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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.

IBM Maximo for Civil Infrastructure is designed to assist organizations like Sund and Baelt in better managing, monitoring and maintaining their infrastructure assets.

ARMONK, N.Y., Oct. 23, 2020 — IBM today announced new capabilities in IBM Maximo for Civil Infrastructure to help prolong the lifespan of aging bridges, tunnels, highways, and railways. New enhancements include the ability to deploy on Red Hat OpenShift for hybrid cloud environments, as well as new AI and 3D model annotation tools that can provide deep industry and task-specific insights to support engineers.

In the United States roughly $2 trillion in infrastructure repairs were unfunded in 2015, according to the 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Report Card. And around the world, the prevalence of aging infrastructure threatens the continuity of day-to-day life for citizens worldwide. Owners, operators and engineers need to be able to improve their ability to decide where, when and how to address infrastructure issues with critical assets that must endure for generations.

IBM Maximo for Civil Infrastructure can consolidate numerous sources of data including maintenance and design details; near real-time IoT data generated from sensors; wearables; stationary cameras, drones and weather data from The Weather Company. This data can help operators assess the impact of damage such as cracks, rust and corrosion, as well as displacement vibrations and stress. By better managing and prioritizing infrastructure repair, organizations can work to reduce the need for time-intensive manual inspections and unnecessary costs.

“Tools like AI, predictive maintenance, drones and hybrid cloud will play an important role in meeting the challenge of rising infrastructure costs, and helping these vital structures endure for future generations,” said Bjarne Jørgensen, Executive Director, Asset Management at Sund and Baelt. “These solutions can help determine the exact need for maintenance in near real-time to assist organizations in extending the lifetime of structures.”

IBM Maximo for Civil Infrastructure allows civil engineers to make structures come alive using 3D modeling and AI visual recognition tools developed by IBM Research. Additional capabilities like Maximo Visual Inspection can make it easier to identify defects, their root-cause, and place them in the context of the greater structure. These tools that allow for more rapid assessments can be increasingly important for future engineers as skills availability may be a challenge.

“Infrastructure maintenance is a problem that’s being compounded from all sides: Bridges are getting older, payloads are getting larger, and the necessary preventive actions and maintenance are often postponed due to lack of funding,” Jørgensen added. “With Maximo for Civil Infrastructure, IBM is introducing a solution that addresses the problem from all sides, using IoT and AI technology to administer more proactive repairs, maintain invaluable institutional and engineering knowledge, and better prioritize resources.”

“Maximo for Civil Infrastructure was developed with input from some of the largest operators of infrastructure in the world so that IBM’s powerful technology across AI and IoT is carefully adapted to the unique needs of civil engineers,” said Joe Berti, VP of AI Applications at IBM. “With these tools we believe civil engineers will be able to innovate and improve the methods for monitoring, maintaining and preserving important structures around the world.”

IBM Maximo for Civil Infrastructure provides the following new capabilities, in addition to the core offerings available as part of the IBM Maximo Application Suite.

Maximo Application Suite licensing and Open Shift deployment: With a single license, customers can now deploy asset management, sensor integration, advanced data analytics including AI functionality and visual analytic capability. Capabilities including Monitor and Health can be deployed now on RedHat Open Shift, allowing customers to more quickly deploy, manage and scale their hybrid cloud deployments with ease.

Defect Management: A new user interface allows inspectors to record defect information, add multi-variable defect rankings, attach pictures and store defect history. Structural defects do not exist in isolation, they can affect everything they touch and the integrity of the overall structure. By comparing detected defects against work history, sensor data, weather and traffic data and more, AI can help engineers better identify root causes and patterns that indicate a defect may reoccur.

Improved 3D Visualization: Most serious defects are located within the structure and are not necessarily visible from the outside. New tools within the Maximo BIM viewer plugin allow users to add annotations to their standard 3D models, giving users access to a 3D representation of an asset, for example a pillar or beam, where all the defects have been annotated.

Asset Loader Improvements: While every piece of civil infrastructure is unique, many share common hierarchies of assets, and some organizations have hundreds or even thousands of similar structures that need to be defined in the asset management system. A new tool streamlines the import and export of an asset hierarchy, including a new UI to manage the process and select files.

IBM Maximo for Civil Infrastructure integrates 30 years of recognized industry-leading infrastructure asset management with best-in-class models from the world’s premier infrastructure firms. It helps operators and engineers address one of the world’s largest and most complex challenges — extending the lifespan of critical structures under frequently changing conditions. You can watch a video about Maximo for Civil Infrastructure here and read more about the solution here.

Burger King Brazil virtual assistant named TOP, enabled by IBM Watson, allows employees to access various HR services through their own WhatsApp

ARMONK, N.Y., Oct. 16, 2020 — IBM Services and Burger King Brazil have teamed up to create a new virtual assistant, based on IBM Watson Assistant, named TOP (Technology Orienting People) to help Burger King (BK) Brazil’s 16,000 employees, serving more than 800 restaurants, be more connected to each other and its leadership.

New research from the IBM Institute for Business Value indicates that surveyed companies outpacing others in profitability, revenue growth and innovation are also leading practitioners of what the report termed: HR 3.0 principles. HR 3.0 refers to the evolution of the human resources (HR) function, to become one that is more human-centric, better engaging remote employees, and cultivating a resilient workforce with the goal of providing transparency, diversity and inclusion.

Conducted in partnership with global independent industry analyst Josh Bersin, the global survey of more than 1,500 global HR executives in 20 countries and 15 industries, revealed that leading companies were “extremely confident” in the need to reinvent HR, and that HR executives from those surveyed, were eight times as likely as their counterparts at other companies to be driving innovation.

Before TOP, BK Brazil’s employees used a centralized command system to submit requests for vacations, documents such as payment statements, earnings reports, and other Human Resources related topics. All of these services are now available via a text conversation in natural language, through the employee’s own WhatsApp, with topics that are regularly updated. Today, the virtual assistant is already responsible for 50% of employees’ requests on HR issues, freeing up the team to focus on more strategic goals.

“TOP’s main objective is to be close to our employees and facilitate access to information. And technology plays a major role in enabling this connection, especially at a time when reliability, security and speed are so critical,” said Iuri Miranda, CEO, Burger King Brazil. “We know that the moment demands communication and an agile flow of information and if technology allows us this close contact with the people who are part of the team, we will make the most of it.”

The solution is also designed to enable Burger King Brazil to answer questions from employees and give the necessary guidance on the company’s strategy as it navigates the COVID-19 pandemic. In a joint effort with IBM, updates are made to the tool to help provide official updated content from the Ministry of Health. The tool also helped the company make content available for more than 30 responses to FAQs, such as guidance on PPE’s (personal protective equipment), risk groups and driving to use spaces, among others.

TOP recognizes each employee by their telephone number and registered ID in the company’s system to protect confidentiality and thus helps them to answer questions about vacations, earnings reports, among 60 other Human Resources matters. Today, this virtual assistant has become an agile tool in assisting company employees, accounting for 50% of calls. A hybrid and multicloud cloud architecture, accessing IBM Cloud in the BK Brazil IT environment, helps with the exchange of information to respond in near real time.

“Burger King Brazil is a great example of an organization on their journey to HR 3.0. The company has combined its journey of digital transformation with its people management strategy to be more connected and help respond more effectively to the needs of its team,” said Amy Wright, managing partner, Talent & Transformation, IBM Services. “People are the heart of any organization and with new AI-enabled digital tools, the HR 3.0 mindset can be critical to our ongoing development of a more productive and rewarding world of work.”

By placing technology as an ally for people, Burger King Brazil can establish the path to continue reinventing itself, growing and offering a relevant experience to employees in parallel with the transformation of the company.

Expanded strategic partnership to combine Watson AIOps with ServiceNow IT Service Management and IT Operations Management Visibility to help businesses fix and prevent IT issues at scale

ARMONK, N.Y. and SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 15, 2020 — IBM and ServiceNow today announced an expansion to their strategic partnership designed to help companies reduce operational risk and lower costs by applying AI to automate IT operations. Available later this year, a new joint solution will combine IBM’s AI-powered hybrid cloud software and professional services to ServiceNow’s intelligent workflow capabilities and market-leading IT service and operations management products.

The solution is engineered to help clients realize deeper, AI-driven insights from their data, create a baseline of a typical IT environment, and take succinct recommended actions on outlying behavior to help prevent and fix IT issues at scale. Together, IBM and ServiceNow can help companies free up valuable time and IT resources from maintenance activities, to focus on driving the transformation projects necessary to support the digital demands of their businesses.

“AI is one of the biggest forces driving change in the IT industry to the extent that every company is swiftly becoming an AI company,” said Arvind Krishna, Chief Executive Officer, IBM. “By partnering with ServiceNow and their market leading Now Platform, clients will be able to use AI to quickly mitigate unforeseen IT incident costs. Watson AIOps with ServiceNow’s Now Platform is a powerful new way for clients to use automation to transform their IT operations.”

“For every CEO, digital transformation has gone from opportunity to necessity,” said ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott. “As ServiceNow leads the workflow revolution, our partnership with IBM combines the intelligent automation capabilities of the Now Platform with the power of Watson AIOps. We are focused on driving a generational step improvement in productivity, innovation and growth. ServiceNow and IBM are helping customers meet the digital demands of 21st century business.”

Organizations are under pressure to deliver innovation and create great experiences for customers and employees, all while driving efficiencies and keeping costs and IT risks down. Yet in today’s technology-driven organization, even the smallest outages can cause massive economic impact for both lost revenue and reputation. This partnership will help customers address these challenges and help avoid unnecessary loss of revenue and reputation by automating old, manual IT processes and increasing IT productivity.

IBM and ServiceNow will initially focus on:

• Joint Solution: IBM and ServiceNow will deliver a first of its kind joint IT solution that marries IBM Watson AIOps with ServiceNow’s intelligent workflow capabilities and market-leading ITSM and ITOM Visibility products to help customers prevent and fix IT issues at scale. Now, businesses that use ServiceNow ITSM can push historical incident data into the deep machine learning algorithms of Watson AIOps to create a baseline of their normal IT environment, while simultaneously having the ability to help them identify anomalies outside of that normal, which could take a human up to 60% longer to manually identify, according to initial results from specific Watson AIOps early adopter clients. The joint solution will position customers to enhance employee productivity, obtain greater visibility into their operational footprint and respond to incidents and issues faster.

Specific product capabilities will include:

• • ServiceNow ITSM allows IT to deliver scalable services on a single cloud platform estimated to increase productivity by 20%.
  • ServiceNow ITOM Visibility automatically delivers near real-time visibility from a native Configuration Management Database, into all resources and the true operational state of all business services.
  • IBM Watson AIOps uses AI to automate how enterprises detect, diagnose, and respond to, and remediate IT anomalies in real time. The solution is designed to help CIOs make more informed decisions when predicting and shaping future outcomes, focus resources on higher-value work and build more responsive and intelligent applications that can stay up and running longer. Using Watson AIOps, the average time to resolve incidents was reduced by 65 percent, according to one recent initial proof of concept project with a client.
• Services: IBM is expanding its global ServiceNow business to include additional capabilities that provide advisory, implementation, and managed services on the Now Platform. Highly-skilled IBM practitioners will apply their expertise to facilitate rapid delivery of valuable insights and innovation to clients. IBM Services professionals also will introduce clients to intelligent workflows to help improve resiliency and reduce IT risk. ServiceNow is co-investing in training and certification of IBM employees and dedicated staff for customer success.

For example, using the IBM and ServiceNow joint solution, a bank will be able to obtain a full view of an incident, from start to finish. With recommendations and deep diagnosis from Watson AIOps, a service agent will be able to quickly understand the incident, without ever leaving the ServiceNow ITSM platform. Leveraging more than an agent’s own knowledge and research, Watson AIOps can provide anomaly detection along with automated recommendations from the historical deep analysis of prior incidents.  Using incident management tools from ServiceNow, actions and insights can be recorded for auditing purposes and for leveraging future insights. Watson AIOps can then push important context to tickets, discovered only via AI algorithms and baselining techniques, helping to make the data more useful to agents and retraining the AI over time.

“Businesses are facing increased pressures to match the digital pace of a cloud-first market in order to meet the demands of their customers,” said Stephen Elliot, program vice president, DevOps and Management Software, IDC. “The C- suite is transforming workflows to deliver insights and automation for more efficient customer engagement models and cost containment strategies for the business, while simplifying IT operations and increasing collaboration between IT and business stakeholders.”

Today’s news strengthens the partnership previously announced by IBM and ServiceNow to help enterprises simplify IT operations for multi-cloud environments.

Also today, IBM announced the formation of the AIOps Elite Team – a new no-charge advanced engagement team, dedicated to engineering AIOps in a client environment and building and refining AI models.