At IBM Think 2019, the keynote of IBM CEO Ginni Rometty is gaining high traction for her views about Chapter 2 of digital transformation. She shared the way businesses around the world have experimented with artificial intelligence (AI) and migrated their workloads to cloud in last few years.
IBM Think is one of the largest events of visionaries, technologists and innovators. Business leaders from around the world gather to share their vision on cloud, internet of things (IoT), blockchain, quantum computing, AI, data analytics, and much more.
According to Ginni, the chapter 1 of digital transformation was about committing to random acts of digital and experimenting the modern technologies in business.
In her keynote at IBM Think 2019, she noted: “Chapter one of the cloud represented about 20 percent of the workload opportunity. It was largely about moving a lot of new and customer-facing applications to the cloud.
“Chapter two is about the hard stuff. It’s about scaling artificial intelligence and creating hybrid clouds. It’s about bringing the cloud operating model to all those mission-critical apps and enabling customers to manage data, workloads and apps and move them between multiple clouds. This is a trillion-dollar opportunity and IBM intends to be No. 1.”
Hence, the chapter 2 of digital transformation is about moving from experimentation to true transformation. It’s about gaining speed and scale. Here are the three core areas, according to Ginni, which every enterprise will need to focus on for moving to the next stage of innovation:
1. Digital and AI
Ginni noted that enterprises are following two different approaches to digital transformation: outside-in and inside-out. The outside-in approach is driven by market and demand for new digital services. whereas, the inside-out approach includes modernization of main systems and designing the business for change.
According to her, “there can’t be AI without IA”, where IA is information architecture. IA is important because enterprises require a platform for connecting their digital services and then control and manage the lifecycle of AI apps.
To help businesses move to the next chapter of digital transformation with AI, IBM had recently launched Watson Anywhere, which aims to break AI siloes for enterprises that are caused by vendor lock-in. The new initiative makes the IBM Watson portable across any cloud.
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2. Hybrid cloud
During the first chapter of cloud, enterprises have moved 20% of their mission-critical apps to cloud. The second chapter will include moving the remaining 80%, considering the unique requirements around compliance, security and location. This causes a complex set of hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
According to IBM, the chapter 2 will include becoming pioneer in efficiently and securely moving apps and data between multiple clouds. IBM has been working for long to simplify and accelerate the journey of enterprises to hybrid cloud.
At Think conference, the company launched new hybrid cloud services that will help enterprises in migrating, integrating, and managing applications and workloads securely and seamlessly across public, private and on-premises environments.
There is a new IBM Cloud Integration Platform that is aimed to optimize time and complexity while launching new services and apps across cloud. The new hybrid cloud offerings also include new services to advise on holistic cloud strategies, to simplify management of resources across cloud, and to deliver security for data and apps in public cloud.
3. Responsible stewardship
Chapter 2 of digital transformation will demand more than technology and business. It will open a door to several new opportunities can will need enterprises to do more than digital reinvent themselves. Ginni emphasized that businesses will need to act as responsible stewards and work on building new levels of trust, transparency and purpose.
Enterprises can become responsible stewards by securing the data of customers, allowing customers to retain control of their data, and make them trust on AI and its suggestions.
She also said that there is a need for training students and working pros with in-demand skills.
Ginni wrapped up her keynote with the announcement of Code and Response, a new $25 million, four-year commitment to build, fortify, test and implement open source technology solutions at scale to speed recovery in the wake of natural disasters.
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“Generating ideas through challenges is not enough,” said Bob Lord, IBM Senior VP, Cognitive Applications and Developer Ecosystems.
“Every year natural disasters affect close to 160 million people worldwide. To take a huge leap forward in effective disaster response, we must tap into the global open source ecosystem to generate sustainable solutions we can scale and deploy in the field. But we cannot do it alone. It is only by working with venerable partners like the American Red Cross that we will see these technologies really come to life.”
