IBM Think: New automated solutions for the CIO

IBM released a new set of automated artificial intelligence (AI) operations capabilities during its Think Digital conference on Tuesday. In addition to Watson AIOps, IBM also released the Accelerator for Application Modernization with AI, and automate business planning, automate business operations, and automate call centers. 

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“Today, 10% of data is being processed at the edge. That is expected to grow by 75% between now and 2025 per year. Every organization has to deal with this idea of a resilient infrastructure, has to be always on, and try to balance budgets that have a mix between keeping the lights on and driving innovation,” said Rob Thomas, senior vice president of the cloud and data platform at IBM, during a press conference. 

“IDC recently predicted enterprises that use AI and move 50% faster than those that do not,” Thomas said. “We’re bringing AI to IT. We want to arm every CIO in the world to use AI to predict problems before they happen, fix problems before they happen–and if they still happen to occur, because we all know that at times they will–quickly address a problem in your technology infrastructure.” 

The IBM Watson AIOps aims to do that, according to Thomas. 

IBM Watson AIOps 

The solution, built on the latest release of Red Hat OpenShift, runs across hybrid cloud and works in tandem with other technologies including Slack and Box. The service also works with IT monitoring solutions Mattermost and ServiceNow, according to a press release. 

“To work an IT problem without Watson AIOps, it takes five hours and it costs about $200,000. With Watson AIOps, five hours becomes 14 minutes, and the costs have gone down to $5,000,” Thomas said. 

Watson AIOps can be useful across organizations and enterprises. It would help the supply chain when trying to deliver goods in real time or financial services when dealing with financial transactions, Thomas noted. 

Accelerator for Application Modernization 

Along with the AIOps rollout, IBM also announced its Accelerator for Application Modernization with AI, which is in its Cloud Modernization service. 

The capability helps clients reduce effort and costs that come with application modernization, providing tools designed to make the end to end modernization journey more efficient and accelerate the analysis and recommendations for architectural and microservice options. 

“Every company that’s being forced into this new environment quickly needs to modernize their applications,” Thomas said. “So we built capabilities and part of one of our services offerings that helps clients decide the best way to containerize an application to make that modern for this current environment.” 

Other automation releases

Along with automating IT operations, IBM also released new capabilities for helping CIOs operate in this new environment. 

• Automate business planning 

IBM’s Cloud Pak for data has been updated with new abilities to help business leaders automate the access to important business-ready data. An example are the platform extensions to IBM Planning Analytics, designed to help users automate planning, budgeting, and forecasting for their organization. 

• Automate business operations

IBM is helping automate business operations through an update to its IBM Cloud Pak for Automation. The software helps users design, build, and run automation apps and enable clients to more easily create AI digital worker automation solutions. These digital workers will help automate routine tasks and collaborate with human employees. 

• Automate call centers

IBM Watson Assistant has been updated to help leaders automate complex, knowledge-intensive interactions and improve customer satisfaction. This new version is meant to help deploy easily and use out-of-the-box without development required. It also includes “autolearning,” which learns from prior customer behavior the best way to answer relevant questions on topics. 

For more, check out IBM’s The Weather Channel launches coronavirus map and app to track COVID-19 infections on TechRepublic.

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