The issues confronting today’s Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are more complex and crucial than ever before, as such executives try to help their companies heal and rebuild in the aftermath of a global pandemic. To this end, IBM (NYSE: IBM) is announcing at its Think Digital conference a broad variety of new AI-powered technologies and services designed to support CIOs simplify their IT.

Business intelligence company IDC forecasts that by 2024, businesses driven by AI should be able to react to consumers, rivals, regulators and collaborators 50% faster than those not using AI.

To this end, IBM is launching IBM Watson AIOps, a new offering that uses AI to optimize how businesses detect, diagnose and respond to IT abnormalities in real time. Unforeseen IT accidents and outages will cost companies sales and credibility. Market consulting company Aberdeen is setting an loss costing around $260,000 an hour.

Watson AIOps allows companies to introduce automation at infrastructure level and is intended to help CIOs better anticipate and influence potential results, concentrate energy on higher-value jobs, and create more flexible and adaptive networks that can remain up and running longer.

The new software is based on the newest version of Red Hat OpenShift to run through hybrid cloud architectures and function in tandem with applications at the heart of today’s collaborative work climate, such as Slack and Box. It also partners with conventional IT management software suppliers, such as Mattermost and ServiceNow.

As part of the roll-out, IBM is also announcing the  inside the IBM cloud modernization program. This latest technology is intended to aid clients reduce total framework development commitment and costs.

It offers a set of resources designed to simplify the end-to-end process of modernisation, speed up research and suggestions for different architecture and microservice choices.

The accelerator leverages continuous learning and interpretable AI frameworks to respond to the customer’s favorite digital development activities and keeps up-to-date with the advancement of technologies and platforms.

Several of the innovations underpinning Watson AIOps and Accelerator for Software Modernization have been built in IBM Research.

“The biggest obstacle for organisations is cohesion. Slack is most useful because it interacts closely with other platforms that consumers use every day, taking vital business knowledge to networks where teams can interact, “said Slack CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield,” by utilizing Slack with Watson AIOps.

IT operators may better work together on accident responses, enabling them to invest valuable time fixing incidents rather than finding them.

“In this modern age of remote employment, safely storing and viewing data at any time and through any of your devices is more critical than ever before,” said Aaron Levie, CEO of Box. “We are excited to extend our relationship with IBM to provide content and teamwork through Watson AIOps, allowing IT companies and enterprises to get research done quicker, simpler and more safely.”

“What we’ve learnt from businesses around the world is that there are three main variables that will decide AI’s performance in market – language, technology and confidence,” said IBM Senior Vice President, Cloud and Application Network, Rob Thomas.

“The crisis of COVID-19 and growing competition for remote job capability are increasing the need for AI automation at an unparalleled rate and speed. Through automation, we allow next-generation CIOs and their teams to prioritize the critical role of today’s emerging companies — managing and extracting data to add insightful insights that can contribute to more successful market results and lower costs. 

In the growing business climate, consumers around sectors embrace modern technologies.

“Our business has been hard hit by the pandemic, and our research in AI over the last few years will help us overcome some of the potential problems,” said Roland Schuetz, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of the Lufthansa Company.

“Working with IBM to implement the Watson AI technology has helped us simplify how we modernize our Data Science Environment Platform. We use AI to optimize processes that result in gains such as extremely sensitive customer service and organizational problems. In this way, we make an significant contribution to a strong start to the crisis.”

In addition to automating IT processes, IBM is unveiling a range of latest and improved tools intended to include a blueprint for CIOs to work in a modern world. The new capabilities are designed to help:

• Automate Business Planning – IBM Cloud Pak for Data, IBM’s fully-integrated data and AI platform, has been updated with a host of new capabilities designed to help business leaders automate the access to critical business-ready data. For example, added to the platform as extensions are IBM Planning Analytics, designed to enable users to automate planning, budgeting and forecasting for business; and DataOps capabilities such as IBM InfoSphere Master Data Connect, which enables users to access MDM deployments in on-premises environments.
• Automate Business Operations – A major new update to IBM Cloud Pak for Automation, software for designing, building and running automation apps, enables clients to more easily create AI “digital worker” automation solutions. Digital workers automate routine work and collaborate with human counterparts. The new capabilities can help simplify how organizations digitize automation skills, such as data capture, task automation and business routing. 
• Automate Call Centers – IBM Watson Assistant, IBM’s AI-based conversation platform, has also been updated to help intelligently automate the most complex, knowledge-intensive interactions and drive improved customer satisfaction while reducing operating costs. Assistant now has a pre-built user interface that requires no development effort to deploy and is designed with user experience-based best practices. Also, new integrations to some of the leading customer service platforms preserve clients’ existing investments in those services and allows users to reach live agents with ease. Finally, a new feature called “autolearning,” currently in development and due in the product this summer, will learn from prior customer behavior to provide the best, most relevant answers to new questions on the same topic. Just as human agents improve over time by learning from customer interactions, autolearning will now offer similar capabilities for the virtual assistant.

“To operate effectively in the current environment, T-Mobile is focused on ensuring a more responsive and agile supply chain, while saving costs and delivering superior customer service,” said Erdem Eskigun, Director, Supply Chain Data Analytics and Operations Research, T-Mobile.

“IBM Cloud Pak for Software puts together diverse datasets from around our enterprise and helps them to evaluate and build predictive models for initiatives ranging from product replenishment to transport management, revenue forecasting, consumer demand forecasting, and supply chain management. Today, we can switch from concept start-up to distribution to market customers even quicker.”

Today’s coverage is building on the newly reported industry strategies for COVID-19 change that are now helping companies tackle the complexity of today’s market climate. Leading organizations and organisations are looking to IBM infrastructure and our leadership in cloud, technology and AI technologies to assist with recovery during this pandemic.