IBM Think 2023: 10 Coolest Products In AI, Security

Watsonx.ai, the Cloud Carbon Calculator and FYI were among the coolest offerings on the expo floor of IBM Think 2023.

A product set for artificial intelligence builders to train, test and deploy traditional machine learning and new generative AI capabilities. A calculator dashboard for measuring, tracking, managing and reporting carbon associated with hybrid multi-cloud. And a productivity application for creative professionals to receive idea suggestions.

Watsonx.ai, the Cloud Carbon Calculator and FYI were among the coolest offerings on the expo floor of IBM Think 2023.

This year, Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM held its annual conference in Orlando. For the first time, IBM held a Partner Plus Day for content geared toward about 750 partners in attendance. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna spoke during Partner Plus Day.

Coolest Think 2023 Products

Krishna also promised that next year’s Think will have more non-IBM partners on the show floor, explaining that Think 2023 was planned two years in advance back when the COVID-19 pandemic was more of a factor.

“We weren’t exactly sure this year how many would come out,” Krishna said during a conversation with analysts and reporters at Think 2023.

IBM has about 55,000 worldwide channel partners, 12,000 of them in North America, according to CRN’s 2023 Channel Chiefs.

Click through the slideshow for more information on the coolest offerings on Think 2023’s show floor.

Watsonx.ai

IBM Watsonx.ai and Watsonx.data are the first two product sets within the Watsonx platform slated to go into general availability in the summer, according to the vendor.

A third product set, Watsonx.governance, has not received a specific GA release date.

The IBM Watsonx.ai product set is meant for AI builders who train, test, tune and deploy traditional ML and new generative AI capabilities powered by foundation models.

Users can leverage Watsonx.ai from data preparation to model deployment and monitoring. The product set has a foundation model library with large, curated sets of enterprise data backed by filtering and cleansing processes and auditable data lineage, according to IBM.

The models are trained on code, time-series data, tabular data, IT events data, geospatial data and other modalities. The first foundation models set will be in beta tech preview for select clients, according to IBM. Some of those early model categories will be fm.code, fm.NLP and fm.geospatial.

IBM has partnered with Hugging Face to provide thousands of open models and datasets through Watsonx.ai, according to the vendor.

IBM is already training 1,000 consultants on the Watsonx platform, according to a Bank of America report Wednesday.

Watsonx.data

The second of two Watsonx product sets expected to go into general availability in the summer is Watson.data.

The IBM Watsonx.data data store is built on open lakehouse architecture and optimized for governed data and AI workloads, according to the vendor. Users will have access to querying, governance and open data formats, according to IBM.

Watsonx.data can manage workloads on-premises and across multi-cloud environments. IBM estimates that users can halve warehouse costs through Watsonx.data workload optimization. Users can access data through a single point of entry while applying a variety of fit-for-purpose query engines.

Watsonx.data provides built-in governance, automation and integrations with users’ existing databases and tools, according to IBM.

Watson Assistant

IBM had a demonstration at Think 2023 of Watson Assistant, which is used to create AI-powered virtual agents.

Watson Assistant promises friendlier, faster interactions with customers with an interface that allows for building and maintaining virtual agents and chatbots.

Watson Assistant uses natural language understanding (NLU) to better understand your customers in context, according to IBM. It integrates with customer relationship management (CRM) software, back-end systems and processing power. A low-code visual builder aims to allow nontechnical employees to build and manage virtual agents.

IBM promises up to 95 percent accuracy in answers from the agents and chatbots, according to the vendor.

QRadar EDR

IBM Security’s QRadar Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) offering aims to secure endpoints from cyberattacks, detect anomalous behavior and remediate issues in near-real-time, according to the vendor.

Formerly known as ReaQta, QRadar EDR promises to remediates known and unknown endpoint threats with intelligent automation and little-to-no human interaction.

QRadar EDR comes with attack visualization behavioral trees and storyboards plus automated alerts. The EDR console is continuously threat hunting for indicators of attack and compromise, according to the vendor.

The QRadar suite is among the IBM offerings receiving resources for a greater channel sales motion, according to the company.

Foundation Models For zSystems

IBM featured a demonstration of AI foundation models for its zSystems offerings during Think 2023.

Foundation models are trained on broad data – such as anti-money laundering or fraud – that users can then leverage for other tasks to reduce time-to-value. For offerings like IBM’s z16, SQL Data Insights (SQL DI), an AI-powered feature included in Db2 13 for z/OS, allows clients to use AI for business processes with SQL queries.

SQL DI operates on large volumes of data stored in IBM’s flagship relational database, IBM Db2 for z/OS, and other enterprise data stores to create foundation models, according to the vendor.

According to a Bank of America report Wednesday, IBM’s foundation models have been “trained for last several years on large GPU clusters using IBM data” and “allow for enterprises to skip a significant part of the training phase of AI that can be expensive and time consuming, thereby allowing for faster time to market (incremental training just on client proprietary data).”

Power E1050

IBM’s Power E1050 four-socket rack server promises optimization for data-intensive apps and hybrid cloud deployments, according to the vendor.

This midrange server aims to provide enterprise-class capabilities and enhanced security with transparent memory encryption at the processor level and production-ready AI at the point of data, according to IBM.

The E1050 also promises redundancy and disaster recovery in IBM Cloud and – with its 7nm Power10 processor – greater energy efficiency, workload capacity and container density compared to the IBM Power9 processor.

Instana Observability

IBM bought application performance monitoring (APM) provider Instana back in 2020.

At Think 2023, the vendor had a demonstration of the offering available, showing how users can automate full-stack visibility with one-second granularity and three-second notifications.

With an hour of downtime costing some users beyond six figures, Instana Observability promises data and context for any employees in development operations (DevOps), site reliability engineering (SRE), platform engineering, IT operations (ITOps) and development, according to IBM.

Instana captures and isolates browser and mobile application errors, including JavaScript. And the offering provides a unified data source for user behavior and frontend issues for troubleshooting. Instana integrates with log management and network monitoring tools, too.

Cloud Carbon Calculator

One of IBM’s AI-informed offerings announced at Think 2023 that didn’t carry the Watsonx name was the Cloud Carbon Calculator dashboard.

On display on Think’s expo floor, the Calculator uses IBM Research technology for measuring, tracking, managing and reporting carbon associated with hybrid multi-cloud.

The calculator is in a limited beta and promises to track greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across various workloads down to the cloud service level. Users can analyze GHG emissions by month, quarter and year as well as location and organizational workstreams, according to IBM.

Guardium

IBM Security Guardium aims to provide enterprise and midmarket users with data visibility, compliance and protection.

The vendor bills Guardium as able to discover, classify and catalog regulated structured and unstructured data on-premises and in the cloud for finding vulnerabilities.

Guardium uses encryption, key management, real-time alerts, dynamic redaction, quarantining suspect IDs and other measures for data protection, according to IBM.

FYI

Bringing some star power to IBM Think 2023 was rapper, singer and producer Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas.

Will.I.Am took the stage for a talk on AI and generative AI and the role it plays in creativity and the music business.

On the Think show floor was a demonstration of Focus Your Ideas (FYI), a productivity application for creative professionals. Will.I.Am serves as CEO and founder of the app, which runs on IBM Cloud.

FYI allows workers to organize projects, conduct group calls and chats, share assets and display assets in interactive layouts, according FYI’s website. It also uses cryptography methods such as Elliptic-curve Diffie–Hellman (ECDH) and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) to secure messages and projects from end to end.

The app can also suggest ideas for projects, including song lyrics, stories, descriptions and color choices. It can summarize group chats and recommend times for scheduling calls.