Dive Brief:
- IBM is leaning on a hybrid approach to generative AI solutions, leveraging partnerships with hyperscalers and global service integrators to bring the technology to clients, Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna said Wednesday during a Q3 2023 earnings call.
- “We believe that generative AI will be multimodal, with clients using a combination of IBM's models, other companies’ models, their own proprietary models and open-source models,” Krishna said. “This hybrid approach to AI is similar to the hybrid approach to cloud.”
- The company posted revenue of $14.8 billion for the quarter, up nearly 5% year over year. Software and consulting drove those gains, accounting for roughly three-quarters of the company’s revenue base, SVP and CFO Jim Kavanaugh said Wednesday.
Dive Insight:
IBM doubled down on hybrid cloud and AI two years ago, building a consulting practice focused on helping clients deploy workloads across platforms. The company is forging a parallel path with generative AI.
“Consulting is going to be the tip of the spear,” Krishna said, pointing to an AI-infused human resource management solution EY engineered using watsonx and proprietary models IBM is helping analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet build.
As enterprises launch pilot programs to identify scalable use cases, options are proliferating. Cloud marketplaces continue to deploy and upgrade multiple models, creating a complex ecosystem of AI-infused tools. AI expertise remains difficult to source.
IBM rolled out a suite of solutions on its watsonx platform, including an LLM trained to rescript COBOL business applications in Java earlier this year, and deployed its Granite model series, tuned for summarization, content generation and insight extraction, last month.
The company’s strategy extends to other commercially available models, with IBM consultants helping clients adopt Azure OpenAI and AWS services, Krishna said.
IBM Consulting expanded its AWS partnership earlier this month, pledging to train 10,000 consultants in AWS generative AI by the end of next year. The two companies will also create joint AI solutions, the announcement said.
To add to watsonx’s suite of capabilities, IBM plans to roll out an AI governance solution for compliance and risk mitigation before the end of the year, Krishna said.
