IBM Think 2023: Watsonx promises enterprise AI and trust at scale

May 9, 2023 at 9:33 AM EDT

“If you look at AI adoption, it has doubled since 2017. This was even before we moved to generative AI and underlying models. but I think we’re pushing 100% at that point yeah 80 [percent] to 100 percent. It’s all about opportunities for partners,” says Rob He Thomas, senior vice of software at IBM and his chief commercial officer.

IBM announced the Watsonx artificial intelligence and data platform at its annual Think conference, promising general availability of the first two product sets in July.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based vendor also said its third Watsonx product set and a number of other AI-based products will be available later this year. These other offerings include the Cloud Carbon Calculator, the Center of Excellence for Generative AI, the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) Infrastructure as a Service offering, and Watson Code Assistant Code Generation AI.

IBM announced the product at Think 2023, which runs through Thursday in Orlando, Florida.

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IBM announces Watsonx AI Studio

Branden Voegerl, IBM solutions director at partner CleanSlate Technology Group, based in Carmel, Indiana, told CRN that AI is becoming more of a conversation with customers. A text generation program that contributed to the spread of generative AI.

“Within the IBM Cloud, there is an opportunity to deploy this IBM Watson solution with digital workspaces available to our customers,” says Voegerl. “This allows customers to work from anywhere in the world, on any device. So I’ve seen a lot of chatter about it. [machine learning] kind of thing. ”

In a keynote held Monday at the vendor’s Partner Plus Day, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said that customer interest in AI is partly due to high labor costs and the need to use data collected by departments within an organization for proprietary tools. said that it comes from a desire for a tool that can be understood by Individual data standards.

“We need technology that can take in more data … and we need to be able to put it all in and be able to digest it for a purpose very quickly. It performs tasks that used to be manual,” Krishna said in his keynote. “That’s exactly what we want to achieve with the Watsonx.data platform. And hopefully, in the coming months, when more people get it, please give us your feedback.”

Kate Woolley, IBM’s channel chief, whose official title is general manager of the IBM ecosystem, told CRN that expanding partner access to training, badges and enablement as an in-house IBM sales representative is a significant step forward for vendors. said it is an example of how the company is investing to attract partners. New cutting-edge technology products such as Watsonx.

“As soon as anything is available to IBMers, it’s available to partners,” Woolley said. “And I think it’s going to be very important, not just in skills and badges. But it’s also all client content. or go to a partner customer and talk about Watsonx.ai or Watsonx.data, they’re all using the same content in that conversation. I have the same conversations with my clients.”

When asked by CRN at a virtual press conference about the opportunities with Watsonx for IBM services-led partners, Rob Thomas, senior vice president of software and chief commercial officer, said that MSPs and system integrators will bring Watsonx to market. .

“The most common thing we hear from clients is, after confirming we’re interested in this, after asking about the use case, they say, ‘Can you help us?’” says Thomas. “And then there is the technical side of the assistance. So, if you’re using the basic model, you end up changing your business process, removing your business process, and automating something. Such work usually requires a lot of help from integrators and consulting partners. ”

Consulting giant EY is already using AI to streamline HR operations, and rival Deloitte is using AI for sustainability.

“There are probably endless opportunities for service providers as part of what’s happening in the base model,” says Thomas.

Other generative AI work involving service-driven partners includes business consulting on data cleaning, data exploration, data structuring, foundation model building, customer success, and change management, Thomas said. said at a press conference.

“If you look at AI adoption, it has doubled since 2017,” says Thomas. “That was before we moved to generative AI and underlying models. And he fast-forwards four to five years and I think adoption is probably pushing 100% at that point, if not 100%. so 80 [percent] to 100 percent. All of which are opportunities for partners. ”

Watsonx platform

According to IBM, the Watsonx platform brings together trusted data, speed, and governance in one place to enable enterprises to train, tune, and deploy foundational models, ML capabilities, and AI models across their organization in any cloud environment. It is intended to be

Early business use cases for Watsonx include:

*Customer and employee interactions and conversations

*Automation of IT processes, business workflows and internal processes

*Threat protection

*Sustainability target

According to the vendor, IBM Watsonx.ai and Watsonx.data are two product sets expected to be generally available in the summer. Watsonx.governance has not received a specific GA release date.

The Watsonx platform features foundational and open-source models curated and trained by IBM, according to the vendor. Users have access to data stores to collect and cleanse data for training and tuning.

According to IBM, customers can build their own models or fine-tune and adapt available models using enterprise data and deploy them at scale in a trusted, open environment.

Watsonx.ai

The IBM Watsonx.ai product set is for AI builders who train, test, tune, and deploy traditional ML and new generative AI capabilities powered by foundational models.

Users can take advantage of Watsonx.ai from data preparation to model deployment and monitoring. According to IBM, the product set has an underlying model library with a large curated enterprise data set backed by filtering and cleansing processes and auditable data lineage.

Models are trained on code, time series data, tabular data, IT event data, geospatial data, and other modalities. According to IBM, the first base model set is in beta technical preview for select clients. These early model categories include fm.code, fm.NLP, fm.geospatial, and others.

The fm.code category is for developers who generate code in natural language. The fm.NLP collection contains Large Language Models (LLMs) for industry-specific domains with the ability to customize with curated and client data. The fm.geospatial category is also built on climate and remote sensing data for natural disaster change planning, biodiversity, land use, and other processes, according to IBM.

IBM has partnered with Hugging Face to offer thousands of open models and datasets through Watsonx.ai, according to the vendor.

Watsonx.data and Watsonx.governance

According to the vendor, Watsonx’s second set of products is Watsonx.data.

The IBM Watsonx.data data store is built on an open lakehouse architecture and optimized for governed data and AI workloads, according to the vendor. Users have access to query, governance, and open data formats.

Watsonx.data can manage workloads across on-premises and multi-cloud environments. IBM estimates that optimizing Watsonx.data workloads can help users cut their warehouse costs in half. Users can access data through a single entry point while applying different query engines to suit their purposes.

Watsonx.data provides built-in governance, automation, and integration with your existing databases and tools.

According to IBM, Watsonx’s third set of products, Watsonx.governance, promises to reduce the risk, time and cost of manual processes and deliver transparent and explainable documentation of results.

According to the vendor, Watsonx.governance is committed to protecting customer privacy, proactively detecting model bias and drift, and helping organizations meet ethical standards.

More AI Informed Offerings

The vendor has hinted at other AI-based products coming this year:

*Watson Code Assistant. Developers can use English commands to generate code.

*Preview of IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite (EIS) Builder Edition offering for geospatial foundation models used to reduce environmental risk

*Full-stack, high-performance, flexible, AI-optimized infrastructure delivered as a service on IBM Cloud for training and serving underlying models

*Cloud Carbon Calculator Dashboard. Use IBM Research technology to measure, track, manage, and report on the carbon associated with hybrid multicloud.

According to IBM, all major future software products will adopt the underlying model of Watsonx.ai. The vendor plans to combine its underlying model of natural language processing (NLP) with Watson Assistant and Watson Orchestrate to improve employee productivity and customer service.

According to IBM, the vendor has also launched a center of excellence for generative AI, with more than 1,000 IBM consulting experts supporting Watsonx and other AI client deployments.