As I get ready for the IBM Think event May 20-23 in Boston, Massachusetts, I have been reviewing the progress of the IBM ecosystem strategy along with my analyst colleagues at Acceleration Economy, including co-founders Bob Evans and John Siefert, CIO Kenny Mullican, and SVP of Acceleration Economy, Tom Smith.
In Q4 of 2023, the analysts at Acceleration Economy named IBM as one of the AI Ecosystem Top 12, all of which represent the platforms that are defining AI’s future through innovation, partnerships, and customer outcomes. This, along with IBM’s inclusion in Bob Evans’ Cloud Wars Top 10, puts IBM on an exclusive list of only five companies that Acceleration Economy analysts follow closely throughout the year for not only their AI and cloud innovation but also for their developments in the data and cybersecurity/threat protection categories.
About a year ago, IBM rolled out its AI and data platform, watsonx. At that time, I spoke with Raj Datta, IBM Global VP of Software and AI Partnerships, who outlined IBM’s strategy and approach to engaging ISVs (independent software vendors) to co-create their innovations on IBM watsonx. A year later, that vision has taken root, and the progress is reshaping what “build partner” means in the IBM ecosystem.
In this analysis, we reconnect with Datta for an update, speak with two partners in the IBM ecosystem that are scaling its businesses in retail and financial services, and outline a few of the biggest things to expect at Think 2024.
According to Datta, “Partners see the value in Generative AI’s ability to drive business growth, but many don’t have the resources to build, manage, and provide the ongoing support required to develop AI from scratch or keep up with the pace of AI innovation across the industry. IBM is drawing on decades of industry leadership, investment, and research in AI to help guide partners along its AI journey.”
A great example of this in practice is Bakstage.AI, a startup that co-created an AI-based customer experience platform with IBM that enables online customers to connect with in-store specialists using one-on-one live video. Through the Bakstage.AI innovative use of GenAI, the discussion is recorded and transcribed delivering insights and action items that build brand trust, boost conversions, and increase customer lifetime value.
“In retail, our partner Bakstage.AI is using watsonx,” said IBM’s Datta, “to provide businesses with an AI-powered 1:1 video concierge service that helps them create modern, dynamic, and hyper-personalized experiences for customers.”
Preet Raj, co-founder and CTO of Bakstage.AI commented, “Sentiment analysis is one of the key innovations we are most excited about in the platform where, with the aid of AI from watsonx, our customers are able to proactively extract experiences that should be escalated from the 1:1 discussions and do proper follow up immediately with customers, creating better customer and business outcomes.”
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CTO Raj explains that the scale Bakstage.AI has been able to drive with its platform is due, in large part, to the co-creation process and access to engineering teams at IBM who spent the time to understand and develop the platform in collaboration with him and his team.
Raj continued, “IBM has a legacy of creating these amazing ecosystem tools that have the AI, governance, and cybersecurity pieces baked in, which makes the decision a no-brainer to partner with them. I am sure others will get there, but they are not there yet.”
Putting the Bakstage.AI experience into perspective, we asked Datta to define the top three differentiators enabling partners to achieve this level of success, where he described the tools to develop trustworthy AI, the suite of embeddable tools, and access to valuable technical and GTM (go-to-market) resources at IBM:
- Providing the right tools and platforms to develop trustworthy AI. For example, watsonx, IBM’s AI and data platform with a set of AI assistants, empowers businesses to train, tune, and govern their AI using reliable data and governance capabilities.
- Offering a portfolio of embeddable AI technologies, including watsonx, AI libraries, applications, and APIs that can be tailored to suit different needs, helping enterprises build AI-powered solutions in less time with fewer developer and data science resources.
- Access to technical and sales enablement so partners can acquire in-demand skills, such as watsonx, and bring them to their organizations and clients.
Another IBM partner, QuantumStreet AI, which was part of the 2017 IBM Global Entrepreneur program, is experiencing similar success, where Datta explains the company is “offering a comprehensive AI platform that embeds watsonx for professional investors, representing $6 billion of client assets covering 50,000 publicly traded global companies and asset classes.”
QuantumStreet AI COO Art Amador defines the relationship with IBM watsonx as key to the company’s primary objective, which is to “help investors understand where markets and securities prices may be headed and identify major themes in the marketplace like GenAI, metaverse, autonomous vehicles, and more.”
When describing the relationship with IBM, Amador explained that resources from IBM joined him and his executive team in not only the development of this cutting-edge platform to deliver financial insights to investors but also on the journey to bring this solution to market. “We worked very closely with IBM’s go-to-market team. One of the things we do for our largest institutions is invite them into the IBM Innovation Studios where we help our investors wrap their arms around different AI use cases and demystify the whole thing.”
Amador continues to define the critical role this played in closing the biggest deals the company has landed because “when it comes to AI being adopted in the investment process, we are really still in the first inning and to help investors understand it, IBM has been key in providing that education.”
One of the high-flying platform partners that IBM has built a tight relationship with is ServiceNow, specifically with the GenAI-powered Now Assist platform, something Acceleration Economy analysts, specifically Tony Uphoff and Tom Smith, have called a “platform of platforms for enterprise companies adopting GenAI.”
When describing the evolved partnership between IBM and ServiceNow, Datta stressed, “ServiceNow is adding watsonx to a portfolio of various models powering Now Assist capabilities enhancing summarization, virtual agent conversational exchanges, and resolution generation to help customers increase productivity, speed-to-delivery, and issue resolution.”
Stay tuned as Acceleration Economy analyst Kenny Mullican joins me at IBM Think 2024, and we explore more stories of innovations and partnerships defining co-creation in the AI Ecosystem to dazzle customers.
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