The day has arrived for IBM Think 2021, our flagship event for customers and partners around the world.

The innovations highlight IBM’s role in helping its customers and partners so they can accelerate their digital transformations, return to work smarter and build strategic ecosystems to help drive better business outcomes. You’ve heard us say IBM is “all in” on Hybrid Cloud and AI, and this event is the place to learn more about it.

Exciting new innovations

We’ve announced several exciting new innovations we’ll showcase at Think, and I wanted to give you a peek “under the hood” of these announcements, which advance our leadership in Hybrid Cloud and AI for business. Enterprises have more data — in more places — than ever. Customers often tell me about their successes, but they also share common frustrations with the challenges posed by having their data spread across the company in different sources and systems. They also want a clear and credible path to modernizing their mission-critical systems.

Our press release highlights the ways we’re helping customers address those challenges. We are introducing innovations to help unify, access, secure and manage data — anywhere. We’re rolling out new AI and automation elements to help our customers transform processes across business and IT. And these new advancements include support for what we call the democratization of AI: bringing AI to individuals like business professionals and field technicians.

Here is a summary of what we announced today:

• We are introducing a capability to IBM Cloud Pak for Data, a new “Auto SQL” technology that uses AI to automate access, integration and management of data for AI without ever having to move it, no matter where the data resides or how it is stored. AutoSQL capabilities will be one of the key technologies underlying a new data fabric from IBM in the Cloud Pak for Data. At Think, we’re excited to be joined by Citi, Verizon and Palantir to help us talk about this capability and their innovation in Data and AI. For more information on AutoSQL and the new data fabric in IBM Cloud Pak for Data, read more from our head of development.
• We announced IBM watsonx Orchestrate — new, interactive AI for business professionals, including sales, human resources and operations, designed to help them reclaim a significant amount of their time to focus on what matters most. Developed in partnership with IBM Research, watsonx Orchestrate uses an AI engine that connects to popular business applications and common collaboration tools like calendar and email. watsonx Orchestrate is currently in preview as part of the IBM Cloud Paks for Automation, but our customers are already sharing positive feedback about what’s possible when employees have AI at their fingertips. At Think, we’re looking forward to hearing from NatWest and Johnson & Johnson about their use of AI and automation.
• Maximo Mobile, part of the IBM Maximo Application Suite, is an easy-to-deploy mobile platform. This new solution empowers the technician with intelligent enterprise asset management (EAM) to manage critical physical assets, such as roads, bridges, plants and production lines. While watsonx Orchestrate is focused on helping make business professionals more productive, Maximo Mobile is designed to transform the job of professionals in the field. Even in the most remote locations, technicians can access AI, intelligent workflows, expert human assistance, digital twin information and in-depth organizational knowledge to solve complex issues more efficiently and with a focus on safety.
• To help enterprises apply AI to help modernize their applications for hybrid cloud, IBM Mono2Micro has recently been commercialized into IBM WebSphere Hybrid Edition. The capability uses AI developed in IBM Research to scan and analyze enterprise applications and provide recommendations on how to rewrite the application for containers and microservices.
• On May 5, 2021, we announced new advancements in our Security portfolio: a new Software as a Service (SaaS) version of IBM Cloud Pak for Security, designed to simplify how organizations deploy a zero trust architecture across the enterprise. We also announced an alliance partnership with cloud and network security provider Zscaler and new solution blueprints that offer guidance for applying zero trust to secure top business initiatives. You can learn more by reading Mary O’Brien’s blog and by joining us at Think, where we will hear from our customer, Dow Chemical.

Join us at Think 2021

You can link to all of our Think keynote sessions here. In addition to real-world stories from customers, these sessions will feature demos of new innovations and thoughts from industry leaders.