IBM’s new capability innovations bring data and AI together

Recognising that the imperative for businesses to embed AI into their processes has become even more urgent during the pandemic and believing hybrid cloud and AI as the path to future business success, IBM has announced new and innovative advances in AI, hybrid cloud and quantum computing.

Unveiled during the company’s Think conference, these innovations are designed to equip businesses for the next stage of their digital journeys, to help companies fast-track their digital transformations and ultimately drive better business outcomes.

Pandemic pushed the button on AI

According to IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, the pandemic has been a catalyst for digital transformation, with businesses increasingly realising the need to create a clear and credible path to modernising their misson-critical systems and that AI is the way to do this.

“We will look back on this year and last as the moment the world entered the digital century in full force,” says Krishna, adding that “in the same way that we electrified factories and machines in the past century, we will use hybrid cloud to infuse AI into software and systems in the 21st century”.

A recent IBM study proves this, with 43% of IT professionals saying their companies had accelerated their rollout of AI as a result of the pandemic with 80% of companies already using automation software or planning to use this technology in the next 12 months.

“As organisations move to a post-pandemic world, data from the Global AI Adoption Index 2021 underscores a major uptick in AI investment,” says Rob Thomas, Senior VP, IBM Cloud and Data Platform.

According to Thomas, a large majority of those investments continue to be focused on three key capabilities that define AI for business, including automating IT and processes, building trust in AI outcomes, and understanding the language of business, and that these investments “will continue to accelerate rapidly as customers look for new, innovative ways to drive their digital transformations by taking advantage of hybrid cloud and AI”.

New capabilities bringing data and AI together

And this is why IBM is innovating, and has recently invested heavily in building rich and powerful AI capabilities for business, announcing new capabilities that will bring AI and data together, that will transform how companies develop, deploy and operate IT.

• Cloud Pak for Data - new capabilities bringing data and AI together

AI to help automate how customers access, unify and manage data anywhere A breakthrough capability in Cloud Pak for Data that uses AI to help customers get answers to distributed queries as much as 8x faster than previously and at nearly half the cost of other compared data warehouses. AutoSQL automates how customers access, integrate and manage data without ever having to move it, and solves one of the most critical pain points customers face as they look to reduce the complexity of curating data for AI and eliminate the high cost of moving data.

• Watson Orchestrate – helps professionals automate work to increase productivity

The latest AI-powered automation capability from IBM, Watson Orchestrate is designed to help people reclaim a significant amount of their time to focus on more strategic tasks. This new interactive AI capability can increase personal productivity of business professionals across sales, human resources and operations. Requiring no IT skills, it enables professionals to initiate work in a very human way using collaboration tools such as Slack and email in natural language. It also connects to popular business applications like Salesforce, SAP and Workday.