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Industry-first capability to hunt threats across security tools and clouds without moving data

ARMONK, N.Y., Nov. 20, 2019 — IBM today announced Cloud Pak for Security, featuring industry-first innovations to connect with any security tool, cloud or on-premise system, without moving data from its original source. Available today, the platform includes open-source technology for hunting threats, automation capabilities to help speed response to cyberattacks, and the ability to run in any environment.

Cloud Pak for Security is the first platform to leverage new open-source technology pioneered by IBM, which can search and translate security data from a variety of sources, bringing together critical security insights from across a company’s multicloud IT environment. The platform is extensible, so that additional tools and applications can be added over time.

As businesses move further into cloud maturity, applications and data are frequently spread across multiple private and public clouds and on-premise resources. Attempts to protect this fragmented IT environment often require security teams to undertake complex integrations and continuously switch between different screens and point products. In a recent SANS Institute report, sponsored by IBM Security, more than half of security teams surveyed said they struggle to integrate data with disparate security and analytic tools and combine that data across their cloud environments to spot advanced threats.

Three initial capabilities of Cloud Pak for Security include:

• Run anywhere. Connect security openly – IBM Cloud Pak for Security installs easily in any environment – on premises, private cloud or public cloud. It is comprised of containerized software pre-integrated with the Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s most comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes platform. Through the OASIS Open Cybersecurity Alliance, IBM has also forged partnerships with dozens of companies to promote interoperability and help reduce vendor lock-in across the security community through co-developed open source technologies.
• Gain security insights without moving data – Transferring data in order to analyze it creates additional complexity. IBM Cloud Pak for Security can connect data sources to uncover hidden threats and help make more-informed risk-based decisions, while leaving the data where it resides. Through the use of open standards and IBM innovations, clients can access IBM and third-party tools to search for threat indicators across any cloud or on-premise location. Via the Cloud Pak for Security’s Data Explorer application, security analysts can streamline their hunt for threats across security tools and clouds. Without this capability, security teams would have to manually search for the same threat indicators (such as a malware signature or malicious IP address) within each individual environment. Cloud Pak for Security is the first tool that allows this type of search without needing to move that data into the platform for analysis.
• Respond to security incidents faster with automation – IBM Cloud Pak for Security connects security workflows with a unified interface to help teams respond faster to security incidents. According to IBM Security estimates, security teams have to manage an average of 200,000 potential security events per day, and coordinate responses across dozens of tools. IBM Cloud Pak for Security allows clients to orchestrate and automate their security response so they can prioritize their team’s time. The platform allows companies to orchestrate their response to hundreds of common security scenarios, guiding users through the process and providing quick access to security data and tools. IBM’s Security Orchestration, Automation and Response capability integrates with Red Hat Ansible for additional automation playbooks. By formalizing security processes and activities across the enterprise, companies can react quickly and efficiently, while arming themselves with information to help address regulatory requirements.

“As businesses move mission-critical workloads to hybrid multicloud environments, security data is spread across different tools, clouds and IT infrastructure. This can create gaps that allow threats to be missed, leading security teams to build and maintain costly, complex integrations and manual response plans,” said Mary O’Brien, General Manager, IBM Security. “With Cloud Pak for Security, we’re helping to lay the foundation for a more connected security ecosystem designed for the hybrid, multicloud world.”

IBM collaborated with dozens of clients and service providers during the design process, developing a solution to address critical interoperability challenges that permeate the security industry. The Cloud Pak for Security includes connectors for pre-built integrations with popular security tools from IBM, Carbon Black, Tenable, Elastic, BigFix, Splunk, as well as public cloud providers including IBM Cloud, Amazon Web Services² and Microsoft Azure². The solution is built on open standards so that it can connect additional security tools and data from across a company’s infrastructure.

“Organizations have rapidly adopted new security technologies to keep up with the latest threats, but are now juggling dozens of disconnected tools which don’t always work well together,” said Jon Oltsik, Senior Principal Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “The industry needs to solve this issue for customers by shifting to more open technologies and unified platforms that can serve as the connective glue between security point tools. IBM’s approach aligns with this requirement and has the potential to bring together every layer of the security stack within a single, simplified interface.”

To further accelerate industry migration toward open security, IBM is also spearheading open-source projects to make security tools work together natively across the security ecosystem. As a founding member of the Open Cybersecurity Alliance, IBM and more than 20 other organizations are working together on open standards and open source technologies to help enable product interoperability and reduce vendor lock-in across the security community.

Designed for the Hybrid, Multicloud World
Seventy-six percent of organizations surveyed report they are already using between two and 15 hybrid clouds, and 98 percent forecast they will be using multiple hybrid clouds within three years.³ IBM’s Cloud Pak for Security is built on open source technologies that support companies’ cloud environments – including Red Hat OpenShift.

Creating Cloud Pak for Security on these open, flexible building blocks allows for easy “containerized” deployment across any cloud or on premise-environment. As companies continue adding new cloud deployments and migrations, Cloud Pak for Security can adapt and scale to these new environments – allowing clients to bring their sensitive and mission-critical workloads into the cloud while maintaining visibility and control from within a centralized security platform.

Cloud Pak for Security also provides a model to help Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) efficiently operate at scale, connect security silos and streamline their security processes. Organizations can also hire IBM Security for a wide range of additional services, such as on-demand consulting, custom development and incident response.

IBM works with Novate Solutions®, Inc. to Improve Performance of Critical Assets and Operations

ARMONK, N.Y., Nov. 6, 2019 — IBM today announced Maximo Asset Monitor, a new AI-powered monitoring solution designed to help maintenance and operations leaders better understand and improve the performance of their high-value physical assets. An extension of IBM’s market-leading IBM Maximo capabilities, this new solution will help unlock essential insights with AI-powered anomaly detection and provide enterprise-wide visibility into critical equipment performance. The result is faster problem identification that can inform better decisions and reduce downtime.

According to a 2016 report by analyst firm Aberdeen Research, unplanned downtime can cost a company as much as $260,000 an hour. A comprehensive view of asset performance across operations may help reduce downtime, but that visibility has been difficult to achieve due to fragmented legacy systems, data silos and geographic barriers. With Maximo Asset Monitor, organizations can now aggregate data from across the enterprise and combine it with advanced predictive analytics and AI to identify operational patterns. Capabilities like AI-powered anomaly detection can help organizations identify the most important alerts among the hundreds generated daily from critical assets. This can help teams respond quickly to the most critical anomalies and gain greater insights into root cause variables that lead to asset failure.

“As critical assets become more connected, intelligent and complex, the model for operating and maintaining them must evolve. Organizations must move faster to spot patterns and react to maintenance issues quickly, accurately and safely,” said Kareem Yusuf, Ph.D., general manager, IBM IoT. “With the launch of the new Maximo Asset Monitor solution, IBM is helping organizations better understand their data and automate workflows with preventative, predictive and prescriptive maintenance actions to help extend asset life and improve operations. According to IDC, monitoring performance and scheduling repairs with predictive maintenance can reduce maintenance costs by 15-20%, improve asset availability by 20%, and extend the lives of machines by years.^“1

IBM is recognized by analyst firm IDC as a leader in Enterprise Asset Management applications.² IBM Maximo is deployed across 99 countries, seven continents and used by many of the world’s largest organizations. IBM has a long history of working with organizations like Novate Solutions®, Inc. to help monitor and manage their assets and operational performance.

Novate Solutions leverages Maximo Asset Monitor to expand process control services
Novate Solutions is an industrial technology and engineering services firm in California that is collaborating with IBM to develop a new, scalable, remote monitoring and support service for industrial manufacturers. The application of IBM Maximo Asset Monitor enabled by AI and analytics leverages existing infrastructure collected from SCADA systems to detect anomalies to predict system failures. The analysis of data by engineering professionals at Novate’s Support Operations Center provides insights into the root cause of an anomaly and its process implications. These experts are able to identify events that may warrant immediate proactive intervention which enables maintenance and engineering support teams to take action before the control system is designed to react. The ultimate goal of Novate is to improve production reliability and reduce costly unplanned downtime.

“Our goal is to revolutionize how industrial manufacturers utilize data and technology to improve production metrics by providing a scalable service that virtually every manufacturer can afford. We are collaborating with IBM to enable this transformation by leveraging AI technology with IoT data and analytics,” said Rob Mora, executive vice president, Novate Solutions®, Inc. “The ability to recognize anomalies in real-time and proactively make changes to operations can have a tremendous impact on increasing plant reliability and driving continuous improvement for manufacturers of any size.”

New platform designed to help address specific requirements of financial services institutions for regulatory compliance, security and resiliency

ARMONK, N.Y., Nov 6., 2019 — IBM today announced that it has designed the world’s first financial services-ready public cloud. IBM will welcome financial services institutions, and their suppliers, to join the financial services-ready public cloud. Bank of America will be a committed collaborator to use the platform built on IBM’s public cloud. The Bank will host key applications and workloads to support the requirements and privacy and safety expectations of its 66 million banking customers.

The financial services-ready public cloud has been designed to help address the requirements of financial services institutions for regulatory compliance, security and resiliency. This will help financial institutions transact with technology vendors who have met the platform’s requirements. It is the only industry-specific public cloud platform that can provide preventative and compensatory controls for financial services regulatory workloads, multi-architecture support and proactive and automated security, leveraging the industry’s highest levels of encryption certification.

To help develop the control requirements for the platform, IBM has collaborated intensively with Bank of America. The financial services-ready public cloud can potentially enable Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers – from the smallest FinTechs to more established vendors – to focus on their core offerings to financial institutions with the controls for the platform put in place.

“This is one of the most important collaborations in the financial services industry cloud space,” said Cathy Bessant, chief operations and technology officer, Bank of America. “This industry-first platform will allow Bank of America to use the public cloud, putting data security, resiliency, privacy and customer information safety needs at the forefront of decision making. By setting a standard that addresses the concern of hosting highly-confidential information, we aim to drive the public cloud to a safety level that is unmatched.”

The collaboration with IBM marks the next step in Bank of America’s seven-year cloud journey and reflects the Bank’s unwavering commitment to the security and privacy of banking customers while also creating an opportunity to address the unique regulatory and compliance requirements of the financial services industry.

The financial services-ready public cloud is expected to run on IBM’s public cloud, which uses Red Hat® OpenShift® as its primary Kubernetes environment to manage containerized software across the enterprise, and includes more than 190 API driven, cloud native PaaS services to create new and enhanced cloud-native apps.

The project draws upon technology and financial services industry experience earned through IBM’s relationships with 47 of the Fortune 50 companies and the 10 largest financial institutions in the world. Additionally, to help promote a regulatory compliant environment, IBM and Bank of America are working with Promontory, an IBM business unit and a global leader in financial services regulatory compliance consulting.

“The financial services-ready public cloud represents an ongoing focus from Bank of America, IBM and Promontory to help develop a technology ecosystem where regulations can be addressed,” said Bridget van Kralingen, Senior Vice President, Global Industries, Clients, Platforms & Blockchain, IBM. “Together we plan to help our customer address their ongoing compliance requirements, coupled with highly scalable, standardized capabilities that will be built to help serve today’s modern financial services industry.”

“We recognize that we must help create an environment where financial services institutions can address their regulatory requirements and expectations,” said Gene Ludwig, Promontory Founder and CEO. “Bank of America, IBM and Promontory are uniquely suited to help give the industry and vendors confidence in the quality of this cloud platform.”

The financial services-ready public cloud will help give financial institutions an opportunity to more efficiently assess the security, resiliency and compliance of their technology vendors. Participating financial services software providers may benefit from the platform’s security validation. Only ISV or SaaS providers that demonstrate they comply with the platform’s policies will be eligible to deliver offerings through the platform.

New hybrid cloud offerings help migrate mission-critical workloads to the cloud

BARCELONA, Spain, Nov. 5, 2019 — Today at VMworld® Europe 2019, IBM announced an extended partnership with VMware to accelerate hybrid cloud innovation and adoption across global enterprises. Through new and updated technology offerings, IBM is making it easier than ever for enterprises of all sizes to more securely move VMware workloads to the cloud and leverage open technologies to modernize their business operations.

Enterprises are at a critical juncture in their cloud journey as they begin to modernize their most mission-critical workloads in search of greater speed and flexibility. With data often spread across disparate computing environments, clients are embracing a hybrid strategy in which they’re enabling applications to share data across clouds and on premises environments. To date, IBM and VMware have helped nearly 2,000 enterprises on their hybrid cloud journeys, with clients such as American Airlines, Fujifilm, Veritas, Universidad Europea and others adopting IBM Cloud™ and VMware solutions. Clients who turn to IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions can access secured, enterprise-grade features like the highest certified level of key management encryption, and an established ecosystem of third-party services for backup, security, and more.ⁱ

As businesses look to optimize everything from supply chains to core banking systems, IBM and VMware help speed enterprise hybrid cloud adoption through a suite of new solutions that accelerate the migration of critical VMware workloads to IBM’s public cloud in a highly secured, open environment:

• IBM announced plans to release a beta in December 2019 of IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared, offering enterprises of all sizes more options for hybrid cloud adoption. A new multi-tenant solution on IBM’s public cloud using VMware vCloud Director, it will be offered as an alternative to IBM’s single-tenant solution that provides a client-managed environment with full control for the user. IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared can give enterprises of all sizes a flexible, managed environment where they can directly provision their virtual machines on-demand to address the needs of diverse set of projects and businesses. This will free clients from manually installing and managing updates to their virtual infrastructure or managing multiple third-party vendors, instead allowing them to focus on driving innovation. The new solution will be made available through IBM partners or directly to end users so that enterprises of all sizes can utilize IBM’s public cloud with greater flexibility.
• IBM is enabling the automated deployment of Red Hat® OpenShift® directly on top of a client’s VMware Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) environments in IBM’s public cloud as a self-managed solution. This is designed to provide customers with an on-ramp for migrating their mission-critical workloads to the cloud by leveraging their existing VMware footprint. Beginning in December, customers will be able to deploy Kubernetes within this environment more easily in order to modernize existing VMware applications or build new applications on containers alongside their virtual machines, all while maintaining the same level of network control and security policies.
• IBM and HCL Technologies are also collaborating to help clients migrate and modernize VMware workloads on IBM’s public cloud. By onboarding its customers to IBM’s public cloud, HCL will be able to help them quickly modernize their business-critical workloads. At the same time, clients can maintain their cloud with the highest certified levels of security, as well as high availability, to help them with their compliance with data governance obligations. HCL will also work with IBM to transform and modernize VMware applications with Kubernetes and containers leveraging Red Hat OpenShift on IBM’s public cloud.
• IBM Cloud for VMware Mission Critical Workloads and IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services with HyTrust Data Control Integration are now generally available, enabling clients to manage and replicate data across regions to aid them in their data compliance responsibilities. IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services and HyTrust Data Control Integration offers the industry’s highest level of protection for data encryption keys.

“Today’s news highlights the continued momentum we’re driving through our longstanding partnership with VMware and our shared vision to help clients adopt hybrid cloud strategies that can truly modernize their operations,” said Harish Grama, general manager, IBM Public Cloud. “Enterprises are selecting IBM’s public cloud as the best destination to migrate their VM workloads and drive the innovation that will transform their businesses.”

“Cloud is no longer a destination but rather an operating model about which VMware and IBM have a deep understanding,” said Ajay Patel, senior vice president and general manager, Cloud Provider Software business unit, VMware. “We have helped thousands of large global enterprise customers migrate tens of thousands of mission-critical workloads to the cloud and operate them at scale. Once in the IBM Cloud, these customers can transform applications in ways not possible by simply running them on-prem, taking advantage of a rich set of cloud-native services for application development, AI/ML, machine learning and IoT.”

Adoption of IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions continues to grow as enterprises embrace hybrid cloud strategies to help them modernize their operations. For instance, Veritas and Universidad Europea have turned to IBM’s public cloud and VMware to help migrate their mission-critical workloads to the cloud:

• Veritas leveraged VMware tools to migrate their mission-critical workloads from on-premises IT infrastructure to IBM’s public cloud. Veritas chose to work with IBM because it offered flexibility and control with its bare metal server offering and had a large global presence with a network backbone that allowed free data transfer between data centers. With IBM’s public cloud, Veritas was able to migrate with minimal downtime, and adopt a hybrid cloud strategy for modernizing their mission-critical workloads including their customer portal, website, and other backend IT systems.
• Universidad Europea is adopting a hybrid cloud strategy for the next phase of its cloud journey by migrating its IT infrastructure to IBM public cloud. By adopting IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions, Universidad Europea will be able to upgrade and expand its virtual campus, its Universidad Europea Online and transform its offerings to address the current demands of digitally savvy students. For example, the university will be able to manage enrollment fluctuations for online courses, offer innovative digital applications to engage the student learning experience and accelerate time to market for new programs and training initiatives.

ARMONK, N.Y. and LONDON, Oct. 29, 2019 — Policy-makers at a number of central banks around the world are seriously considering developing and issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC), with a consumer-ready CBDC likely to arrive in the next five years. That is the key finding from a report from IBM (NYSE: IBM) and OMFIF, a central banking think tank.

The report, commissioned by IBM, encompasses an in-depth survey of officials from 23 central banks in advanced and emerging economies. The findings present a holistic picture of policy-makers’ approaches to setting up a retail CBDC. The survey projects that the first CBDC will be produced within five years in a small economy and respond to a specific policy objective with a well-defined use.

A consumer-ready CBDC is likely to require some form of public-private partnership. Central banks are hampered in their ability to offer financial services, and private companies will probably fill the gap.

Without regulation, private sector digital currencies could possibly undermine central banks’ monetary sovereignty and threaten financial stability. Central banking policy-makers and regulators increasingly acknowledge that understanding and, where appropriate, incorporating these technologies into their own functions may have to be an essential part of their mandate.

Key findings:

• In dealing with digital currencies, policy objectives will remain central bankers’ pre-eminent concern; advances in technology alone will not determine how CBDCs are designed or whether they will be introduced.
• 73% of central bank survey respondents would require retail CBDCs to be available under all circumstances and for all types of payments where cash is currently used.
• More than half of respondents said they were very concerned about the possibility that private challengers like Libra would critically undermine monetary sovereignty.
• 82% of those responding said their greatest financial stability concern from CBDC implementation was the risk of digital bank ‘runs’ which could damage stability and confidence.
• 64% of respondents said outsourceable ‘intermediation’ functions, such as customer onboarding, would be important for CBDC implementation.

‘The concept of retail CDBCs has moved rapidly from being the thought experiment of technical experts and philosophers to the subject of boardroom debates focused on tangible, near-term reforms,’ said Philip Middleton, OMFIF deputy chairman. ‘When senior central bankers speculate publicly about the possibility of a universal digital currency, it is a happy endorsement of the reports’ timeliness.’

‘Central banks surveyed are interested in positioning themselves to launch their own retail CBDCs, as the findings of this report make clear,’ said Saket Sinha, global vice president, IBM Blockchain Financial Services. ‘Large banks and technology companies will have a major role to play as new public private partnerships are formed to promote interoperability, create services, and extend financial inclusion.’

The survey was conducted between July-September 2019, involving central banks from 13 advanced economies and 10 emerging markets.

Welcome to the World Premiere of HCL Domino, Notes, and Sametime v11, and Connections v6.5. HCL global launch begins.

Join live broadcast from Tokyo on December 4

HCL global launch begins. New versions of Domino, Connections and Sametime — live demos, news, roadmaps, technical sessions.

Welcome to the World Premiere of Domino, Notes, and Sametime v11, and Connections v6.5. This will be a historic day, marking the first major product releases for these iconic products under HCL Digital Solutions. Tune in live to hear the latest product features, hear from thought leaders, and find out how you can upgrade to the latest versions.

AGENDA includes:

• Live from Tokyo Keynote: A Major HCL Milestone.
  Richard Jefts, General Manger, HCL Digital Solutions
• Domino V11: Why Modernizing Beats Migrating.
• Domino V11 Demo: One Vendor, One Solution, One Stack. The Only Stack You Need.
  Andrew Manby, Vice President of Product Management, HCL Domino
• We Hear You: HCL Connections 6.5 = More Value from Your Investment.
• Boost Engagement with HCL Connections 6.5: We’ll Show You How.
  Danielle Baptiste, Vice President of Product Management, HCL Connections
• Get Started with Domino V11 and Connections 6.5 Today.
  François Nasser, Global Sales Leader, HCL Digital Solutions

For registration, please, go to the page: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/8965223601101319179

ARMONK, N.Y., Oct. 25, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — today announced that the IBM public cloud has been named a 2019 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for cloud infrastructure as a service.

The Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice Distinction is based on feedback and ratings from end-user professionals who have experience purchasing, implementing and using cloud infrastructure as a service, worldwide. Gartner defines cloud infrastructure as a service as a standardized, highly automated offering, where compute resources, complemented by storage and networking capabilities, are owned by a service provider and offered to the customer on demand. The resources are scalable and elastic in near real time, and metered by use. Self-service interfaces are exposed directly to the customer, including a web-based UI and an API. The resources may be single-tenant or multitenant, and hosted by the service provider or on-premises in the customer’s data center. Thus, this market covers both public and private cloud IaaS offerings.

Enterprises are operating in a hybrid multicloud landscape, and they will find themselves at different points on this spectrum for the next several years as they migrate, modernize, and build new applications to the cloud. Public cloud plays a critical role in this hybrid architecture because of the efficiency, scale and access to high value services it provides for even the most complex workloads.

The IBM public cloud delivers the capabilities required by the world’s largest and most complex enterprises, including market leading security, data and app protection; open source innovation; and enterprise-grade capabilities for the most robust workloads.

“Building on thousands of engagements with clients from every industry, IBM continues to enhance our public cloud to meet the requirements of clients in even the most heavily regulated environments,” said Harish Grama, General Manager, IBM Public Cloud. “Enterprises from all over the world and from every industry are entrusting their business to the IBM public cloud. I believe being named a 2019 Customers’ Choice for cloud infrastructure as a service demonstrates the important role IBM Cloud is playing in accelerating the cloud journey, regardless of where clients are starting.”

LOS ANGELES & TOKYO – TBCASoft, IBM and SoftBank Corp. today announced that they are entering into a strategic collaboration to support the transformation of the telecommunications industry that is intended to use cross-carrier blockchain technology designed to enable new synergies throughout the industry, provide new services to telecom carriers and their subscribers, and foster innovative business models.

Based on the planned agreement, TBCASoft will bring technology and solutions, IBM will bring its blockchain technology, experience in integrating and scaling blockchain networks, and software solutions, and SoftBank will bring its telecommunications expertise to the collaboration. Together, the companies will aim to enable carriers to leverage blockchain technology through the Carrier Blockchain Study Group (CBSG) Consortium, a global carrier blockchain consortium co-founded by TBCASoft and SoftBank.

The three companies share a common vision and believe that carriers are well-positioned to harness the benefits of blockchain technology. TBCASoft has created a cross-carrier blockchain network that already includes 18 participants. This network is designed to support several industry-specific use cases including cross-border payments, digital identity, and telecom supply chain, leading to substantial opportunities for industry members.

The first application to be launched by the CBSG Consortium is the Cross-Carrier Payment System (CCPS), which will be designed to allow traveling mobile subscribers to use their mobile payment app with local merchants while abroad. TBCASoft blockchain technology aims to help optimize transaction records and clearing between different telecom carriers, also referred to as over-the-top (OTT) payment solutions. CCPS provides interoperability across different OTT payment networks, making established networks of merchants instantly available to telecom carrier subscribers.

IBM has worked closely with TBCASoft to define the consortium strategy, and, through this new strategic collaboration, will also support the scaling of the ecosystem, leveraging the experience gained through working with 80% of the world’s telecommunication carriers. To provide telecom carriers added flexibility, TBCASoft plans to use IBM Blockchain Platform in its blockchain stack to offer open technology that can be used in multiple cloud environments.

SoftBank is one of the founders of the CBSG Consortium and the first adopter of CCPS. The Japanese telecom leader is providing industry expertise, strategic support and technical services to make the launch of CCPS possible. SoftBank aims to launch the payment system in Tokyo in 2020.

Ling Wu, Founder and CEO of TBCASoft, said, “As the global pioneer of cross-carrier blockchain solutions, we have been working closely with leading telecommunication carriers in the past 3 years under the CBSG consortium to drive adoption of CCPS platform. As the technology provider of CCPS, we are extremely excited to see the strong momentum of the platform and how it is positioned as an important pillar of the telecommunication transformation strategy. We believe that this collaboration will bring greater combined values to our customers, partners, and the telecommunication industry.”

Utpal Mangla, Vice President & Partner for Blockchain, IBM Telecommunications Services said, “As telecommunication networks evolve and we move into 5G era, carriers will help transform into digital service providers and provide consistent customer experiences across multiple platforms. Leveraging a telecommunications blockchain network that can enable improved cross-carrier relations, cross carrier payment can help transform the way telecom carriers transact with partners and customers to deliver innovative payment solutions.”

Daichi Nozaki, VP & Head of SoftBank Corp. Global Business Division, said, “We are proud to contribute to this project, which utilizes our expertise as the first adopter of the CCPS platform. We look forward to working on this ecosystem transformation initiated by the telecommunications industry, with carriers around the world united as one through blockchain technology.”

Terms and details of the definitive agreement will be finalized in the coming months.

New capabilities make IBM’s public cloud the most open and secure platform for enterprises to run their core business

ARMONK, N.Y., today announced that clients in highly regulated industries, including Aegean Airlines, BNP Paribas, Elaw Tecnologia SA and Home Trust, are selecting IBM Cloud as their preferred destination for mission-critical workloads.

IBM also announced new capabilities that make its public cloud the industry’s most secure and open cloud for business, including:

• The industry’s only commercially available state-of-art cryptographic technology for the cloud called “Keep Your Own Key.”¹ This gives enterprises the ability to retain control of their own encryption keys — and the hardware security modules that protect them — so customers are the only ones who can control access to their data.
• Increased bandwidth for its next-gen virtual servers on the cloud up to 80 Gbps, making the IBM public cloud hyperscale-ready. Designed so enterprises can access IBM public cloud services and scale their networks quicker than ever before, all within a controlled, secured environment that is suited for sensitive workloads.
• An expansion of IBM’s global cloud data center footprint with new multizone regions (MZR) planned for Toronto, Canada and Osaka, Japan by the end of 2020, building on the recently announced MZR in Sao Paulo, Brazil. These regions will help clients quickly deploy mission-critical workloads and applications across hybrid cloud environments, and gain access to a consistent set of IBM public cloud services – from enterprise-grade infrastructure to AI services.
• The same IBM Power Systems technology behind the world’s smartest supercomputers, Summit and Sierra, is expected to be available for select geographies by the end of 2019 in the IBM Cloud giving organizations a new, powerful option to begin developing and training their AI applications. IBM’s support of Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Power Systems reinforces our commitment to clients to provide a flexible, secure and open, hybrid multicloud platform for their workloads.
• New features to be made available for IBM Security Advisor to detect security misconfigurations so companies can better assess their security postures and take corrective actions.

IBM reported last week that its cloud business generated more than $20 billion dollars in revenue over the last 12 months. Today’s news complements IBM’s existing cloud offerings for private and on-premises environments – including those from recently-acquired Red Hat – enabling the company to provide comprehensive, open multicloud hybrid solutions.

“Open architectures, based on Kubernetes and containers, are driving the next wave of cloud-based innovation. That’s why IBM has just completed a two-year journey to enhance its public cloud on a foundation of open source software,” said Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President, Cloud and Cognitive Software, IBM. “Today, we are going a step further by unveiling new capabilities for the IBM public cloud, designed to provide clients with the highest available level of security, leading data protection and enterprise-grade infrastructure to run Red Hat OpenShift.”

Aegean Airlines has adopted IBM Cloud to transform its internal business processes and further enhance its customer experience.

“IBM is the strategic provider that will support our determination and willingness to innovate and achieve excellence at both organizational and business process level,” said AEGEAN Group’s Chief Information Office, Aristeidis Kamvysis. “By utilizing IBM Cloud, we’re able to infuse IBM Watson into our applications in order to gain better business insights, while improving business operations in a reliable, scalable, and agile environment.”

With the consumer experience a top priority, banks like BNP Paribas must deal with the rapidly changing needs of customers, while also managing evolving security and regulatory guidelines, and a variety of complex data and workloads.

BNP Paribas is leveraging the IBM Cloud and adopting a hybrid cloud strategy to overcome these challenges and support its development and innovation within the ever-increasing need for security and compliance. This includes a BNP Paribas dedicated cloud based on IBM public cloud technology that offers the best of both worlds: the security of a private cloud, with the breadth of catalog and economics of a public cloud. Due to launch in mid 2020, it will provide access to the full range of IBM Cloud IaaS and PaaS services, including IBM’s Watson AI services, and will run in a Multizone Region dedicated to BNP Paribas in the Paris area to provide high availability and resilience. BNP Paribas will migrate its IT and applications to this dedicated cloud, complementing it with the IBM public cloud in the US, Asia and Europe. Together, BNP Paribas and IBM look to define and establish the cloud platform to help meet the regulatory and security controls facing BNP Paribas’ critical banking workloads.

“With the increasing regulation restrictions in the financial services industry, institutions have been historically challenged to use cloud, and public clouds in particular. By working with IBM, we are able to provide the innovation and agility that public clouds can offer, combined with the security necessary to remain compliant,” said Bernard Gavgani, BNP Paribas Group Chief Information Officer. “This approach enables us to innovate faster, provide a better customer experience, enter into new business models and tap into new technologies, such as AI.”

Together with IBM, Elaw Tecnologia SA, a company that specializes in the development of corporate solutions for legal management, created a new cognitive solution that automates cumbersome and high-volume legal tasks, hosted on IBM Cloud.

“The strict labor laws in Brazil result in a vast number of labor lawsuits. To streamline legal processes, we worked with IBM to develop a AI-enabled legal process management solution to improve efficiency and productivity for our lawyers,” said Guilherme Bordon, Chief Executive Officer, Elaw. “The solution is hosted on IBM Cloud to enable Elaw to access IBM Watson APIs, automate processes and provide a secured platform for confidential information.”

Home Trust, a federally regulated trust company based in Canada, recently migrated its IT infrastructure to IBM’s public cloud to transform its operations, while still maintaining end-to-end visibility and management over its platforms and applications. By migrating to the cloud, Home Trust now has access to flexible and scalable computing services, as well as access to higher value technologies, including AI, to digitally transform its offerings.

“For many financial institutions, upgrading core systems can disrupt underlying business operations and impact efficiency,” said Victor DiRisio, Chief Information Officer at Home Trust. “By choosing IBM Cloud, we are able to modernize our IT environment while realizing the economic benefits of cloud computing. It ensures that new solutions are immediately useable, rapidly deployable and can ultimately offer a superior customer experience.”