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Canadian Fintech Solutions Provider Gives Financial Institutions the Flexibility and Security to Rapidly Innovate and Compete; Advances IBM’s Hybrid Cloud and AI Strategy

ARMONK, N.Y., Dec. 15, 2020 — IBM today announced it has acquired Montreal-based fintech company, Expertus Technologies Inc. The acquisition strengthens IBM’s portfolio as an end-to-end digital payments solution provider and further advances IBM’s hybrid cloud and AI strategy.

“Financial institutions must balance greater demand for secure digital solutions while complying with rapidly evolving regulation,” said Mark Foster, Senior Vice President, IBM Services. “Expertus’ payment-as-a-service solution expands our hybrid cloud-based payments offerings, transforming payments and treasury management with AI to give financial institutions the flexibility to rapidly innovate and stay competitive as consumer demands evolve.”

Expertus is a pioneer in cloud solutions for the financial services industry. More than 1,000 entities including banks, credit unions, regulatory agencies and corporates around the globe process an average of over $50 billion daily on its payments platform. Expertus is also one of the largest North American services bureaus of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Transactions (SWIFT), the vast network used by banks and other financial institutions to manage money transfers and treasury transactions.

With this acquisition, IBM gains decades of consulting experience to address the most pressing payment modernization challenges of financial institutions, which are part of the more than $100 billion consulting and business process services opportunity in banking and financial markets¹ over the next few years. This acquisition also expands IBM’s finance industry depth and ability to manage complex integrations – of technologies, people and processes – and builds on last month’s acquisition of SAP consulting partner TruQua, which bolstered IBM Global Business Services’ cloud application modernization and finance transformation expertise.

AI-Powered Intelligent Workflows for Payments

IBM has long been committed to simplifying and streamlining the payment transaction experience while complying with the myriad of regulations, improving fraud detection and enforcement of payments industry standards. Expertus payments and cash management solutions modernize payment operations such as real-time cross-border payment processing. Cloud-based payments provide the needed flexibility for financial institutions to develop and offer new consumer services, while also meeting strict regulatory requirements for financial data transmission and fraud detection.

Together with Expertus, IBM can now provide financial institutions with the full breadth of intelligent workflows, end-to-end business processes embedded with AI, data and analytics, transforming payments and treasury management on the cloud with real-time data, easy to use interfaces and improved pricing by reducing cost per transaction. Additionally, it complements the deep industry expertise, security and resiliency available through IBM Cloud for Financial Services™.

“Expertus built an efficient and trusted financial services enterprise, that in many ways, was ahead of its time,” said Jacques Leblanc, CEO and founder of Expertus. “Together with IBM, we now can offer businesses worldwide the benefits and security of seamless end-to-end financial transactions.”

“IBM and Expertus’ long-standing partnership is a great foundation upon which to deepen our relationship,” added Leblanc. “As a home-grown Montréal company, we are proud to bring our offering as well as our commitment to customers to a new level and to a broader market.”

Expertus is now part of IBM Global Business Services, following its previous successful alliance with IBM Payments Center Canada. IBM will consolidate Expertus’ Payments Platform as a Service offering and build on SWIFT processing services and capabilities, which enable a global network of 11,000 financial institutions in more than 200 countries to send and receive information about financial transactions.

IBM’s continued investment is its secure and enterprise-grade hybrid cloud offerings – leveraging Red Hat OpenShift – makes it uniquely equipped to meet the specific requirements of financial services institutions. IBM Cloud for Financial Services™ is powered by the same industry-leading confidential computing security found in IBM Z. Delivered via IBM Hyper Protect Services, it features ‘Keep Your Own Key’ encryption capabilities backed by the highest level of security certification commercially available, making it ideal for mission-critical workloads and highly sensitive data.

– IBM Research innovations in natural language processing, automation and building trust to be commercialized in Watson products

NEW YORK, Dec. 9, 2020 — IBM today announced innovative new capabilities planned for IBM Watson designed to help scale the use of AI by businesses.

Developed by IBM Research, the new capabilities are designed to improve the automation of AI, provide a higher degree of precision in natural language processing, and foster greater trust in outcomes derived from AI predictions. They include:

• Reading Comprehension is based on an innovative question-answering (QA) system from IBM Research. Currently in beta in IBM Watson Discovery, it is planned as a new feature that can help identify more precise answers in response to natural language queries from vast troves of complex enterprise documents. It also provides scores that indicate how confident the system is in each answer.
• FAQ Extraction uses a novel NLP technique from IBM Research to automate the extraction of Q&A pairs from FAQ documents. Currently in beta in IBM Watson Assistant’s search skill, it is planned as a new feature to help businesses keep virtual assistants up-to date with the latest answers and reduce the time-consuming process of manual updates.
• A new intent classification model is now available in IBM Watson Assistant. It is designed to more accurately understand an end-user’s goal or intent when engaging with a virtual assistant and to enable administrators to train the system faster. The model provides more accurate results from less data versus compared commercial systems¹. This can help businesses go live with virtual assistants in a few days while achieving high accuracy.
• IBM Watson Discovery now includes support for 10 new languages including Bosnian, Croatian, Danish, Finnish, Hebrew, Hindi, Norwegian (Bokmål), Norwegian (Nynorsk), Serbian and Swedish. IBM has continued to add support for additional languages to help businesses build global, enterprise-grade NLP solutions.

“This past year has shown us that the real power of AI is in helping companies take action and respond to changing conditions in real time. That means in minutes and hours — not weeks or months,” said Daniel Hernandez, General Manager of Data and AI, IBM. “Today’s new AI capabilities are yet another example of how cutting-edge AI advancements coming out of IBM Research help us to deliver innovations for language, automation and building trust in IBM Watson that are changing the game for businesses of all sizes and across all industries.”

Advancing AI Governance Capabilities to Help Build Trust and Transparency in Business Outcomes

IBM also announced plans to commercialize IBM Research-developed ‘AI Factsheets’ in Watson Studio in Cloud Pak for Data throughout the next year. Like nutrition labels for foods or information sheets for appliances, AI Factsheets are designed to provide information about a product’s important characteristics. Standardizing and publicizing this information will help build trust in AI services across the industry.

To complement this, IBM Services for AI at Scale, a new consulting offering, provides businesses with a framework, methodology, and underlying technology to guide organizations on their journey to  trustworthy and ethical AI. IBM Cloud Pak for Data also has new capabilities to provide a complete foundation for AI that can run on any cloud.

Leading global brands are using IBM Watson to infuse intelligence into their workflows. For instance, a global leader in assurance, tax, strategy and transactions and consulting services, EY is transforming the M&A due diligence process using IBM Watson Discovery. Following the expansion of its global alliance with IBM earlier this summer, EY launched Diligence Edge, which includes a custom NLP model trained on EY proprietary M&A language, to help deal makers identify and leverage valuable insights throughout the transaction’s lifecycle, as well as make informed decisions on deal value opportunities to gain an advantage in competitive deal processes.

Regions Bank has worked with IBM to complete a model monitoring use case that leverages IBM Cloud Pak for Data and Watson OpenScale. Regions was able to have a continuous read on model accuracy in production and achieved a higher confidence in the quality of predictions. IBM provides a standardized and disciplined approach to tracking model performance and will further Regions’ end-to end model lifecycle management program. The company is also using IBM Watson to enhance customer service and reports having decreased call wait times by 40 percent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic using Watson Assistant.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 1, 2020 — IBM Security today announced that it was recognized as a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Security Analytics Platforms, Q4 2020 report. Released today, the report evaluated 11 of the top Security Analytic providers, with IBM ranking highest in the current offering category compared to other vendors, and Forrester noting that IBM is “building an open security platform on the cloud.”

“As enterprises have moved their own workloads to the cloud to take advantage of its scale, flexibility, and availability, security vendors have finally started to follow suit with cloud-based delivery of their security analytics solutions,” said the report. According to Forrester, this shift has enabled vendors to more quickly roll out new capabilities to their customers and decrease the management overhead for these systems.

The Forrester Wave report recognizes several differentiators for IBM’s security analytic offerings, including IBM Security QRadar Advisor with Watson, IBM Security X-Force threat intelligence capabilities, and integration with IBM managed security services. Additionally, Forrester notes that customer references appreciated IBM’s global reach, technical support, and innovation.

“IBM believes the future of security will be built on open, cloud-native technologies that allow companies to simplify the complexity challenges plaguing today’s security operation centers,” said Justin Youngblood, Vice President IBM Security. “We are tackling this problem head on with IBM’s Cloud Pak for Security, which is designed to connect security and infuse AI and automation across previously siloed tools, teams, and hybrid cloud environments.”

Download the report via IBM’s registration page here, or Forrester subscribers can read the full report here. Learn more about IBM security analytic offerings, including Cloud Pak for Security, IBM Security QRadar (Security Information and Event Management) and IBM Security SOAR (Security Orchestration Automation and Response.)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 1, 2020 — IBM Security today announced that it was recognized as a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Security Analytics Platforms, Q4 2020 report. Released today, the report evaluated 11 of the top Security Analytic providers, with IBM ranking highest in the current offering category compared to other vendors, and Forrester noting that IBM is “building an open security platform on the cloud.”

“As enterprises have moved their own workloads to the cloud to take advantage of its scale, flexibility, and availability, security vendors have finally started to follow suit with cloud-based delivery of their security analytics solutions,” said the report. According to Forrester, this shift has enabled vendors to more quickly roll out new capabilities to their customers and decrease the management overhead for these systems.

The Forrester Wave report recognizes several differentiators for IBM’s security analytic offerings, including IBM Security QRadar Advisor with Watson, IBM Security X-Force threat intelligence capabilities, and integration with IBM managed security services. Additionally, Forrester notes that customer references appreciated IBM’s global reach, technical support, and innovation.

“IBM believes the future of security will be built on open, cloud-native technologies that allow companies to simplify the complexity challenges plaguing today’s security operation centers,” said Justin Youngblood, Vice President IBM Security. “We are tackling this problem head on with IBM’s Cloud Pak for Security, which is designed to connect security and infuse AI and automation across previously siloed tools, teams, and hybrid cloud environments.”

– Acquisition to help businesses use AI to better manage complexity of modern applications that span hybrid cloud landscape; Builds on IBM’s industry-leading AI-powered automation capabilities

ARMONK, N.Y., Nov. 18, 2020 — IBM today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Instana, an application performance monitoring and observability company. The acquisition will help businesses better manage the complexity of modern applications that span the hybrid cloud landscape. Today’s news further advances IBM’s Hybrid Cloud and AI strategy and strengthens its AI-powered automation capabilities. Financial details were not disclosed.

With the acquisition of Instana, IBM will help companies overcome the challenge of managing application performance across multiple teams, and across 2 to 15 clouds, on average.ⁱ And it is another example of how IBM is building on its AI-powered automation capabilities, including:

–  the launch of IBM Watson AIOps earlier this year, IBM’s AI offering for automating how enterprises self-detect, diagnose and respond to IT anomalies in real time;
–  its acquisition of WDG Automation to provide clients with broader access to intelligent automation through software robots;
–  its expanded partnership with ServiceNow to develop a joint solution to help companies reduce operational risk and lower costs by applying AI to automate IT operations;
–  and continued updates to IBM Cloud Pak for Automation designed to help companies drive innovation across their expanding IT environments and accelerate digital transformation.

“Our clients today are faced with managing a complex technology landscape filled with mission-critical applications and data that are running across a variety of hybrid cloud environments – from public clouds, private clouds and on-premises,” said Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President, Cloud and Data Platform, IBM. “IBM’s acquisition of Instana is yet another important step that we are taking to provide companies with the most complete portfolio of AI-automated solutions to tackle this enormous challenge and help prevent unforeseen IT incidents that can cost a business in lost revenue and reputation.”

Headquartered in Chicago, with a development center in Germany, Instana provides businesses with capabilities to manage the performance of complex and modern cloud-native applications no matter where they reside – on mobile devices, public and private clouds and on-premises, including IBM Z.  Instana’s enterprise observability platform automatically builds a deep contextual understanding of cloud applications and provides actionable insights to indicate how to best prevent and remedy IT issues that could damage the business or reduce customer satisfaction — such as slow response times, services that aren’t working or infrastructure that is down.

Once Instana’s capabilities are integrated into IBM, companies will be able to feed these insights into Watson AIOps. The information could then be compared to a baseline of a normal operating application, with AI triggering alerts to resolve issues quickly before negative impacts to that transaction or activity. This can help eliminate the need for IT staff to manually monitor and manage applications, freeing these employees to focus on innovation and higher value work.

“With the added responsibility of ensuring the build and run quality of the software they develop, DevOps teams need a new generation of application performance monitoring and observability capabilities to succeed,” said Mirko Novakovic, co-founder and CEO, Instana. “Instana’s observability capabilities combined with IBM’s AI-powered automation capabilities across hybrid cloud environments will give clients a full view of their application performance to best optimize operations.”

New Network Designed to Create Transparency About Each Product from the Source of the Fiber to the Completion of the Garment

ARMONK N.Y., November 16, 2020 – IBM and KAYA&KATO, a textile company that manufactures uniforms and work wear, today announced the development of a blockchain network for the fashion industry, with the support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development (BMZ). The network is designed to create transparency about the origin of garments, from the fiber used to the completion of the final product, and to provide consumers with the knowledge that their clothes are sustainably produced.

This new application of blockchain technology to document and trace the supply chain for textiles will allow suppliers of organic cotton and customers of KAYA&KATO alike to identify the origin and where the fabrics were processed as well as gain an understanding into each production and distribution step. The aim is to create transparency and to help develop secured protocol for the traceability of ecological materials. All the permissioned parties involved will be able to access the transaction data recorded in blocks in an unchangeable record on the chain.

There is increasing demand from consumers to understand the environmental impact of the products they buy. According to a global study conducted this year by the IBM Institute for Business Value in association with the National Retail Federation, 77% of consumers surveyed say that sustainability is important to them, and 57% surveyed said they are willing to change their purchasing habits to help reduce negative impact to the environment.

Within the garment industry, these attitudes are more prevalent among and more important to younger demographics. A recent survey of European consumers by Morning Consult commissioned by IBM found that 75% of respondents said they are concerned about the level of waste in the fashion industry. Furthermore, 64% of respondents said they would be more likely to buy the garment if new technologies could prove sustainability claims.1

Many within the fashion industry are working to help address changing consumer attitudes while creating ways to be more transparent about the environmental impact of the materials they use. Blockchain is well-suited to help garment manufacturers and their suppliers work together to create a permanent, immutable record of the origin of all materials used in production to build trust.

“Blockchain technology is a catalyst for collaboration and transparency across industries and within supply chains,” said Christian Schultze-Wolters, Director of Blockchain, IBM. “Blockchain technology today is being used to help increase visibility and agility in supply chains in industries including automotive manufacturing, mining, electronics production and even the cultivation and distribution of many types of food. By creating shared visibility, the technology helps foster trust among companies and their suppliers, businesses and especially their consumers. We want to set an example within the industry and offer other companies the opportunity to join us in advancing development and helping to create solutions for supply chain.”

“The advancement of sustainability and digitization is crucial to our forward-looking approach. This project combines both aspects in an excellent way by promoting supply chain transparency. For KAYA&KATO, there are multiple compelling reasons to initiate the development of a blockchain network and we look forward to implementation and eagerly await the first solutions in cooperation with IBM,” says Dr. Stefan Rennicke, co-founder and managing director of KAYA&KATO GmbH.

The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has long been calling for more transparency in global supply chains and is also supporting the cooperation between KAYA&KATO and IBM.

KAYA&KATO is one of the first 27 companies to be certified with the “Green Button” by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The Green Button is the seal introduced by the BMZ for textiles produced in a socially and ecologically sustainable manner. The Green Button is the first state seal to combine requirements for textiles and for the entire company

Practice unit to create industry solutions built on IBM Cloud and help clients migrate, manage and transform critical workloads across hybrid cloud environments

East Brunswick, New Jersey, USA and Bangalore, India – October 29, 2020: Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, today announced its intention to expand its IBM Hybrid Cloud Practice. Supported by technical experts from both organizations, the practice is expected to help Wipro customers modernize their digital operations across hybrid cloud environments by leveraging IBM Cloud Paks, containerized software running on Red Hat OpenShift.

Wipro’s IBM Hybrid Cloud Practice unit will help customers innovate at scale by leveraging industry-ready Wipro solutions such as BoundaryLess Enterprise (BLE) and ModernizR. Both of these solutions were built with IBM Cloud Paks on Red Hat OpenShift and can run in any cloud environment, including the IBM public cloud.

• BoundaryLess Enterprise (BLE) is a hybrid cloud management platform that offers a comprehensive array of technologies in a single environment that help customers run their cloud-native applications from anywhere. BLE leverages IBM’s open hybrid cloud capabilities to support containers, IaaS, and PaaS computing models that can help enterprises accelerate their transformation journey to the cloud.

• ModernizR is a software-based solution built with IBM Cloud Pak for Applications, a key technology in Wipro’s cloud migration and operations portfolio. The solution is designed to help enterprises move their legacy applications to the cloud by leveraging artificial intelligence to mine and analyze customer’s legacy applications and data. The resulting insights can be used to assess risk and recommend a migration strategy that includes employing automation to help software developers re-engineer the application.

Bhanumurthy B.M, President and Chief Operating Officer, Wipro Limited said, “Wipro empowers customers across industries to re-imagine their cloud journey with its business-first strategy and industrialized solutions approach. We believe the future will be driven by hybrid cloud hence, the expansion of IBM Hybrid cloud practice is intrinsic to our strategy. It will strengthen our relationship with IBM and help accelerate our client’s transformation journey across hybrid cloud environments.”

Bob Lord, Senior Vice President, Cognitive Applications and Ecosystems, IBM said, “The expansion of our relationship with Wipro reinforces our joint commitment to help clients accelerate their journey to cloud across industries, including highly regulated sectors such as financial services, energy and utilities, manufacturing and healthcare. Wipro’s industry knowledge, combined with IBM’s hybrid cloud and AI platform powered by Red Hat OpenShift, can help enterprises drive real business transformation by migrating and managing their critical workloads across an open hybrid cloud environment.”

Wipro is part of IBM’s hybrid cloud ecosystem, an initiative to support global system integrators and independent software vendors to help clients modernize workloads with Red Hat OpenShift for any cloud environment, including the IBM public cloud. Red Hat OpenShift is the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform. The IBM public cloud is the industry’s most secure and open public cloud for business. With its security leadership, enterprise-grade capabilities and support for open source technologies, the IBM public cloud is designed to differentiate and extend on hybrid cloud capabilities for enterprise workloads.

Wipro recently announced a 5G edge services solution suite that integrates IBM Edge Application Manager and TRIRIGA to address a range of concerns related to deploying and managing distributed services on devices, private edges and telecom operator’s Multi-Access Edges globally. The company received the IBM Beacon Award for Best IBM Hybrid Multi Cloud Practice at IBM PartnerWorld 2020.

Red Hat and OpenShift are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries.

DALLAS and ARMONK, N.Y., Oct. 29, 2020

What’s the news?
IBM and AT&T will work together to help enterprises manage their applications hosted in hybrid cloud environments with IBM Cloud Satellite leveraging Red Hat OpenShift, over AT&T networks.

By making it easier for businesses to connect open hybrid cloud computing using AT&T Multi-access Edge Computing, a low-latency, private cellular network edge environment, IBM and AT&T will be able to help businesses across all industries more rapidly develop and deploy innovative new services wherever they need to run using regional or on-premises edge computing with additional privacy and security.

Built on Red Hat OpenShift, IBM Cloud Satellite gives clients the flexibility to bring their applications to any environment where their data resides using the enhanced security of IBM’s open hybrid cloud architecture.

What will this do?
Enterprises will be able to use a single dashboard designed to manage services across multiple clouds and billions of edge devices with high levels of reliability and security.¹ IBM Cloud Satellite, currently in beta, can unlock new potential in the cloud for business customers with the power of AT&T 5G, whether it’s a mobile field workforce using cloud-hosted applications via AT&T 5G edge network connectivity, or a manufacturing facility needing increased privacy, low latency and control with AT&T Private Cellular Networks or Multi-access Edge Computing.

The benefits? Speedy implementation, better customer experiences, centralized management and enhanced security through IBM’s sophisticated encryption capabilities. IBM will also bring its AI capabilities via IBM Watson to deliver deeper insights for clients in near real time from data collected at the edge.

Why does it matter?
“The advancements in 5G and edge are impacting every industry, bringing the promise of enhanced experiences for consumers and new revenue opportunities for businesses,” said Howard Boville, senior vice president, IBM Hybrid Cloud. “Together with AT&T, we will be helping clients securely leverage 5G and edge offerings in any environment with IBM’s open and secure hybrid cloud platform. This marks a significant step forward increasing the possibilities of 5G and edge in the enterprise.”

Businesses are using a hybrid cloud strategy, and high levels of control are needed for today’s remote environment. Especially as 5G and edge computing continue to grow. And by putting enhanced security at the forefront of the solution, AT&T and IBM have made it so that even clients in the most highly regulated industries can capture the 5G opportunity. IBM’s sophisticated encryption capabilities mean that only the client has access to their data – IBM and AT&T cannot access it.

The rise of 5G, a market opportunity projected to reach $667 Billion by 2026, is signaling a new frontier in cloud computing – where data collected from billions of mobile devices and factory floor sensors – can be processed where the data resides, delivering low latency and efficiency.

“Make no mistake: AT&T is fast,” said Mo Katibeh, Chief Product and Platform Officer for AT&T Business. “And we don’t just have the fastest nationwide 5G network². With our edge computing capabilities, we can also offer incredibly responsive networks – needed for mission-critical business applications. Our work with IBM will bring differentiated value that customers will appreciate.”

With the increased use of digital services in 2020 – from those supporting remote work to e-commerce, online learning, communications and entertainment – increasing data traffic is creating high demand. 5G paired with open, secure hybrid cloud computing can boost data transfer speeds, lower latency, enhance connectivity and unveil new opportunities around IoT and other intelligent devices.

Who’s going to use this?
This is designed to help clients that manage distributed IT environments (think thousands of sensors on a factory floor, or a point of sale system in retail) with a consistent development and operational experience. Especially data being processed in multiple clouds. Some examples include:

• The healthcare industry could potentially adopt tools such as hospital operations monitoring patients remotely via connected medical devices with telehealth and working to enhance worker safety.
• In manufacturing, 5G-connected automated operations can help reduce costs and control quality on production lines through robotics and near real time visual analysis.
• In retail, 5G and edge can help stores analyze supply chain data, detect spills or spoilage or monitor metrics like crowd density in ways that would have overwhelmed a network without edge computing.
• Supply chains can become more resilient and dynamic with enhanced networking and remote monitoring, combined with automated inventory management and AI-enhanced procurement processes.
• In banking and finance, fraud detection and customer claims can be addressed in near real time. Edge-equipped ATMs can themselves serve as the point of fraud detection, deterring a bad actor from tampering with the system.