Copersucar Selects IBM Cloud for Sustainable Digital Growth in Hybrid Cloud Environment

The Brazilian sugar and ethanol trader invested in technology to grow and relied on the IBM Cloud and Global Technology Services to help them reduce costs and gain agility, security and scalability

São Paulo, May 27, 2021: Copersucar, a global leader in sugar and ethanol trading, has chosen IBM Cloud to help them increase productivity and efficiency, modernize processes and accelerate its business expansion. Responsible for commercializing 3.7 million tons of sugar and 5 billion liters of ethanol in 2019-2020 Crop-Year, the company recently completed an important step on its digital transformation journey by migrating its main IT infrastructure to IBM Cloud with support from IBM Global Technology Services.

Brazil is now responsible for approximately 20% of the world’s sugar production and is a global leader in the production of sugarcane ethanol, the biofuel with the lowest available carbon footprint. The country ranks second in biofuel production, behind only the United States. As a global leader in both sectors, Copersucar has a unique business model, connecting mills and the customers, at the same time it carries out the logistical operation, integrating all links in the value chain.

To achieve its digital transformation and business goals, Copersucar tapped IBM – its technology partner for of over a decade – to enable the migration of its IT environment from an on-premises architecture to IBM Cloud. The comprehensive technology upgrade addressed Copersucar’s most pressing requirements: gaining more flexibility, security and infrastructure scalability while reducing IT operational costs.

“The decision to migrate our infrastructure to the cloud was based on the search for agility, scalability and adequate costs. IBM Cloud has shown to be the right choice in this regard, as we have been able to experience more agility in the delivery of our services, without losing the quality and security that we had in the previous model, on premises. Surely this will be a vector to further accelerate the delivery of services and new solutions to internal and external customers and to our ecosystem, composed of our 34 partner mills”, says Dalbi Arruda, CIO of Copersucar.

Today, IBM manages Copersucar’s entire IT multicloud environment – including SAP workloads, billing and logistic systems. The services provided have a direct impact on its whole supply chain, from the sugarcane in the field all the way to the final logistical distribution of products, such as the ships used to export products.

“Companies like Copersucar are turning to hybrid cloud capabilities to innovate more quickly. In addition to efficiency and scalability, on IBM Cloud we have cutting edge security technology design, which allows Copersucar to run critical workloads while protecting the integrity of its data and operations”, explains Luis Marcelo Teixeira, IBM Brazil Infrastructure Services Director. “By removing the traditional barriers to cloud adoption, IBM is able to help enterprises embrace the benefits of cloud.”

In addition to the IT environment, IBM also manages Copersucar’s IT Service Desk, powered by the artificial intelligence (AI) of the IBM Workplace Services with Watson solution, leveraged to autonomously respond to IT inquiries – like systems password resets and network folders access –  from the company’s more than 500 employees across Brazil, supporting its holistic digital transformation process from the inside out.

Pitney Bowes Taps IBM for Global Hybrid Cloud Transformation

ARMONK, N.Y., May 20, 2021 — IBM and Pitney Bowes (NYSE: PBI) today announced an agreement under which IBM will deliver IT automation, machine learning and managed infrastructure services designed to help Pitney Bowes transform and embrace hybrid cloud computing to support its global business plan and goals.

For over 100 years, Pitney Bowes has focused on innovating and delivering technologies that remove the complexity of getting commerce transactions precisely right. The company moves more than 222 million parcels and facilitates the sending of billions of mail pieces each year and has tapped IBM to design and implement an agile technology infrastructure that can enable greater collaboration and integration between its business and IT environments.

Under the agreement, IBM will manage core infrastructure domains including servers, storage systems, end-user computing, and networking for Pitney Bowes, while helping to keep critical business systems running efficiently.

Pitney Bowes embarked on this technology transformation with IBM to better serve its clients around the world – including 90 percent of the Fortune 500 – who rely upon the accuracy and precision of the company’s solutions, analytics, and APIs in the areas of ecommerce fulfillment, shipping and returns; cross-border ecommerce; office mailing and shipping; presort services; and financing.

“We have a strategic vision and roadmap to transform our operations and enhance the way we deliver ecommerce, shipping, mailing and financial services to end-users,” said Joseph Schmitt, Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer of Pitney Bowes. “Working with IBM on this hybrid cloud transformation can enable our business to become dynamic and responsive to unexpected challenges and emerging opportunities.”

IBM Global Technology Services professionals will help Pitney Bowes create and implement an agile IT infrastructure environment and governance model by deploying automation, artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, and hybrid cloud capabilities designed to support, manage, and unleash the potential of its on-premises and multicloud computing workloads.

“By utilizing our IT infrastructure knowledge, tools and transformation techniques, we’re prepared to help Pitney Bowes bring its ambitious hybrid cloud vision to life,” said Karen Bruno, Industrial Markets General Manager, IBM Global Technology Services. “We will bring together people, processes and solutions through an optimized managed services approach that can enable Pitney Bowes to enhance its operations and deliver new innovations to its customers.”

IBM and Pitney Bowes signed their global hybrid cloud infrastructure transformation agreement in 1Q 2021.

IBM Announces Breakthrough Hybrid Cloud and AI Capabilities to Accelerate Digital Transformation at 2021 Think Conference

ARMONK, N.Y., May 11, 2021 — IBM announces advances in artificial intelligence (AI), hybrid cloud, and quantum computing at the company’s Think conference at 12:00 p.m. ET today. The innovations highlight IBM’s role in helping its clients and partners accelerate their digital transformations, return to work smarter, and build strategic ecosystems that can drive better business outcomes.

“We will look back on this year and last as the moment the world entered the digital century in full force,” said IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna. “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. And one thing is certain: this is a future that must be built on a foundation of deep industry collaboration. No one understands this better than IBM, which is one of the reasons we are boosting investment in our partner ecosystem. Also at Think 2021, we are unveiling our latest hybrid cloud and AI innovations – the very technologies that serve as the building blocks of a new IT architecture for business.”

IBM is all-in on hybrid cloud and AI because we understand that businesses need a clear and credible path to modernizing their mission-critical systems. A new IBM study on the adoption of AI for business reveals that the imperative to embed AI into business processes became more urgent during the pandemic. Of IT professionals surveyed, 43 percent said that their companies had accelerated their rollout of AI. And nearly half of global IT professionals surveyed said they evaluate AI providers in large part on their ability to automate processes. That is why IBM has invested heavily in building rich and powerful AI capabilities for business.

We are already helping thousands of clients across every industry transform their businesses with the power of our hybrid cloud and AI platform. The following innovations are designed to equip businesses for the next stage of their digital journeys.

New Capabilities Bring Data and AI Together

  • AI to Help Automate How Customers Access, Unify and Manage Data Anywhere with Cloud Pak for Data: 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 (Structured Query Language) automates how customers access, integrate and manage data without ever having to move it, regardless of where the data resides or how it is stored. AutoSQL solves one of the most critical pain points customers are facing as they look to reduce the complexity of curating data for AI and eliminate the high cost of moving data, while also uncovering hidden insights to make more accurate AI-driven predictions. With the launch of AutoSQL, IBM Cloud Pak for Data now includes the highest-performing cloud data warehouse on the market (based on our benchmarking study) that can run seamlessly across any hybrid multi-cloud environment – including private clouds, on-premises and any public cloud. AutoSQL will be one of several new technologies woven into a new data fabric in the Cloud Pak for Data. The new intelligent data fabric will automate complex data management tasks by using AI to discover, understand, access and protect distributed data across multiple environments, while unifying disparate data sources across a common data foundation. For more information, read the blog: 5 Things to Know about Cloud Pak for Data and New Data Fabric.
  • Watson Orchestrate Helps Professionals Automate Work to Increase Productivity: Watson Orchestrate is a new interactive AI capability designed to increase the personal productivity of business professionals across sales, human resources, operations and more. Requiring no IT skills to use, Watson Orchestrate 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®. Watson Orchestrate uses a powerful AI engine that automatically selects and sequences the pre-packaged skills needed to perform a task, and connects with applications, tools, data and history on-the-fly. This can help workers more quickly perform routine tasks, such as scheduling meetings or procuring approvals, or more mission-critical tasks, like preparing proposals or business plans. Watson Orchestrate is the latest AI-powered automation capability from IBM designed to help people reclaim a significant amount of their time to focus on more strategic tasks. It was developed by IBM Research and is now available in preview as part of the IBM Automation Cloud Paks and is expected to be generally available later this year. For more information, read the blog: 5 Things to Know about Watson Orchestrate.
  • Maximo Mobile Transforms the Work of Field Technicians: IBM has launched Maximo Mobile, an easy-to-deploy mobile platform with IBM’s leading Maximo asset management solution at the core. Maximo Mobile is designed to transform the work of field technicians who maintain physical assets such as roads, bridges, production lines, power plants, refineries and more. A new, intuitive interface provides technicians with the right asset operational data at the right time. Even in the most remote locations, users can access Watson AI and in-depth organizational knowledge to easily solve complex issues. This powerful combination of AI, intelligent workflows, remote human assistance and access to digital twins puts decades of industry experience directly into the hands of technicians for safer, more efficient operations. For more information, watch the video: Empowering the Technician of the Future with Maximo Mobile.

New AI Transforms How Companies Develop, Deploy and Operate IT and Modernize Applications

  • Project CodeNet Dataset Advances AI’s Understanding and Translation of Code: IBM Research is releasing Project CodeNet, a large-scale, opensource dataset comprised of 14 million code samples, 500 million lines of code and 55 programming languages, to enable AI’s understanding and translation of code. Project CodeNet is currently the largest, most differentiated dataset in its class and addresses three main use cases in coding today: code search (automatically translating one code into another, including legacy languages like COBOL); code similarity (identifying overlaps and similarities among different codes); and code constraints (customizing constraints based on a developer’s specific needs and parameters). IBM believes Project CodeNet will serve as a valuable benchmark dataset for source-to-source translation and transitioning legacy codebases to modern code languages, helping businesses speed up their application of AI. For more information, read the blog: Kickstarting AI for Code: Introducing Project CodeNet.
  • Mono2Micro Helps Take the Pain Out of Cloud Migration: IBM has added a new capability into WebSphere Hybrid Edition that enables enterprises to optimize and modernize their applications for hybrid cloud. IBM Mono2Micro uses AI developed by IBM Research to analyze large enterprise applications and provide recommendations on how to best adapt them for the move to cloud. It can simplify and speed up an error-prone process, which can reduce costs and maximize ROI. IBM Mono2Micro is one of IBM’s suite of AI-powered products and services that can make it faster to migrate to the cloud. For more information, read the blog: IBM Mono2Micro: Three Things You Need to Know.

Leading Brands Adopt IBM Hybrid Cloud and AI Solutions

  • IBM Watson Assistant Fuels COVID Response for CVS Health: IBM is collaborating with leading diversified health services company, CVS Health to help the national health care company handle a tenfold spike in call volume as the US rolls out its Covid-19 vaccination program. IBM Global Business Services (GBS) and CVS Health developed and delivered a customer care solution using IBM Watson Assistant on IBM Public Cloud in just four weeks. Infusing AI and natural language processing into the critical workflow of its telephonic customer care system, CVS Health has been able to quickly and accurately respond to a range of questions on COVID-19 from tests, to vaccines, symptoms, proof of vaccination, cost and more, freeing up human agents to handle the most complex requests. As government guidance has evolved, the team’s rapid updates have enabled the virtual agent to customize responses based on vaccine status across all 50 US states. Since launching in early January, the virtual voice assistant has handled millions of calls –a majority without human assistance –and cut call length down significantly.
  • EY and IBM create Financial Services Center of Excellence for Hybrid Cloud: EY and IBM have established a Center of Excellence that offers new open hybrid cloud solutions built with Red Hat OpenShift for the IBM Cloud for Financial Services. The solutions will be centered on regulatory compliance, digital trust and security, leveraging IBM technology and EY experience working with financial institutions to drive digital transformation and accelerate cloud adoption. They will be designed to address the specific and evolving requirements of financial services organizations as they transition to the cloud and transform business processes. IBM Cloud for Financial Services incorporates regulatory and compliance standards and offers a highly secure environment for financial services institutions to transact with their technology partners and customers. For more information, read the release from EY: EY and IBM announce the creation of Center of Excellence to help accelerate digital transformation for financial services institutions.

Continued Investments in IBM’s Partner Ecosystem

  • New Benefits to Drive Partner Success: As part of a $1 billion investment to support its partner ecosystem, IBM unveiled new competencies, skills training, and benefits to ensure its partners succeed in an increasingly competitive market. For example, IBM has created a new competency framework to enable partners to demonstrate expertise, technical validation, and sales success in specialized areas such as hybrid cloud infrastructure, automation and security. IBM ecosystem partner Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has already achieved competencies for building an industrial and manufacturing AI solution for data scientists and AI developers. To further its investment in ecosystem partners, IBM is also expanding availability of its Cloud Engagement Fund (CEF), to all partner types, whether they build on, service, or re/sell IBM technology. CEF provides investment through significant technical resources and cloud credits for partners to help migrate customer workloads to hybrid cloud environments. IBM’s collaboration with Siemens Digital Industries Software is just one example of how the CEF is helping IBM partners scale. Through this joint initiative, Siemens will apply IBM’s open hybrid cloud approach, built on Red Hat OpenShift, to extend the deployment flexibility of MindSphere, the industrial IoT-as-a-service solution from Siemens. For more information, read the blog: IBM Announces New Benefits to Drive Partner Success as Ecosystem Momentum Accelerates.

IBM Brings Quantum Computing One Step Closer to Everyday Use

  • Qiskit Runtime Software Boosts Quantum Circuit Processing Speed by 120x: IBM is making it faster and easier for developers to use quantum software by introducing Qiskit Runtime. This software is containerized and hosted in the hybrid cloud, instead of running most of its code on the user’s computer. Together with improvements in both the software and processor performance, this allows Qiskit Runtime to boost the speeds of quantum circuits, the building blocks of quantum algorithms, by 120 times. Qiskit, the IBM-developed open-source framework for quantum computing for a global community of developers, aims to make quantum computing accessible to all. By introducing Qiskit Runtime, IBM is enabling quantum systems to run complex calculations such as chemical modeling and financial risk analysis in hours, instead of several weeks. To show the power of the software, IBM recently demonstrated how the lithium hydride molecule (LiH) could be modeled on a quantum device in nine hours, when previously it took 45 days. This kind of improvement is key to scaling quantum computation for new use cases. For more information, read the blog: IBM Quantum Delivers 120x speedup of quantum workloads with Qiskit Runtime.

The announcements made during today’s Think event come just days after IBM unveiled the world’s first two nanometer chip which will enable faster, more efficient computing from the datacenter to the edge; Cloud Code Engine, a front-end platform that can help developers quickly deploy cloud-native applications without having to acquire new skills or configure complex code; Spectrum Fusion, a fully-containerized version of IBM’s storage and data protection software designed to provide a streamlined way to discover data from across the enterprise; and IBM’s alliance with Zscaler on Zero Trust where IBM Security Services combines the technology of Zscaler and the expertise of IBM to help clients adopt an end-to-end secure access service edge (SASE) approach, marrying authentication and permission to deliver security and privacy enhancements.

Global Data from IBM Points to AI Growth as Businesses Strive for Resilience

– Adoption poised to accelerate as nearly half of global IT professionals cite advances in AI that make it more accessible
– Changing business needs due to COVID-19 driving adoption

NEW YORK, May 12, 2021 — New market research commissioned by IBM found that almost one-third of IT professionals surveyed globally say their business is now using artificial intelligence (AI), with 43 percent reporting that their company has accelerated their rollout of AI as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. While recent advances in the technology are making AI more accessible than ever, the annual survey also found that a lack of AI skills and increasing data complexity are cited as top challenges.

The “Global AI Adoption Index 2021,” conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of IBM, revealed that while AI adoption was nearly flat over the last year, momentum is shifting as the need for AI has been accelerated by changing business needs due to the global pandemic. AI is already changing the way businesses operate today, from how they communicate with their customers via virtual assistants, to automating key workflows, and even managing network security. The “2021 CEO Study” from IBM’s Institute for Business Value recently revealed that more than half of CEOs surveyed expect AI to deliver tangible business benefits in the next few years.

Highlights from the “Global AI Adoption Index 2021” include:

  • Business adoption of AI was basically flat, but significant investments in AI are planned: Almost one-third of companies reported using AI in their business, similar to 2020 findings. For those deploying or exploring AI, they report it is being driven by multiple pressures and opportunities businesses are facing, from the COVID-19 pandemic to advances in the technology that make it more accessible. A third of global IT professionals report their company plans to invest in both skills and AI solutions over the next 12 months.
  • COVID-19 accelerated how businesses are using automation today: 80 percent of companies are already using automation software or plan to use this technology in the next 12 months, and for more than one-in-three organizations, the pandemic influenced their decision to use automation to bolster the productivity of employees, while others found new applications of this technology to make themselves more resilient, such as helping to automate the resolution of IT incidents.
  • Trustworthy and explainable AI is critical to business: 91 percent of businesses using AI say their ability to explain how it arrived at a decision is critical. While global businesses are now acutely aware of the importance of having trustworthy AI, more than half of companies cite significant barriers in getting there including lack of skills, inflexible governance tools, biased data and more.
  • The ability to access data anywhere is key for increasing AI adoption: The proliferation of data across the enterprise has resulted in over two thirds of global IT professionals drawing from more than 20 different data sources to inform their AI. Almost 90 percent of IT pros say being able to run their AI projects wherever the data resides is key to the technology’s adoption.
  • Natural language processing is at the forefront of recent adoption: Almost half of businesses today are now using applications powered by natural language processing (NLP), and one-in-four businesses plan to begin using NLP technology over the next 12 months. Customer service is the top NLP use case with 52 percent of global IT professionals reporting that their company is using or considering using NLP solutions to improve customer experience and it was the use AI case IT professionals were most likely to report that the COVID-19 pandemic has increased their focus on.

“As organizations move to a post-pandemic world, data from the Global AI Adoption Index 2021 underscores a major uptick in AI investment,” said Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President, IBM Cloud and Data Platform. “A large majority of those investments continue to be focused on the three key capabilities that define AI for business – automating IT and processes, building trust in AI outcomes, and understanding the language of business. We believe 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.”

While adoption is poised for growth, some global businesses are still facing a multitude of challenges when it comes to adopting AI. Persistent barriers across markets and industries highlight the need for continued focus on addressing skills and solutions gaps.

  • The survey determined top three barriers to AI adoption for businesses are: Limited AI expertise or knowledge (39 percent), increasing data complexity and data silos (32 percent), and lack of tools/platforms for developing AI models (28 percent).

IBM is working to accelerate adoption by delivering AI designed for the needs of businesses. To give businesses, data scientists and developers the capabilities they need to scale AI, IBM is continually bringing new innovations to IBM Watson from IBM Research that help enable organizations to better understand the language of business, automate processes and IT, and drive trust in their AI outcomes. Additionally, IBM Global Business Services brings deep technology, industry and process design expertise to co-create solutions with customers that embed AI into core business processes and create intelligent workflows at scale.

Methodology
The data sheds new light on the deployment of AI across 5,501 businesses in China (500), France (500), Germany (500), India (500), Italy (500), Latin America (1,000 across Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Peru), Singapore (500), Spain (500), the United Kingdom (500), and United States (501). The polling was conducted online through Morning Consult’s proprietary network of online providers in April 2021. All respondents were required to have significant insight or input into their firm’s IT decision-making. See full details on the methodology at the end of the summary.

IBM Announces Breakthrough Hybrid Cloud and AI Capabilities to Accelerate Digital Transformation at 2021 Think Conference

ARMONK, N.Y., May 11, 2021 — IBM announces advances in artificial intelligence (AI), hybrid cloud, and quantum computing at the company’s Think conference at 12:00 p.m. ET today. The innovations highlight IBM’s role in helping its clients and partners accelerate their digital transformations, return to work smarter, and build strategic ecosystems that can drive better business outcomes.

“We will look back on this year and last as the moment the world entered the digital century in full force,” said IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna. “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. And one thing is certain: this is a future that must be built on a foundation of deep industry collaboration. No one understands this better than IBM, which is one of the reasons we are boosting investment in our partner ecosystem. Also at Think 2021, we are unveiling our latest hybrid cloud and AI innovations – the very technologies that serve as the building blocks of a new IT architecture for business.”

IBM is all-in on hybrid cloud and AI because we understand that businesses need a clear and credible path to modernizing their mission-critical systems. A new IBM study on the adoption of AI for business reveals that the imperative to embed AI into business processes became more urgent during the pandemic. Of IT professionals surveyed, 43 percent said that their companies had accelerated their rollout of AI. And nearly half of global IT professionals surveyed said they evaluate AI providers in large part on their ability to automate processes. That is why IBM has invested heavily in building rich and powerful AI capabilities for business.

We are already helping thousands of clients across every industry transform their businesses with the power of our hybrid cloud and AI platform. The following innovations are designed to equip businesses for the next stage of their digital journeys.

New Capabilities Bring Data and AI Together

  • AI to Help Automate How Customers Access, Unify and Manage Data Anywhere with Cloud Pak for Data: 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 (Structured Query Language) automates how customers access, integrate and manage data without ever having to move it, regardless of where the data resides or how it is stored. AutoSQL solves one of the most critical pain points customers are facing as they look to reduce the complexity of curating data for AI and eliminate the high cost of moving data, while also uncovering hidden insights to make more accurate AI-driven predictions. With the launch of AutoSQL, IBM Cloud Pak for Data now includes the highest-performing cloud data warehouse on the market (based on our benchmarking study) that can run seamlessly across any hybrid multi-cloud environment – including private clouds, on-premises and any public cloud. AutoSQL will be one of several new technologies woven into a new data fabric in the Cloud Pak for Data. The new intelligent data fabric will automate complex data management tasks by using AI to discover, understand, access and protect distributed data across multiple environments, while unifying disparate data sources across a common data foundation. For more information, read the blog: 5 Things to Know about Cloud Pak for Data and New Data Fabric.
  • Watson Orchestrate Helps Professionals Automate Work to Increase Productivity: Watson Orchestrate is a new interactive AI capability designed to increase the personal productivity of business professionals across sales, human resources, operations and more. Requiring no IT skills to use, Watson Orchestrate 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®. Watson Orchestrate uses a powerful AI engine that automatically selects and sequences the pre-packaged skills needed to perform a task, and connects with applications, tools, data and history on-the-fly. This can help workers more quickly perform routine tasks, such as scheduling meetings or procuring approvals, or more mission-critical tasks, like preparing proposals or business plans. Watson Orchestrate is the latest AI-powered automation capability from IBM designed to help people reclaim a significant amount of their time to focus on more strategic tasks. It was developed by IBM Research and is now available in preview as part of the IBM Automation Cloud Paks and is expected to be generally available later this year. For more information, read the blog: 5 Things to Know about Watson Orchestrate.
  • Maximo Mobile Transforms the Work of Field Technicians: IBM has launched Maximo Mobile, an easy-to-deploy mobile platform with IBM’s leading Maximo asset management solution at the core. Maximo Mobile is designed to transform the work of field technicians who maintain physical assets such as roads, bridges, production lines, power plants, refineries and more. A new, intuitive interface provides technicians with the right asset operational data at the right time. Even in the most remote locations, users can access Watson AI and in-depth organizational knowledge to easily solve complex issues. This powerful combination of AI, intelligent workflows, remote human assistance and access to digital twins puts decades of industry experience directly into the hands of technicians for safer, more efficient operations. For more information, watch the video: Empowering the Technician of the Future with Maximo Mobile.

New AI Transforms How Companies Develop, Deploy and Operate IT and Modernize Applications

  • Project CodeNet Dataset Advances AI’s Understanding and Translation of Code: IBM Research is releasing Project CodeNet, a large-scale, opensource dataset comprised of 14 million code samples, 500 million lines of code and 55 programming languages, to enable AI’s understanding and translation of code. Project CodeNet is currently the largest, most differentiated dataset in its class and addresses three main use cases in coding today: code search (automatically translating one code into another, including legacy languages like COBOL); code similarity (identifying overlaps and similarities among different codes); and code constraints (customizing constraints based on a developer’s specific needs and parameters). IBM believes Project CodeNet will serve as a valuable benchmark dataset for source-to-source translation and transitioning legacy codebases to modern code languages, helping businesses speed up their application of AI. For more information, read the blog: Kickstarting AI for Code: Introducing Project CodeNet.
  • Mono2Micro Helps Take the Pain Out of Cloud Migration: IBM has added a new capability into WebSphere Hybrid Edition that enables enterprises to optimize and modernize their applications for hybrid cloud. IBM Mono2Micro uses AI developed by IBM Research to analyze large enterprise applications and provide recommendations on how to best adapt them for the move to cloud. It can simplify and speed up an error-prone process, which can reduce costs and maximize ROI. IBM Mono2Micro is one of IBM’s suite of AI-powered products and services that can make it faster to migrate to the cloud. For more information, read the blog: IBM Mono2Micro: Three Things You Need to Know.

Leading Brands Adopt IBM Hybrid Cloud and AI Solutions

  • IBM Watson Assistant Fuels COVID Response for CVS Health: IBM is collaborating with leading diversified health services company, CVS Health to help the national health care company handle a tenfold spike in call volume as the US rolls out its Covid-19 vaccination program. IBM Global Business Services (GBS) and CVS Health developed and delivered a customer care solution using IBM Watson Assistant on IBM Public Cloud in just four weeks. Infusing AI and natural language processing into the critical workflow of its telephonic customer care system, CVS Health has been able to quickly and accurately respond to a range of questions on COVID-19 from tests, to vaccines, symptoms, proof of vaccination, cost and more, freeing up human agents to handle the most complex requests. As government guidance has evolved, the team’s rapid updates have enabled the virtual agent to customize responses based on vaccine status across all 50 US states. Since launching in early January, the virtual voice assistant has handled millions of calls –a majority without human assistance –and cut call length down significantly.
  • EY and IBM create Financial Services Center of Excellence for Hybrid Cloud: EY and IBM have established a Center of Excellence that offers new open hybrid cloud solutions built with Red Hat OpenShift for the IBM Cloud for Financial Services. The solutions will be centered on regulatory compliance, digital trust and security, leveraging IBM technology and EY experience working with financial institutions to drive digital transformation and accelerate cloud adoption. They will be designed to address the specific and evolving requirements of financial services organizations as they transition to the cloud and transform business processes. IBM Cloud for Financial Services incorporates regulatory and compliance standards and offers a highly secure environment for financial services institutions to transact with their technology partners and customers. For more information, read the release from EY: EY and IBM announce the creation of Center of Excellence to help accelerate digital transformation for financial services institutions.

Continued Investments in IBM’s Partner Ecosystem

  • New Benefits to Drive Partner Success: As part of a $1 billion investment to support its partner ecosystem, IBM unveiled new competencies, skills training, and benefits to ensure its partners succeed in an increasingly competitive market. For example, IBM has created a new competency framework to enable partners to demonstrate expertise, technical validation, and sales success in specialized areas such as hybrid cloud infrastructure, automation and security. IBM ecosystem partner Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has already achieved competencies for building an industrial and manufacturing AI solution for data scientists and AI developers. To further its investment in ecosystem partners, IBM is also expanding availability of its Cloud Engagement Fund (CEF), to all partner types, whether they build on, service, or re/sell IBM technology. CEF provides investment through significant technical resources and cloud credits for partners to help migrate customer workloads to hybrid cloud environments. IBM’s collaboration with Siemens Digital Industries Software is just one example of how the CEF is helping IBM partners scale. Through this joint initiative, Siemens will apply IBM’s open hybrid cloud approach, built on Red Hat OpenShift, to extend the deployment flexibility of MindSphere, the industrial IoT-as-a-service solution from Siemens. For more information, read the blog: IBM Announces New Benefits to Drive Partner Success as Ecosystem Momentum Accelerates.

IBM Brings Quantum Computing One Step Closer to Everyday Use

  • Qiskit Runtime Software Boosts Quantum Circuit Processing Speed by 120x: IBM is making it faster and easier for developers to use quantum software by introducing Qiskit Runtime. This software is containerized and hosted in the hybrid cloud, instead of running most of its code on the user’s computer. Together with improvements in both the software and processor performance, this allows Qiskit Runtime to boost the speeds of quantum circuits, the building blocks of quantum algorithms, by 120 times. Qiskit, the IBM-developed open-source framework for quantum computing for a global community of developers, aims to make quantum computing accessible to all. By introducing Qiskit Runtime, IBM is enabling quantum systems to run complex calculations such as chemical modeling and financial risk analysis in hours, instead of several weeks. To show the power of the software, IBM recently demonstrated how the lithium hydride molecule (LiH) could be modeled on a quantum device in nine hours, when previously it took 45 days. This kind of improvement is key to scaling quantum computation for new use cases. For more information, read the blog: IBM Quantum Delivers 120x speedup of quantum workloads with Qiskit Runtime.

The announcements made during today’s Think event come just days after IBM unveiled the world’s first two nanometer chip which will enable faster, more efficient computing from the datacenter to the edge; Cloud Code Engine, a front-end platform that can help developers quickly deploy cloud-native applications without having to acquire new skills or configure complex code; Spectrum Fusion, a fully-containerized version of IBM’s storage and data protection software designed to provide a streamlined way to discover data from across the enterprise; and IBM’s alliance with Zscaler on Zero Trust where IBM Security Services combines the technology of Zscaler and the expertise of IBM to help clients adopt an end-to-end secure access service edge (SASE) approach, marrying authentication and permission to deliver security and privacy enhancements.