IBM Bets on WatsonX for Generative AI

IBM is betting big on artificial intelligence (AI) as the driver around its hybrid cloud approach to enterprise-level plans. Having acquired the Apptio platform to track how and where data lives in hybrid environments, the company could well be betting on its three new WatsonX offerings that provides generative AI model developments, data storage and governance. 

The company had disclosed in a statement three weeks ago that it plans to co-locate Apptio alongside its IT automation software and with the AI platform in order to develop and sell enterprise-level solutions that can manage and optimize speed within their IT stacks. Now IBM is betting on the WatsonX trio as an end-to-end-generative AI platform. 

Democratizing AI tech is the goal

A published article on SDxCentral quotes Jay Limbum, IBM’s VP of data and AI product management to suggest that the WatsonX portfolio would democratize AI tech for small and large businesses to ensure accuracy, scalability and adaptability. Foundation models that are reusable and require minimal training will help implement AI solutions, he says. 

To get a clearer picture, the WatsonX trio comprises Watsonx.ai, Watsonx.data and Watsonx.governance, all of them running on Red Hat OpenShift. They represent the entire AI and data lifecycle that starts from data prep to model development, followed by deployment and monitoring, which is part of governance.

Additionally, OpenShift provides the required flexibility of hybrid, multi-cloud deployment, which is why IBM forked out $4.6 billion for the Apptio platform. Together, these offer enterprises a solution that could use open-source foundation models from third parties or pre-built ones in the WatsonX ecosystem.

Generative AI needs to become scalable

Limbum says generative AI becomes scalable alongside foundation models with success often depending on the ability to customize and adapt such models to specific client requirements. “The promise of foundation models is rooted in their ability to be tuned to an enterprise’s unique data and domain knowledge with specificity that was previously impossible,” he says.

The WatsonX suite is capable of ensuring this flexibility for enterprises with trusted models, performance and portability that would result in enterprise-level data being leveraged more securely and in an effective manner. Businesses can control AI models and data through specialization, deployment, management and governance resulting in owning the value of the data that they produce. 

What does Watson.ai actually provide?

The Watsonx.ai provides AI models for a wide variety of use cases such as text and sentiment analysis, drawing insights from documents and generating code or other content. IBM believes that such a tool could potentially enhance productivity and time to value. Areas such as talent, customer and employee servicing alongside modernizing apps could benefit from Watson.ai. 

Enterprises can use HR data or AI to generate job postings, summarize groups of submitted resumes and enhance employee understanding of business documents. It can also be trained on customer data to develop personalized experiences at scale while also helping developers create and enhance their starter code and playbooks to shorten app-lifecycle modernization. 

IBM had joined the generative AI bandwagon two months ago, making the big announcement at the Think Conference. Though there were some concerns over job losses, the company clarified that the focus on AI would be driven by business challenges of prospects who sought to deploy it within their respective workplaces. Officials even quoted an IBM survey where a third of the business leaders cited trust and transparency as barriers holding them back from AI adoption.