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IBM Watson Advertising Accelerator Expands to Bring AI to Fast-Growing OTT Media and Streaming Landscape

As brands and agencies look to diversify their media portfolios in ever-changing traditional web, IBM offers Watson AI for OTT market, where industry collaboration is critical to achieving scale

NEW YORK, April 29, 2021 — IBM today announced the expansion of IBM Watson Advertising Accelerator for OTT and video, designed to help marketers move beyond contextual relevance alone. Accelerator aims to leverage artificial intelligence to dynamically optimize OTT ad creative for improved campaign outcomes at scale, not dependent on traditional advertising identifiers. While compatible with most streaming platforms, IBM is partnering closely with Xandr, an industry leader in programmatic and converged video solutions, to help scale adoption of Accelerator.

According to eMarketer, in 2020 streaming households outnumbered traditional cable households for the first time, and 27% of cable households are expected to switch in 2021.[1] With this growth, many brands may seek to increase their streaming ad budgets to better target their core groups. According to a survey conducted by the IAB, at the end Q1 2021 media buyers plan to increase U.S. spending for digital video, including CTV/OTT, to 20% of their total media budgets this year. IBM Watson Advertising Accelerator allows brands to tailor ads at the individual impression level, enabling personalization to the viewer in the moment with the goal of improving campaign outcomes for brands, translating into a win for consumers, platforms and advertisers.

Originally designed for display advertising, IBM Watson Advertising Accelerator now also brings powerful AI-driven capabilities to video and OTT campaigns. It uses IBM Watson AI to process and action real-time data signals and to dynamically assemble ads to help brands improve campaigns and time-to-value three-fold:

  • Accelerator takes manual work out of dynamic creative setup. Creative assets such as different music tracks, video sequences, voice overs, and end cards for video, are organized and fed into Accelerator.
  • Accelerator leverages AI to predict and generate impression-level ad variations. It uses Watson Machine Learning to analyze cookieless data signals to predict and subsequently assemble a customized video creative for each impression based on the likelihood of a consumer converting against a KPI.
  • For OTT, the KPIs span video completion rate (VCR), various brand site actions and app installs.

All of these capabilities can help marketing teams to test and derive audience insights from a multitude of different creative variables to improve campaign performance.

“Brands continue to follow their consumers to OTT and CTV, especially now as streaming audiences grow across all age groups. However, brands are too often faced with creative resource constraints, fragmentation, and measurement and frequency challenges. The market is in need of advanced technology to help deliver optimal creative at scale, and IBM sees AI as the solution,” said David Olesnevich, Head of Product at IBM Watson Advertising. “Accelerator is designed to help brands make their campaigns effective, perform against business goals and derive measurable results and insights. All at scale – which requires working together with industry leaders. Using Watson AI, marketers can now develop personalized OTT creative for each user and ultimately help improve campaign performance over time.”

Xandr recently announced 75% YoY growth in digital video platform spend and 235% YoY growth in Connected TV platform spend for Q1 2021. Brands and agencies can leverage the Xandr Invest DSP to pilot the Accelerator OTT product today.

“The fragmentation of media consumption habits in an evolving identity landscape underlines the need for intelligent, data-driven technology solutions,” said Doug Hurd, Head of Corporate Strategy and Business Development at Xandr. “Xandr and IBM’s first-to-market capability will power more relevant ad experiences in Converged Video, Connected TV and OTT environments for brands, publishers and consumers alike.”

Accelerator is an award-winning technology, on average driving +127% lift in display performance over the length of a campaign. In initial Accelerator for video internal tests on The Weather Channel O&O digital property, IBM exceeded its own VCR benchmarks by nearly 20%.

HCL Technologies and IBM Collaborate to Modernize Security Operations

HCL CyberSecurity Fusion Centers to Leverage IBM Cloud Pak for Security for Unified Threat Management

ARMONK, N.Y., April 27, 2021 — Today IBM Security announced it has collaborated with HCL Technologies (HCL) to help unify and streamline threat management for clients via a modernized security operation center (SOC) platform. HCL’s Cybersecurity Fusion Centers will be designed to take advantage of IBM’s Cloud Pak for Security, to help create a unified security platform to connect security teams, tools and processes across the threat lifecycle. This collaboration builds on HCL and IBM’s recent alliance expansion to help organizations with digital transformation.

HCL’s Cybersecurity Fusion Centers deliver threat management services to clients around the world through six global state-of-the-art security operations and response facilities. IBM’s Cloud Pak for Security will serve as the foundation to connect security tools, data and workflows with HCL customers. Cloud Pak for Security is an open, containerized software platform which allows companies to quickly integrate a wide range of security data, tools and clouds for deeper insights into threats across hybrid cloud environments.

“Enterprises operating in today’s fast-moving digital world need a cybersecurity strategy capable of tackling increasingly sophisticated threats. Collaboration is key in the cybersecurity industry to build and implement the solutions to stay one step ahead. This collaboration enables us to enhance the service that we provide to our clients and to combine the threat detection and response technologies with the development of technological processes and the experience of our professionals across all areas of cybersecurity,” said Maninder Singh, Corporate Vice President, Cyber Security Services at HCL Technologies.

“Many companies today are struggling with the complexity of security operations amidst cloud adoption and fragmented IT infrastructure, which can hamper their ability to discover and respond to threats,” said Justin Youngblood, Vice President, IBM Security. “Modern security demands an open platform that leverages AI and automation to help security operations teams connect disparate tools, provide insights and orchestrate response across hybrid cloud environments. With this collaboration, HCL and IBM are modernizing security operations and helping clients accelerate their security outcomes.”

HCL is part of IBM’s Hybrid Cloud Ecosystem, an initiative to support partners of all types — whether they build on, service or resell IBM technologies and platforms — to help clients manage and 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 one of the industry’s most secure and open public clouds for business. With its security leadership, enterprise-grade strength and support for open source technologies, the IBM public cloud is designed to differentiate and extend on hybrid cloud workloads for enterprise workloads.

IBM Launches Advanced Storage Solutions Designed to Simplify Data Accessibility & Availability Across Hybrid Clouds

— Company unveils plans to ship new container-native software defined storage solutions designed to help companies expand data availability across complex hybrid clouds for greater business performance and resilience;
— Releases new IBM Elastic Storage Systems that are designed to provide scalability at double the performance of previous models, for faster access to enterprise data

ARMONK, N.Y., April 27, 2021 — IBM today announced major innovations across its storage portfolio designed to improve the access to, and management of, data across increasingly complex hybrid cloud environments for greater data availability and resilience.

First, the company announced plans to launch a new container-native software defined storage (SDS) solution, IBM Spectrum Fusion in the second half of 2021. The solution will be designed to fuse IBM’s general parallel file system technology and its data protection software to give businesses and their applications a simple and less complex approach to accessing data seamlessly within the data center, at the edge and across hybrid cloud environments.

In addition, IBM introduced updates to its IBM Elastic Storage System (ESS) family of high-performance solutions that are highly scalable and designed for easy deployment: the revamped model ESS 5000, now delivering 10% greater storage capacity and the new ESS 3200 which offers double the read performance of its predecessor.

As hybrid cloud adoption grows, so too does the need to manage the edge of the network. Often geographically dispersed and disconnected from the data center, edge computing can strand vast amounts of data that could be otherwise brought to bear on analytics and AI. Like the digital universe, the edge continues to expand, creating ever more disassociated data sources and silos. According to a recent report from IDC, the number of new operational processes deployed on edge infrastructure will grow from less than 20% today to over 90% in 2024 as digital engineering accelerates IT/OT convergence. And By 2022, IDC estimates that 80% of organizations that shift to a hybrid business by design will boost spend on AI-enabled and secure edge infrastructure by 4x to deliver business agility and insights in near real time.

“It’s clear that to build, deploy and manage applications requires advanced capabilities that help provide rapid availability to data across the entire enterprise – from the edge to the data center to the cloud,” said Denis Kennelly, General Manager, IBM Storage Systems. “It’s not as easy as it sounds, but it starts with building a foundational data layer, a containerized information architecture and the right storage infrastructure.”

Guardant Health, one of the leading precision oncology companies, is dedicated to helping conquer cancer globally through use of its proprietary blood tests, vast data sets, and advanced analytics. The company is committed to helping patients across the cancer care continuum live longer, healthier lives. The company’s data and high-performance computing platforms turn massive amounts of genomic data into actionable insights for oncologists, researchers, and the biopharmaceutical industry, with unparalleled speed and throughput. Several years ago it turned to IBM to help it build a data foundation for its platform knowing that it needed to scale its data infrastructure to serve the tens of millions of patients around the world, and across the cancer care continuum.

“We manage large scale compute clusters demanding high data throughput to a large number of compute nodes,” said Kumud Kalia, CIO, Guardant Health. “IBM Spectrum Scale’s parallel filesystem delivers high performance, while the ESS systems provide the data throughput our genomic pipelines require. I look forward to continued collaboration with IBM to further innovate on this platform.”

Introducing IBM Spectrum Fusion

The first incarnation of IBM Spectrum Fusion is planned to come in the form of a container-native hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) system. When it is released in the second half of 2021, it will integrate compute, storage and networking into a single solution. It is being designed to come equipped with Red Hat OpenShift to enable organizations to support environments for both virtual machines and containers and provide software defined storage for cloud, edge and containerized data centers.

In early 2022, IBM plans to release an SDS-only version of IBM Spectrum Fusion.

Through its integration of a fully-containerized version of IBM’s general parallel file system and data protection software, IBM Spectrum Fusion is being designed to provide organizations a streamlined way to discover data from across the enterprise. In addition, customers can expect to leverage the software to virtualize and accelerate existing data sets more easily by leveraging the most pertinent storage tier.

With the IBM Spectrum Fusion solutions, organizations will be able to manage only a single copy of data. No longer will they be required to create duplicate data when moving application workloads across the enterprise, easing management functions while streamlining analytics and AI. In addition, data compliance activities (e.g. GDPR) can be strengthened by a single copy of data, while security exposure from the presence of multiple copies is reduced.

In addition to its global availability capabilities, IBM Spectrum Fusion is being engineered to integrate with IBM Cloud Satellite to help enable businesses to fully manage cloud services at the edge, data center or in the public cloud with a single management pane. IBM Spectrum Fusion is also being designed to integrate with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Manager (ACM) for managing multiple Red Hat OpenShift clusters.

Advancing IBM Elastic Storage Systems

Today’s launch of new IBM ESS models and updates, all of which is available now, include:

  • Global Data Boost: The IBM ESS 3200, a new 2U storage solution that is designed to provide data throughput of 80 GB/second per node – a 100% read performance boost from its predecessor, the ESS 3000. Also adding to its performance, the 3200 supports up to 8 InfiniBand HDR-200 or Ethernet-100 ports for high throughput and low latency. The system can also provide up to 367TB of storage capacity per 2U node.
  • Packing on the Petabytes: In addition, the IBM ESS 5000 model has been updated to support 10% more density than previously available for a total storage capacity of 15.2PB. In addition, all ESS systems are now equipped with streamlined containerized deployment capabilities automated with the latest version of Red Hat Ansible.

Both the ESS 3200 and ESS 5000 feature containerized system software and support for Red Hat OpenShift and Kubernetes Container Storage Interface (CSI), CSI snapshots and clones, Red Hat Ansible, Windows, Linux and bare metal environments. The systems also come with IBM Spectrum Scale built-in.

In addition, the 3200 and 5000 also work with IBM Cloud Pak for Data, the company’s fully containerized platform of integrated data and AI services, for integration with IBM Watson Knowledge Catalog (WKC) and Db2. WKC is a cloud-based enterprise metadata repository that activates information for AI, machine learning and deep learning. Users rely on it to access, curate, categorize and share data, knowledge assets and their relationships. IBM Db2 for Cloud Pak for Data is an AI-infused data management system built on Red Hat OpenShift.

To further bring together edge computing, core data center, private and public cloud environments, the ESS 3200 and 5000 are also fully integrated with IBM Cloud Satellite.

IPwe and IBM Seek to Transform Corporate Patents With Next Generation NFTs Using IBM Blockchain

An ecosystem to tokenize patents can allow intellectual property to be treated as business assets, making patents easier to license, sell and commercialize

PARIS and ARMONK, N.Y., April 20, 2021 — IPwe today announced plans to begin representing patents as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or digital assets by working with IBM to create the infrastructure for representing patents as NFTs and storing the records on a blockchain network. The tokenization of intellectual property (IP) will help position patents to be more easily sold, traded, commercialized or otherwise monetized and bring new liquidity to this asset class for investors and innovators.

Tokenization provides greater transparency and can also make related transactions simpler and more cost-efficient. By representing IP in this way, it can be licensed, sold and commercialized. Organizations can also more easily view the IP as an asset on their balance sheet. While NFTs have been used to represent digital art, sports memorabilia and even iconic Tweets, the early adoption of IP-based NFTs could usher in a transformation of how IP is treated by inventors and enterprises.

“The IPwe Platform is designed to transform the patent asset class by increasing transparency and promoting engagement, which we believe will encourage innovation,” said IPwe CEO Erich Spangenberg. “The use of NFTs to represent patents will help create completely new ways to interact with IP. This is expected to benefit not only large enterprises that have significant intellectual property, but it will bring new opportunities to small and medium enterprises and even individual IP owners. We believe it will usher in new offerings by financial services firms and corporations to promote the evolution of a new patent asset class.”

These NFTs will be stored and shared on the IPwe Platform, hosted on IBM Cloud and powered by IBM Blockchain. The IPwe Platform also enables the Global Patent Marketplace, which allows owners and other members of the patent ecosystem to engage and transact, buy, license, finance, sell, research and commercialize patents. IPwe, working with IBM, was the first to create a patent marketplace on the blockchain. The introduction of NFTs will only help accelerate the opportunity for IP, which has been notoriously difficult to manage, value and transact, to be treated as a liquid asset.

IPwe will soon begin trials of its NFTs on the company’s Global Patent Marketplace.

According to IPwe, many enterprises, governments, universities and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) around the world are already using their technology, including the IPwe Platform and the IPwe Registry and Global Patent Marketplace. For SMEs in particular, representing patents as digital assets is especially powerful because it allows IP to be treated as collateral or assurance of an organization’s value, also allowing it to be more easily leveraged when seeking funding. The IPwe Registry collects current, active and historical patent records in a single freely accessible registry with enhanced search enabled by IBM AI. A broader ecosystem including financial institutions, insurers, enterprises and other patent stakeholders are planned in the coming months to support the use and exchange of tokenized patents using these new technologies.

IBM and IPwe have worked together for the last three years applying IBM’s deep expertise in blockchain and artificial intelligence to the IPwe Platform to help protect ownership information; generate patent and portfolio analytics; facilitate transactions; reporting and advancements of the next intelligent generation of patent pooling – an agreement among multiple patent holders to jointly license their IP.

“IBM has a long history of leadership in intellectual property and the application of AI and blockchain in business. Our work with IPwe is another example of our collaboration with leading innovators to drive outcomes powered by blockchain capabilities and digital assets that have the potential to transform entire industries,” said Jason Kelley, General Manager, Global Strategic Partnerships, IBM Services. “As businesses increasingly look to transform how they work with intelligent workflows, blockchain technology is a critical tool to increase transparency and reduce barriers.”

IPwe anticipates tokenized IP on the platform to be commercially available in Q4 2021.

IBM’s Independent Managed Infrastructure Services Business to be Named Kyndryl

ARMONK, N.Y., April 12, 2021 — IBM today announced that Kyndryl will be the name of the new, independent company that will be created following the separation of its Managed Infrastructure Services business, which is expected to occur by the end of 2021.

“Kyndryl evokes the spirit of true partnership and growth,” said Martin Schroeter, Chief Executive Officer of Kyndryl. “Customers around the world will come to know Kyndryl as a brand that runs the vital systems at the heart of progress, and an independent company with the best global talent in the industry.”

Kyndryl also announced that it will be headquartered in New York City. “The decision to base our corporate team in one of the world’s most vibrant and global urban centers underscores our commitment to the economic health of cities,” Schroeter said.

Kyndryl is a modern adaptation of two words that are central to the new company’s identity and mission.  “Kyn” is derived from the word kinship, referencing the belief that relationships with people — employees, customers and partners — are at the center of the strategy, and that long-lasting relationships must be built and nurtured. “Dryl” comes from tendril, bringing to mind new growth and the idea that — together with customers and partners — the business is always working toward advancing human progress.

“Creating a name is just the start of our journey as a brand,” said Kyndryl Chief Marketing Officer Maria Bartolome Winans. “It will help identify us and support recognition, but the meaning of the name will be built and enhanced over time from our behaviors, aspirations and actions, and what we enable our customers to do. Our vision is to be the leading company that designs, runs and modernizes the critical technology infrastructure of the world’s most important businesses and institutions, ultimately powering human progress.”

As an independent company, Kyndryl will open alliances with a diverse ecosystem of leading technology partners. With the industry’s most experienced talent, and a global base of 4,600 customers, including some of the world’s most complex technology environments, Kyndryl is uniquely positioned to help customers build strong, secure, resilient and adaptive digital capabilities.

About Kyndryl
Kyndryl designs, runs and manages the most modern, efficient and reliable technology infrastructure for the world’s most important businesses and organizations, with the industry’s most experienced services experts.  For more information, visit www.kyndryl.com

Cleveland Clinic and IBM Unveil Landmark 10-Year Partnership to Accelerate Discovery in Healthcare and Life Sciences

IBM Hybrid Cloud, High Performance Computing, Artificial Intelligence, and Quantum Computing technologies to serve as foundation for newly launched Cleveland Clinic Global Center for Pathogen Research & Human Health
IBM plans to install its first private-sector, on premises quantum computing system in the U.S. at Cleveland Clinic. Cleveland Clinic also plans to receive first, next-generation IBM 1,000+ qubit quantum system in the coming years

ARMONK, N.Y. and CLEVELAND, March 30, 2021 — Cleveland Clinic and IBM have announced a planned 10-year partnership to establish the Discovery Accelerator, a joint Cleveland Clinic – IBM center with the mission of fundamentally advancing the pace of discovery in healthcare and life sciences through the use of high performance computing on the hybrid cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing technologies.

The collaboration is anticipated to build a robust research and clinical infrastructure to empower big data medical research in ethical, privacy preserving ways, discoveries for patient care and novel approaches to public health threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the Discovery Accelerator, the researchers plan to use advanced computational technology to generate and analyze data to help enhance research in the new Global Center for Pathogen Research & Human Health, in areas such as: genomics, single cell transcriptomics, population health, clinical applications, and chemical and drug discovery.

As part of the collaboration, IBM plans to install its first private sector, on-premises IBM Quantum System One in the United States, to be located on Cleveland Clinic’s campus in Cleveland.  The company also plans to install the first of IBM’s next-generation 1,000+ qubit quantum systems at a client facility, also to be located in Cleveland, in the coming years. This quantum program will be designed to actively engage with universities, government, industry, startups and other relevant organizations. It will leverage Cleveland Clinic’s global enterprise to serve as the foundation of a new quantum ecosystem for life sciences, focused on advancing quantum skills and the mission of the center.

“Through this innovative collaboration, we have a unique opportunity to bring the future to life,” said Tom Mihaljevic, M.D., CEO and President of Cleveland Clinic. “These new computing technologies can help revolutionize discovery in the life sciences. The Discovery Accelerator will enable our renowned teams to build a forward-looking digital infrastructure and help transform medicine, while training the workforce of the future and potentially growing our economy.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic has spawned one of the greatest races in the history of scientific discovery – one that demands unprecedented agility and speed,” said Arvind Krishna, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of IBM. “At the same time, science is experiencing a change of its own – with high performance computing, hybrid cloud, data, AI, and quantum computing, being used in new ways to break through long-standing bottlenecks in scientific discovery. Our new collaboration with Cleveland Clinic will combine their world-renowned expertise in healthcare and life sciences with IBM’s next-generation technologies to make scientific discovery faster, and the scope of that discovery larger than ever.”

“Quantum will make the impossible possible, and when the Governor and I announced the Cleveland Innovation District earlier this year, this was the kind of innovative investment I hoped it would advance,” said Ohio Lt. Governor Jon Husted, Director of InnovateOhio. “A partnership between these two great institutions will put Cleveland, and Ohio, on the map for advanced medical and scientific research, providing a unique opportunity to improve treatment options for patients and solve some of our greatest healthcare challenges.”

The Discovery Accelerator will serve as the technology foundation for Cleveland Clinic’s new Global Center for Pathogen Research & Human Health, announced last month as part of the Cleveland Innovation District. The center, supported by a $500 million investment from the State of Ohio, Jobs Ohio and Cleveland Clinic, brings together a research team focused on broadening understanding of viral pathogens, virus-induced cancers, genomics, immunology and immunotherapies. It will build upon Cleveland Clinic’s existing programs and expertise, with newly recruited world leaders in immunology, cancer biology, immune-oncology and infectious disease research as well as technology development and education. Researchers will expand critical work on studying, preparing and protecting against emerging pathogens and virus-related diseases.

Accelerating Discovery

The pace of progress in science historically has been limited by bottlenecks. Researchers are increasingly working to overcome these bottlenecks with the application of AI, quantum computing and hybrid cloud technologies. New technologies are enabling accelerated methods of discovery that include deep search, AI and quantum-enriched simulation, generative models, and cloud-based AI-driven autonomous labs. Leveraging these combined innovations will supercharge new generations of information technology, fuel important advances in science, and IBM will provide access to a variety of research and commercial technologies, education and tools to assist Cleveland Clinic in accelerating discovery in healthcare and life science, including RoboRXN, a cloud-based platform that combines AI models and robots to help scientists design and synthesize new molecules remotely; the IBM Functional Genomics Platform, a cloud-based repository and research tool, which uses novel approaches to reveal the molecular features in viral and bacterial genomes to help accelerate discovery of molecular targets required for drug design, test development and treatment; Deep Search, which helps researchers access structured and unstructured data quickly; and High-Performance Hybrid Cloud Computing technologies that can enable researchers to “burst” their workloads into the cloud and access the resources they need at scale.

IBM Quantum Flagship Program

Quantum computing has the potential to have an immense impact on key healthcare challenges, such as the discovery of new molecules that can serve as the basis of new pharmaceutical breakthroughs and spur the development of new medicines and could help enhance the ability to derive deep insight from complex data that is at the heart of some of the largest challenges in healthcare.

The Discovery Accelerator will leverage IBM’s multi-year roadmap for advancing quantum computing, bringing its revolutionary capabilities into the hands of scientists and practitioners in healthcare and life sciences. In addition to an on-premises quantum system, Cleveland Clinic will also have access to IBM’s fleet of currently more than 20 quantum systems, accessible via the cloud. IBM is targeting to unveil its first next generation 1,000+ qubit quantum system in 2023, and Cleveland Clinic is planned to be the site of the first private-sector on-premises system.

Building Quantum Skills in Ohio

A significant pillar of the program plans to focus on educating the workforce of the future and creating jobs to grow the economy. The 10-year collaboration plans to include education and workforce development opportunities related to quantum computing.

The innovative educational curriculum will be designed for participants from high school to professional level and offer training and certification programs in data science and quantum computing, building the skilled workforce needed for cutting-edge data science research of the future. Cleveland Clinic and IBM plan to hold research symposia and workshops with joint sessions by IBM and academic researchers for academia, industry, government and the general public.

METACO Leverages IBM Cloud and Confidential Computing Capabilities to Help Secure its Integrated Digital Asset Management Solution

Zurich and Lausanne, Switzerland – March 25, 2021 – Today IBM and METACO, a provider of security-critical infrastructure that helps large banks manage digital assets, announced that METACO will leverage confidential computing capabilities through IBM Cloud and IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services for their digital asset orchestration system. With its platform running on IBM Cloud, METACO can deliver its traditional finance clients benefits including increased security and scalability as they adopt hybrid cloud strategies.

To address the rapidly growing market demand for digital assets, METACO enables large financial institutions to securely integrate cryptocurrencies, tokens, and distributed ledger use-cases into their core infrastructure. METACO’s unique offering for digital asset custody, transaction management, trading, and tokenization has made it a sound solution for banks and exchanges.

To support the requirements of clients in highly regulated industries such as banking and financial services, METACO leverages ‘Keep Your Own Key’ (KYOK) encryption and confidential computing capabilities from IBM. This solution allows METACO’s clients to retain sole access to their crypto keys, meaning by engineering design, IBM does not have access to clients’ keys. These enhanced security capabilities help clients mitigate the risk of malicious actors manipulating workflows, viewing confidential data or getting access to assets. Additionally, clients can choose where to run their solution – whether in the cloud, on premises or in a hybrid cloud environment.

METACO’s solution for safe custody of digital assets, offers new options of wallet deployments for flexibility of hot, warm, cold, nearline and frozen storage of digital assets, each encompassing a specific balance of security and agility to best fit the needs of institutions. The orchestration system is running in IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Server enclaves, which provide access to IBM’s confidential computing capabilities.

Adrien Treccani, CEO and Founder of METACO commented, “IBM is one of the financial industry’s longest standing and most trusted technology providers, and we are proud to join forces to strengthen the offering of our custody solution and digital asset orchestration system for institutions. At METACO, we are constantly striving to innovate, expand and improve upon our service offerings. This integration will allow us to deliver greater levels of security and trust to our clients as they innovate in the digital asset space.”

“As the world’s leading financial institutions adopt hybrid cloud, it is critical that they keep in mind security and privacy assurance,” said Hillery Hunter, IBM Fellow, VP and CTO, IBM Cloud.

“As companies such as METACO continue to help the world’s top banks and exchanges manage their digital assets, IBM’s confidential computing capabilities help its clients ensure their data and processes are managed securely, bringing trust into the ecosystem and providing privacy assurance”.

IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services are available on IBM Cloud and on-premises via IBM LinuxONE, delivering the highest level of commercial privacy assurance available today.

IBM Launches Multizone Region in Brazil as Clients in Latin America Adopt Hybrid Cloud

– Expanded global cloud footprint highlights continued investment in a security-rich cloud infrastructure with confidential computing capabilities
– Prepares clients for a sustainable future with plans for reduced carbon footprint from cloud workloads and data centers
– Clients including Arezzo&Co, Stone and Digisystem can leverage IBM Cloud to help protect mission-critical data

ARMONK, N.Y., March 18, 2021 — IBM today announced the opening of its first IBM Cloud Multizone Region (MZR) in Latin America, an important expansion of its global cloud presence in major markets. Building on its existing data center footprint in Brazil, the MZR is a result of the company’s continued investment in cloud infrastructure to accelerate hybrid cloud adoption and help foster business growth in Latin America. Following the openings of Toronto and Osaka last year, the latest MZR in Brazil marks IBM’s ongoing commitment to help clients across the globe deploy mission-critical workloads with high levels of security and resilience, while helping to address data sovereignty requirements and prepare for a sustainable future.

Clients will gain access to cloud security with IBM industry-leading confidential computing
IBM Cloud’s network is designed for low latency and high security, all while helping clients meet their data sovereignty and compliance regulations – a critical requirement for clients in highly regulated industries like financial services, government, telecommunications and more. By hosting workloads on IBM Cloud – the industry’s most secure and open public cloud for business – clients will be able to use IBM Cloud’s confidential computing capabilities delivered with IBM Hyper Protect Crypto Services and backed by the highest level of security certification commercially available.

This can allow businesses to retain control of their own encryption keys, meaning clients are the only ones who can control access to their data, not even IBM can access it. Additionally, IBM MZRs include a catalog of PaaS services, as well as Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud and IBM Cloud Satellite, to help clients implement architecture and mission-critical applications in hybrid cloud environments.

IBM Cloud MZRs are composed of three or more data center zones with each being an Availability Zone. This is designed so that a single failure event can affect only a single data center rather than all zones – allowing for consistent cloud services and greater resiliency. Clients hosting workloads on IBM Cloud MZRs in any country can continuously run mission-critical workloads to keep business up and running.

Accelerating hybrid cloud across industries to manage mission-critical workloads
A hybrid cloud approach has been helping businesses from different industries across the globe address fast growing challenges in service and product demands. As Brazilian companies turn to IBM Cloud, they can leverage its security capabilities and IBM’s deep industry knowledge:

  • Arezzo&Co, leader in the footwear, bags and female accessories segment in Latin America, has chosen IBM Cloud to help offer a secure, faster shopping experience in any sales channel for its nearly 10 million customers. By working with IBM to adopt a hybrid cloud approach and migrate mission-critical applications to IBM Cloud, Arezzo&Co has been able to modernize key workloads including sales processes and inventory control. As a result, the company has created a more agile and flexible omnichannel strategy, while prioritizing security to run complex workloads and deliver enhanced customer experiences.
  • Stone, a Brazilian fintech that offers financial solutions for more than 650,000 small and medium entrepreneurs, has selected IBM Cloud to move part of its workloads to cloud. Operating in the local market since 2012, Stone recently chose IBM Cloud due to the flexibility and security.
  • Digisystem, a Brazilian company with more than 30 years of experience helping businesses in their digital transformation journeys by providing technology solutions, has migrated many of its solutions to IBM Cloud. By adopting a hybrid cloud approach, Digisystem benefits from enhanced performance, more redundancy, and increased flexibility in the operational systems and in the size of the servers. Furthermore, the migration generated a cost reduction. The new hybrid infrastructure has enabled the IT team to have more autonomy and control over the environments.

Building a sustainable future by preparing to minimize carbon footprint from data centers
As IBM continues to help businesses scale and protect critical data through its expanded global cloud footprint, it is also helping prepare for a sustainable future. Building on its decades-long work to address the global climate crisis, IBM recently announced its commitment to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Utilizing a combination of artificial intelligence, hybrid cloud capabilities and quantum computing, IBM is working with clients and partners to address complex climate-related issues, such as the growing global carbon footprint of cloud workloads and data centers. This is not only critical for the environment, but will also help IBM clients address their own sustainability initiatives as companies across the globe look to minimize their carbon emissions.

“As companies embrace digital transformation, IBM is continuing to invest in cloud infrastructure and hybrid cloud capabilities that will help businesses around the world modernize and drive sustainable growth and innovation,” said Harish Grama, General Manager, IBM Cloud. “Following the openings of Toronto and Osaka MZRs just last year, IBM’s expanded presence in Brazil is designed to deliver our clients high levels of security and reliability, so they can advance in their journey to cloud – all in a way that supports sustainability goals while thriving in a digital era advancing to the future.”

bofrost* Taps IBM to Learn from Data and Better Respond to Customer Needs

IBM Global Business Services, in collaboration with Salesforce, developed a new eCommerce and marketing automation solution for bofrost* that will digitally transform the consumer experience according to changed needs and buying behaviors

Milan, March 16th, 2021 – bofrost*, a European leader in frozen food products, and IBM today unveiled the implementation of a new eCommerce and marketing automation solution as the first milestone of bofrost*’s business transformation journey.

The implementation leverages IBM hybrid cloud software, such as  IBM Cloud Pak for Data, to help anticipate and meet changing customer demands, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Salesforce Marketing Cloud technologies, to unify the customer experience across web and mobile. Taken together, these solutions will enable bofrost* to infuse AI throughout its organization and scale its operations to meet increased sales volume, which spiked in 2020 to 10x the growth of the previous year, and follows a decade of continuous growth.

Through this automated, scalable cloud-based solution built with IBM and Salesforce technologies, bofrost* can support fluctuations in online sales while offering its clients a consistent and personalized experience through a more interactive and intelligent website and mobile app that can deliver automated and targeted marketing activities.

At the onset of the pandemic, bofrost* shipped its frozen and fresh products directly to consumers’ homes, reacted promptly to ensure the safety of its employees and responded successfully to the growing demands of its customers who increasingly preferred to shop online.

In June 2020, the Italian-based company started working with IBM on a path of innovation and digital transformation to meet the new needs that had emerged. The first step was a project that analyzed how the COVID emergence transformed customer relationships and how bofrost*’s operating model performed in a situation of high stress on operational activities. The underlying goal was to determine which of these new consumer behaviors would persist after the pandemic and whether business processes and models needed to be revised.

On the basis of this analysis, the evolution of the sales and service models was then defined, leveraging new operational and organizational paradigms that would enable multi-channel and omnichannel solutions.

Now, bofrost*, can offer its clients in Italy, Spain and Switzerland the same high-level client centric approach as it offers with face-to-face sales.

“The COVID-19 pandemic seriously disrupted the way we did things,” said Gianluca Tesolin, CEO of bofrost* Italia. “But with IBM we were able to rethink our strategy and invest in new AI and hybrid cloud capabilities to meet changing consumer expectations now and for the future.”

Through its global alliance with Salesforce, IBM has been able to help transform bofrost* into an increasingly customer-centric company. The journey will lead to a better service experience, with the optimization of online channels – website and applications – and with the 360° knowledge of consumer behavior, made possible by data analysis. In addition, the combination of data provided to support the face-to-face sales – seller and teleseller – with the introduction of new business models to expand customer relations and services, confirms the commitment of bofrost* as an innovative and top-quality retailer.

“The challenge with bofrost* was to work alongside them in both the design of the new model and its implementation, leveraging technology and professional expertise to understand consumer needs and offer innovative solutions that could meet them,” said Rolando Neiger, GM, IBM Global Business Services. “To do so, we used the best experiential methodologies such as design thinking and empathy maps. We are proud to work with a company like bofrost* that is strongly committed to its customers and shares a deep innovative spirit.”

bofrost* Italia
It is the most important Italian company in the direct home sale of frozen food specialties without any interruption of the cold chain. It employs 2,400 people throughout Italy. The head office is located in San Vito al Tagliamento (PN). Today, more than one million Italian families appreciate and know bofrost* Italia products. Quality, taste and excellent service are the success factors of this company. www.bofrost.it

IBM Positioned as a Leader in 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Insight Engines

Organizations and ecosystem partners including EquBot, HSBC and the Clerk of the Superior Court in Maricopa County using IBM Watson Discovery to uncover meaningful business insights

ARMONK, N.Y., March 25, 2021 — IBM today announced that global research firm Gartner has positioned IBM as a Leader in the newly published 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Insight Engines. This builds on the recent news that IBM was positioned as a Leader in the 2021 Magic Quadrant for Cloud AI Developer Services and the 2021 Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms.

In the report Gartner states, “Insight engines combine search capabilities with artificial intelligence to deliver actionable insights derived from the full spectrum of content and data sourced within and external to an enterprise. This Magic Quadrant profiles 15 vendors to help application leaders make the best choice.”

Language can present a unique challenge for businesses – each company and industry has its own vernacular that evolves in response to new innovations, changing consumer expectations and world events. In addition, the language of business comes in many formats, from simple text documents to more complicated formats like charts, tables, PDFs, and images.

IBM Watson Discovery, an AI-powered search and text-analytics service, uses advanced natural language processing (NLP) to help companies find new insights from complex enterprise documents and data.

IBM Research provides a strong pipeline of NLP innovation for IBM Watson designed to help businesses increase accuracy and efficiency, while requiring less data and training time. Over the past year, IBM unveiled new features in beta for IBM Watson Discovery including Reading Comprehension; commercialized advanced sentiment analysis and summarization tools from Project Debater; and partnered with the Recording Academy, Bloomberg & Intelligence Squared, the US Open and ESPN Fantasy Football.

“The majority of data does not fit neatly into a database. It exists in documents. Natural language processing is core to IBM’s AI for business strategy and helps businesses detect business critical insights, perform predictions, and better understand trends,” said Daniel Hernandez, General Manager for Data and AI, IBM. “IBM continues to be positioned as a Leader in reports like the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Insight Engines, which we believe underscores the value IBM Watson is bringing to businesses and partners.”

Organizations and ecosystem partners including EquBot and HSBC, and the Clerk of the Superior Court in Maricopa County are using IBM Watson Discovery in innovative ways to uncover meaningful business insights.

“We are only just now scratching the surface of what AI can do to transform investment management and more broadly financial markets,” said Chida Khatua, CEO, EquBot Inc. “Our team collaborated with HSBC to deliver a first-of-its-kind Artificial Intelligence-powered index (AiPEX) that uses EquBot neural networks with IBM Watson Discovery to uncover new investment opportunities.”

“Our team in Maricopa County receives thousands of service requests each day from our 4 million residents who need support with time-sensitive requests like applying for marriage licenses, renewing passports and accessing court records,” said Aaron Judy, Chief of Innovation and AI, Clerk of the Superior Court in Maricopa County, Arizona. “Using IBM Watson Discovery with IBM Watson Assistant, we’re able to pull up-to-date information from multiple sources across different agencies for complex questions, which helps to keep our citizens informed, keep wait times lower, save our agents valuable time, and provide greater access to justice for all.”