The developers of a super computer that can think for itself, process data in seconds and even learn from its mistakes say it will revolutionise business on a global scale.

IBM's computer, called Watson, shot to fame when it took out American quiz show Jeopardy in 2011.

Now the company says the cloud-based technology is set to revolutionise the way companies interact with their customers.

"I think it's going to make a dramatic impact on government services, the finance sector, telecommunications, health care, pretty much every sector that we work in," IBM engineer Glen Wightwick said.

The size of eight refrigerators, Watson is super smart, understanding human speech, crunching problems, understanding data and giving the best answer.

John Gordon, the vice-president of IBM Watson Solutions, says it can also learn from its own mistakes within seconds.

"Just like you and I do, every time we go into different a situation with a good or bad result, it helps us inform what we're going to do next, so we use that with Watson so it can make decisions," he said.

He says Watson is a new type of computer system and marks the beginning of an era of cognitive computing.

"In the past, where we used to program computers and teach them rules about how to work," Mr Gordon said.

ANZ becomes one of the first to sign up

"With Watson, we give it information the way we want it to learn, the way you teach a person, and it goes through and understands all the information and then it goes through practice questions and answers to learn."

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The technology has the potential to transform customer service, marketing and sales, as data can be processed in record times and customer solutions can be personalised with little effort.

The ANZ bank is so convinced, it has become one of the first companies in the world to sign up.

"From a bank perspective, it gives them the opportunity to know their customers better, as a consequence of that, cross-sell more effectively, and that's about deepening relationships," said Alex Boorman from financial services researcher RFi.

"From a customer's perspective, I think it has the potential to make their lives easier, to do what they want to do from a bank perspective, and do it faster."

Mr Gordon says the cloud-based technology means there will be no hardware for clients to worry about.

"It gives us an ability to stand it up very quickly on new customers information, but also it allows companies of all sizes to benefit from using it because they don't have to manage the technology of Watson, they can just leverage the benefits of cognitive computing," he said.