At its annual THINK conference, IBM unveiled a new lineup of hybrid technologies aimed at helping businesses deploy AI systems more effectively using their own data. The company believes this move will address long-standing issues that prevent large-scale use of AI in enterprise settings.
IBM expects over one billion new applications to emerge by 2028. With environments becoming more complex and fragmented, the company says it is focusing on tools that can simplify integration and improve how AI works across various systems.
“The era of AI experimentation is over. Today’s competitive advantage comes from purpose-built AI integration that drives measurable business outcomes,” said Arvind Krishna, CEO, IBM. “IBM is equipping enterprises with hybrid technologies that cut through complexity and accelerate production-ready AI implementations.”
Making AI agents easier to use
IBM’s watsonx Orchestrate platform now allows users to build AI agents in under five minutes. These agents can handle tasks using no-code or pro-code tools, making them accessible for a wide range of users. IBM is also adding pre-built agents for departments such as HR, sales, and procurement, and simpler agents that perform basic tasks like web research.
To make these tools more useful, IBM says they now integrate with more than 80 applications, including Adobe, AWS, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, and Workday. These agents can now coordinate multiple tasks across vendors, manage workflows, and monitor performance.
A new Agent Catalog also gives users access to more than 150 tools built by IBM and partners such as Box, MasterCard, Salesforce, and ServiceNow. This includes a sales agent that connects to Salesforce and a human resources chatbot that works within Slack.
Solving integration and data issues
One of the main problems businesses face with AI is integration. Many systems use different applications, APIs, and cloud services that don’t work well together. To address this, IBM is introducing webMethods Hybrid Integration, which simplifies how users manage systems, apps, and data across hybrid cloud environments.
The company is also upgrading watsonx.data to help organizations use unstructured data, such as text in contracts or spreadsheets, for generative AI. The improved version brings together a data lakehouse and tools to track and manage data. IBM says early testing showed these improvements can lead to 40% more accurate AI compared with other methods.
The platform will also feature a new integration tool and AI-based analytics service to better process data from multiple sources. These tools can be used independently or together within watsonx.data.
IBM recently shared its plan to acquire DataStax, which adds more tools for managing unstructured data. The integration of watsonx into Meta’s Llama Stack is also expected to improve how companies use generative AI.
Hardware and infrastructure support
To support these advancements, IBM introduced IBM LinuxONE 5, a platform designed to handle AI tasks securely and efficiently. It includes IBM’s latest on-chip AI and quantum-safe encryption, and supports up to 450 billion AI operations daily.
IBM is also expanding its partnerships with AMD, Intel, Nvidia, and CoreWeave to strengthen its offerings in AI computing and data processing.
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