Delivery of joint solutions upgraded with generative AI capabilities for critical uses cases comes with plans to train and skill 10,000 consultants.
AWS and IBM are expanding their relationship to help more mutual clients operationalize and derive value from generative Artificial Intelligence (AI).
As part of this, IBM Consulting aims to deepen and expand its generative AI expertise on AWS by training 10,000 consultants by the end of 2024; the two organizations also plan to deliver joint solutions and services upgraded with generative AI capabilities designed to help clients across critical use cases.
AWS and IBM Consulting already serve clients across a variety of industries with a range of AI solutions and services. Now, the companies are enhancing those solutions and services with the power of generative AI designed to help clients integrate AI quickly into business and IT operations building on AWS.
Both plan to start with these specific solutions:
- Contact Center modernization with Amazon Connect – IBM Consulting worked with AWS to create summarization and categorization functions for voice and digital interactions using generative AI which are designed to allow for transfers between the chatbot and live agent – providing the agent with summarized details that expedite resolution times and improve quality management.
- Platform Services on AWS – Initially introduced in November 2022, this offering is newly upgraded with generative AI to better manage the entire cloud value chain including IT Ops, automation and platform engineering. The new generative AI capabilities give clients tools to enhance business serviceability and availability for their applications hosted on AWS through intelligent issue resolution and observability techniques.
- Supply Chain Ensemble on AWS – This planned offering will introduce a virtual assistant that can help accelerate and augment the work of supply chain professionals as they aim to deliver on customer expectations, optimize inventories, reduce costs, streamline logistics, and assess supply chain risks.
Additionally, for clients looking to modernize on AWS, IBM Consulting plans to integrate AWS generative AI services into its proprietary IBM Consulting Cloud Accelerator to help accelerate the cloud transformation process. This will help with reverse engineering, code generation and code conversion.
Commitment to deepening expertise and expanding AWS on watsonx integration
IBM has already built extensive expertise with AWS’s generative AI services including Amazon SageMaker and Amazon CodeWhisperer and is one of first AWS Partners to use Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that makes industry-leading foundation models (FMs) available through an API.
AI expertise and a deep understanding of AWS capabilities are critical for clients looking to implement generative AI.
IBM is already providing mutual clients with access to professionals from IBM Consulting’s Center of Excellence for Generative AI with specialized generative AI expertise.
IBM Consulting plans to train and skill 10,000 consultants on AWS generative AI services by end of 2024 – with access to an exclusive, partner-only program that provides training on the top use cases and best practices for client engagement with AWS generative AI services.
“Our customers are increasingly looking for the technical support and AI expertise they need to build and implement a generative AI strategy that drives business value from their entire cloud value chain,” said Chris Niederman, Managing Director, Global Systems Integrators, AWS.
Manish Goyal, Senior Partner, Global AI & Analytics Leader, IBM Consulting, said: “Enterprise clients are looking for expert help to build a strategy and develop generative AI use cases that can drive business value and transformation – while mitigating risks.”
IBM is also responding to client demand for generative AI capabilities on AWS by making watsonx.data available on AWS as a fully managed SaaS solution clients can also access in AWS Marketplace.
The company also plans to make watsonx.ai and watsonx.governance available on AWS by 2024.
Generative AI at scale for telecommunications
Clients are already benefitting from the longstanding relationship between IBM and AWS.
Bouygues Telecom, a leading French communications service provider with a history of industry-leading innovation, engaged IBM Consulting to support the company’s evolving cloud strategy to explore, design and implement AI use cases at scale while giving teams flexibility to select cloud and AI providers based on departmental and application needs.
Leveraging the IBM Garage approach, the team co-designed a custom data and AI reference architecture covering multiple cloud scenarios that can extend to all AI and data projects across Bouygues Telecom’s cloud and on-premises platforms.
“As we sought to leverage generative AI to extract insights from our engagements with clients, we were confronted with some unfamiliar issues around storage, memory size and power requirements,” said Matthieu Dupuis, Head of AI for Bouygues Telecom. “IBM Consulting and AWS have been invaluable partners in identifying the right model for our needs and overcoming these technological barriers.” With the new AI platform on AWS, IBM Consulting enabled Bouygues Telecom to develop proof-of-concept models and scale them into production quickly while helping to minimize costs and risks. The platform also enables their data scientists to work with greater efficiency, purpose and satisfaction by allowing them to spend more time on complex, high-value AI projects rather than launching standalone solutions.
