IBM's Concert, a generative AI-powered application automation tool, is now generally available

IBM today announced the general availability of new tools designed to tackle application sprawl and make business operations more efficient.

It's called IBM Concert, and it's said to use generative artificial intelligence to streamline how users control application behavior, provide insights into connected apps and toolsets, and simplify compliance processes.

The company announced IBM Concert last month at its annual IBM Think 2024 conference in Boston, where it explained that the solution gives developers and site reliability engineers more control over rapidly expanding application installations, whether in the cloud or on-premise environments.

IBM says it is trying to combat app sprawl fueled by a surge in adoption of generative AI applications and services. The company cited data from its internal research showing the number of cloud-native apps worldwide will grow from 531.3 million today to more than 1 billion by 2028.

As a result, businesses are under increasing pressure to make sense of the explosion of data and complexity that this growth is creating – and they want to leverage the insights gained from the data generated by new applications to improve the efficiency of their business operations.

“The days of simple, monolithic applications that were easy to track are over,” Bill Lobig, vice president of product management for IBM Automation, wrote in a blog post last month. “Today, business applications are complex ecosystems built and managed using an ever-growing number of tools and services deployed across hybrid cloud environments. Deciphering, analyzing, and making informed decisions with the vast amounts of data that are created can be a daunting task.”

IBM believes that to navigate and control this complexity, businesses must turn to AI-driven automation, and that's what IBM Concert is all about.

It is an AI-powered, automated application management and monitoring tool built on the Watsonx platform, designed to put you in control, providing greater understanding of your applications, the environment they run in, and the various tools available to control them.

IBM Concert is reported to have a host of capabilities, including analytics, visualization and recommendation generation, that will enable users to speed up actions and processes, uncover gaps, reduce complexity, increase resilience, streamline operations, accelerate innovation and better manage information technology costs.

Last month, Ajay Patel, general manager of IBM's Apptio and IBM IT Automation, appeared on SiliconANGLE Media's mobile livestreaming studio, theCUBE, where he explained why AI-powered automation will be central to every business ecosystem in the future.

“Given the breadth and complexity of our automation portfolio and the need to integrate it all and break down silos, it was important for us to start painting a vision and brand that unified all of our capabilities,” said Patel. “Concert is a next-generation management platform that delivers best-of-breed solutions with an AI-enabled, AI-enabled action framework.”

With today's general availability, all IBM clients can start using Concert to get a deeper view of their applications and environments and quickly apply generative AI to gain more insights into those applications. The tool is designed to instantly connect to clients' existing environments and toolsets so clients can immediately start with real-time data and dependency mapping to surface operational challenges. The tool helps clients understand the root causes of those challenges and quickly implement ways to address them by following recommended actions.

IBM Concert's initial focus will be on use cases like application risk and compliance management, but the company plans to expand its capabilities much further beyond that, according to IBM. In the coming weeks, the company plans to improve cost management and address other challenges that come with application sprawl.

To learn more about how IBM Concert can automate application management, watch the full interview with Patel.

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