, why it matters, emerging trends and future possibilities. Every response is transparent, showing data sources, filters, columns and the underlying query logic, making insights explainable and trustworthy, Aziza added.

“Watsonx BI boosts the productivity of data and analytics teams by streamlining the entire insight generation process.” With built-in connectors to diverse data sources, it intelligently interprets metadata to uncover relationships, classify data types and enrich datasets with business context.

“AI-driven automation accelerates every stage, from enrichment to metric creation, reducing manual effort and enabling faster, more reliable insight,” Aziza wrote. “Data stewards play a key role in defining business logic and metrics through a governed modelling process. They can manually create metrics or refine AI-suggested ones based on data patterns, ensuring both accuracy and control.”

Watsonx BI supports a curated selection of large language models (LLMs), including IBM’s own and those from other leading providers, giving organizations the flexibility to align AI choices with compliance and governance needs.

A new era of data-driven decision making

Watsonx BI integrates with existing infrastructure, connecting to data lakehouse, automation workflows and reporting tools. “It delivers contextual insights directly within the platforms your teams already use, lowering adoption barriers and helping to enhance ROI on your data and tech investments,” Aziza said.

The tool can consume metrics from third-party semantic layers and publish its own metrics for reuse across external data applications and, with robust APIs, can also be embedded into third-party apps to enable seamless integration, faster deployment and consistent access to trusted insights across ecosystems.

“IBM watsonx BI marks a new era in data-driven decision-making. It gives business users a simple, intuitive way to get answers – without the noise of complex analytics or dashboards,” Aziza stated.

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