Yearly Archives: 2021

Home 2021

IBM Positioned as a Leader in Two Newly Released Gartner Magic Quadrant Reports

– Businesses across industries such as AMC Theatres and Submergence Group adopting IBM Watson as part of their digital transformation
– Strong pipeline of innovations from IBM Research to IBM Watson in key areas of natural language processing, automation and trust

ARMONK, N.Y., March 11, 2021 — IBM today announced that global research firm Gartner has positioned IBM as a Leader in two newly published Gartner Magic Quadrant reports: the 2021 Magic Quadrant for Cloud AI Developer Services and the 2021 Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms.

“IBM is focused on AI for business and helping customers reclaim precious time through automation, generate critical insights through natural language processing, and foster trust in outcomes derived from AI,” said Daniel Hernandez, General Manager, Data and AI, IBM. “We believe these new recognitions from Gartner underscore the value we’re bringing to businesses through our strategy and our strong innovation pipeline between IBM Research and IBM Watson.”

The 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud AI Developer Services says, “This Magic Quadrant addresses the AI services that software engineering leaders need to enable powerful, next-generation applications”. IBM is recognized as a Leader based on completeness of vision and ability to execute. IBM continues to enhance its portfolio of language, vision and AutoAI products, which includes IBM Watson Assistant, IBM Watson Discovery, IBM Watson Natural Language Understanding, IBM Watson Studio, IBM Maximo Visual Inspection and more, to give developers the easy-to-use tools they need to build AI solutions rapidly.

According to the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms, “This report assesses 20 vendors of platforms that data scientists and others can use to source data, build models and operationalize machine learning.” IBM is recognized for completeness of vision and ability to execute. IBM designed IBM Watson Studio on IBM Cloud Pak for Data to provide end-to-end AI lifecycle management for both experts and citizen data scientists and developers, and it provides strong support for explainability, fairness and governance to help businesses build AI models that they can trust.

Businesses across industries continue to turn to IBM Watson and IBM Maximo products to infuse intelligence into their workflows.

“We’ve started to use Watson Studio to help us gain a much deeper understanding of consumer behavior across theaters and are excited to expand usage of this product within our business,” said Reena Mathews, Senior Director of Analytics, AMC Theatres.

“By greatly simplifying the process of training, deploying and running computer vision models, IBM Maximo Visual Inspection (MVI) has helped us to meet our delivery deadlines even with fast evolving requirements. MVI contains all the ingredients to quickly empower subject matter experts in the maritime industry to build applications without coding or deep learning expertise. Putting AI innovation directly into the hands of experts has been possible using MVI as it offloads most of the tedious tasks enabling a quick deployment of new models,” said Don Scott, Director of Engineering, Submergence Group.

To give businesses, data scientists and developers the capabilities they need to scale AI, IBM is continually bringing new innovations to IBM Watson from IBM Research in the core areas of natural language processing (NLP), trust and automation. In 2020, IBM unveiled advanced NLP capabilities from IBM Research Project Debater in IBM Watson, expanded its AI-powered automation capabilities with the launch of IBM Watson AIOps and announced AI Factsheets, a new methodology for embedding trust and transparency into the development of AI models coming to Watson Studio in Cloud Pak for Data in 2021.

Siemens, IBM, Red Hat Launch Hybrid Cloud Initiative to Increase Real-time Value of Industrial IoT Data

Siemens to Adopt Red Hat OpenShift for its MindSphere Platform used by Manufacturers Globally

ARMONK, N.Y., Feb. 24, 2021 — Siemens, IBM and Red Hat today announced a new collaboration that will use a hybrid cloud designed to deliver an open, flexible and more secure solution for manufacturers and plant operators to drive real-time value from operational data. In one month, a single manufacturing site can generate more than 2,200 terabytes of data according to a report by IBM – yet most data goes unanalyzed.

Through the joint initiative, Siemens Digital Industries Software will apply IBM’s open hybrid cloud approach, built on Red Hat OpenShift, to extend the deployment flexibility of MindSphere®, the industrial IoT as a service solution from Siemens. This will enable customers to run MindSphere on-premise, unlocking speed and agility in factory and plant operations, as well as through the cloud for seamless product support, updates and enterprise connectivity.

“Today’s manufacturers require agility and flexibility to meet expectations for higher quality products with shorter production cycles,” said Raymond Kok, senior vice president of Cloud Application Solutions for Siemens Digital Industries Software. “MindSphere already provides customers with data-driven insights to strengthen operations through Industrial IoT. Through our work with IBM and Red Hat, we can now offer customers the flexibility to choose to operate MindSphere on-premise or in the cloud to best meet their distinct operational needs and become more efficient, nimble and responsive to today’s marketplace.”

“We see that most industrial data is generated outside of IT – in manufacturing operations, supply chains or connected products – yet to leverage digital technologies, manufacturers choose to either send data up to their enterprise cloud, or bring the technology down,” said Manish Chawla, Industry General Manager, Energy, Resources, and Manufacturing at IBM. “Our collaboration with Siemens uses hybrid cloud and is being engineered to deliver manufacturers the best of both worlds: autonomy, speed and control over shopfloor data processed at the edge, as well as seamless connection to the enterprise.”

“Our collaboration with Siemens helps streamline operations in manufacturing by bringing the leading Kubernetes platform and an open hybrid approach,” said Darrell Jordan-Smith, senior vice president, Industries and Global Accounts, Red Hat. “With Red Hat OpenShift as the underlying platform for MindSphere, we reduce complexity by providing manufacturers one unified method to deploy and operate MindSphere on-site or in the cloud. This allows manufacturing leaders to focus on innovation and drive maximum business results.”

To help operationalize the capabilities and reduce IT risk, IBM Global Business Services and Global Technology Services consultants will serve as a provider for managed services and IoT solutions for Siemens’ MindSphere customers.

MindSphere is used by organizations to collect and analyze real-time sensor data from products, plants, systems, and machines, enabling users to optimize products, production assets, and manufacturing processes along the entire value chain to build a real-time digital twin. By adopting Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform, as the preferred on premise architecture, customers will have the flexibility to run MindSphere solutions locally in a private cloud, or in future applications through a hybrid, multi-cloud model, as well as enabling field to enterprise insights. Through this offering, Siemens and IBM enable customers to retain full physical control of their data to better cope with regulatory requirements and data privacy.

Today’s announcement builds on a long-standing relationship between IBM and Siemens, including most recently, the introduction of a joint solution with IBM Maximo that extends the operating lifecycle of industrial products and machinery by bringing together engineering, operations and maintenance data into one platform.

The collaboration with Siemens is part of IBM’s ecosystem program to invest in accelerating adoption of hybrid cloud and open architectures across essential industries, including manufacturing, energy, smart cities, telecommunications, and financial services. Siemens is leveraging IBM’s Cloud Engagement Fund, established as part of IBM’s $1B investment into its ecosystem, to access technical resources and cloud credits to support migration of client workloads to hybrid cloud environments.

These efforts are increasing in importance as organizations navigate the impacts of the pandemic which has created an acute need for speed to market, flexibility and nimbleness to encourage innovation.

Majid Al Futtaim Taps IBM Food Trust to Deliver Food Traceability Across Carrefour Stores Using Blockchain Technology

– Strategic collaboration offers Carrefour customers the benefit of end-to-end product visibility-promoting food quality, credibility and safety
– IBM Food Trust to allow Carrefour to efficiently document and locate products through manufacturing, processing, distribution and handling
– The comprehensive history of the product, including production process, halal and hygiene certifications, date of birth, nutrition information and temperature data, will be readily available to customers in stores.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Feb. 22, 2021 — Majid Al Futtaim, the leading shopping mall, communities, retail and leisure pioneer across the Middle East, Africa and Asia – owner and operator of the Carrefour franchise in these regions – and IBM today announced that Majid Al Futtaim has joined IBM Food Trust, a blockchain-enabled global ecosystem for the food industry run on IBM Cloud.

Carrefour will become the first retailer in the region to offer new levels of insight and transparency to its customers about the provenance of their food via end-to-end visibility on products throughout its supply chain, promoting increased quality, credibility and safety for its shoppers.

The initiative will start with two initial product categories, Carrefour’s own fresh chicken brand and microgreens harvested from select in-store hydroponic farms, before expanding into more product lines. All participants in this initiative across the supply chain will benefit from a smarter, and more sustainable food ecosystem. The digitisation of transactions and data provides a more efficient way of working across the supply chain for growers, processors, shippers, retailers, regulators, and consumers.

By simply using their smartphone to scan a QR code on participating products such as Carrefour’s fresh chicken, customers will be able to get immediate access to actionable food supply chain data, from farm to store shelf. The history of the product, including production process, halal and hygiene certifications, date of birth, nutrition information and temperature data, will be readily available once uploaded onto the blockchain.

The growing demand for food traceability is evidenced by research conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV), showing that 73 per cent of those responding to a survey said traceability of products is important to them. Of those who said it was very important, 71 per cent of respondents indicated they are willing to pay a premium for brands that provide it.

“Trust in the food supply is becoming increasingly important worldwide, a trend accelerated by changing consumer demands and the subsequent health and wellbeing concerns arising from the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Hani Weiss, Chief Executive Officer, Majid Al Futtaim Retail. “It is therefore imperative for us to invest in ensuring quality throughout the value chain while simultaneously working to build robust customer trust and loyalty. In meeting the new market expectations, we are now offering enhanced food traceability for our valued Carrefour customers and improved operational efficiency for our business.”

Majid Al Futtaim is engaging with its supplier partners to enable broader participation in this initiative, giving Carrefour customers access to traceability details across diverse products throughout the UAE, before introducing it to other Carrefour markets operated by the company in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

“Thanks to the availability of advanced cloud-based, blockchain technology and the commitment of Majid Al Futtaim to deliver the highest quality to its customers, we are proud to be using this supply chain solution to provide the very best in quality, safety and trust to our customers in the markets we operate in,” Nalla Karunanithy, Chief Digital Officer at Majid Al Futtaim Retail said.

IBM Food Trust uses decentralised ledgers to record transactions in a verifiable way. Through a collaborative blockchain network, critical information such as product origin, transportation, and ingredients, can be logged effectively and accessed quickly by permissioned participants across the value chain and ultimately customers.

Today’s announcement is the latest tech-forward initiative in Majid Al Futtaim’s digital transformation of its Carrefour operations, following numerous innovative developments including Automated Click & Collect, Mobile Scan & Go and the launch of an online marketplace, utilising the latest in state-of-the-art technology.

About Majid Al Futtaim

Founded in 1992, Majid Al Futtaim is the leading shopping mall, communities, retail and leisure pioneer across the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

A remarkable business success story, Majid Al Futtaim started from one man’s vision to transform the face of shopping, entertainment and leisure to ‘create great moments for everyone, every day’. It has since grown into one of the United Arab Emirates’ most respected and successful businesses spanning 17 international markets, employing more than 43,000 people, and obtaining the highest credit rating (BBB) among privately-held corporates in the region.

Majid Al Futtaim owns and operates 27 shopping malls, 13 hotels and four mixed-use communities, with further developments underway in the region. The shopping malls portfolio includes Mall of the Emirates, Mall of Egypt, City Centre malls, My City Centre neighbourhood centres, and five community malls which are in joint venture with the Government of Sharjah. The Company is the exclusive franchisee for Carrefour in over 30 markets across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, operating a portfolio of more than 350 outlets and an online store.

Majid Al Futtaim operates more than 500 VOX Cinemas screens as well as a portfolio of world-class leisure and entertainment experiences across the region including Ski Dubai, Ski Egypt, Dreamscape, Magic Planet, Little Explorers and iFLY Dubai. The Company is parent to the consumer finance company ‘Najm’, and a Fashion, Home and Specialty retail business representing international brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, AllSaints, lululemon athletica, Crate & Barrel, Maisons du Monde, LEGO and THAT, a Majid Al Futtaim fashion concept store and app. In addition, Majid Al Futtaim operates Enova, a facility and energy management company, through a joint venture operation with Veolia, a global leader in optimised environment resource management.

Delta Air Lines Taps IBM for Cloud Expertise and Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Platform

ARMONK, N.Y., Feb. 18, 2021 — IBM and Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) announced a multi-year agreement under which IBM will help lead Delta to the public cloud, in order to increase its agility, speed to market and innovation capabilities around digital transformation.

As part of the expanded relationship, IBM will provide technology and industry expertise to modernize and migrate Delta’s applications to the public cloud. IBM will transform Delta’s computing environment to run on a hybrid cloud architecture built on Red Hat OpenShift, enabling a consistent, standards-based approach to development, security and operations across clouds. IBM’s team of experts, spanning travel transportation and technology, are working with Delta teams to utilize the IBM Garage Methodology and IBM hybrid cloud software, such as CloudPaks, to modernize existing applications and co-create new solutions powering Delta’s transformation. This will help Delta drive greater software engineering productivity and result in an enhanced customer experience in the future.

“As an airline industry leader, we understand the critical need to constantly evolve our digital presence and enhance our customer and employee experience to not only help respond quickly to the dynamic changing conditions but also reinforce brand loyalty from our customers,” said Rahul Samant, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Delta Air Lines. “As one of many integral steps we are taking to advance our digital business transformation, IBM will help us migrate to the cloud and create a new operating model that will transform and modernize our technology platform.”

“This agreement expands our longstanding relationship with Delta Air Lines to help them accelerate and navigate their ambitious digital transformation journey,” said Mark Foster, Senior Vice President, IBM Services. “This long-term project will apply the power of IBM’s hybrid cloud approach, enabling Delta to develop applications once and deploy them anywhere, integrate security across the breadth of their IT estate, and automate operations with management visibility.”

IBM and Delta have a longstanding history of collaboration on transformative projects that have led to innovations for Delta and the airline industry. Early last year, the companies announced a multi-year collaborative effort via the IBM Q Network™ to explore the potential capabilities of quantum computing to transform experiences for airline customers and employees.

bp joins the IBM Quantum Network to advance use of quantum computing in energy

LONDON, Feb. 15, 2021 — IBM today announced bp has joined the IBM Quantum Network to advance the use of quantum computing in the energy industry.

By joining the IBM Quantum Network™ as an Industry Partner, bp will have access to IBM’s quantum expertise and software and cloud-based access to the most advanced quantum computers available via the cloud. This includes access to a premium 65-qubit quantum computer, the largest universal quantum system available to industry today, and an important milestone on the IBM Quantum roadmap to a 1,000-plus qubit system, targeted for the end of 2023.

bp will work with IBM to explore using quantum computing to solve business and engineering challenges and explore the potential applications for driving efficiencies and reducing carbon emissions.

“bp’s ambition is to become a net zero company by 2050 or sooner and help the world get to net zero. Next-generation computing capabilities such as quantum computing will assist in solving the science and engineering challenges we will face, enabling us to reimagine energy and design new lower carbon products,” said Morag Watson, senior vice president, digital science and engineering for bp.

Quantum computing has the potential to be applied in areas such as: modelling the chemistry and build-up of various types of clay in hydrocarbon wells – a crucial factor in efficient hydrocarbon production; analyzing and managing the fluid dynamics of wind farms; optimizing autonomous robotic facility inspection; and helping create opportunities not yet imagined to deliver the clean energy the world wants and needs.

In 2020, bp announced its net zero ambition and its new strategy. By the end of this decade, it aims to have developed around 50 gigawatts of net renewable-generating capacity (a 20-fold increase), increased annual low carbon investment 10-fold to around $5 billion and cut its oil and gas production by 40%.

Joining the IBM Quantum Network will enhance bp’s ability to leverage quantum advances and applications as they emerge and then influence on how those breakthroughs can be applied to its industry and the energy transition.

“bp joins a rapidly growing number of clients working with IBM to explore quantum computing to help accelerate the discovery of solutions to some of today’s biggest challenges,” added Dario Gil, Senior Vice President and Director of IBM Research. “The energy industry is ripe with opportunities to see value from the use of quantum computing through the discovery of new materials designed to improve the generation, transfer, and storage of energy.”

bp joins more than 130 members of the IBM Quantum Network, a global community of Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, academic institutions and research labs working to advance quantum computing and explore practical applications. Together, members of the Network and IBM Quantum teams are researching and exploring how quantum computing will help a variety of industries and disciplines, including finance, energy, chemistry, materials science, optimization and machine learning, among many others.

IBM Quantum Network™ is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.

Humana and IBM Watson Health Collaborate to Simplify and Enhance the Member Experience for Humana Employer Group Customers

IBM Watson Assistant for Health Benefits – an AI-enabled Watson virtual agent – can help enable greater access to accurate and helpful information about benefits and healthcare costs for Humana Employer Group members, agents and employer-customers

LOUISVILLE, Ky. and CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Feb. 11, 2021 – Humana Inc. and IBM Watson Health today announced a collaboration leveraging IBM’s conversational artificial intelligence (AI) solution – to help provide a better member experience while providing greater clarity and transparency on benefits and other related matters for Humana Employer Group members.

Research indicates that consumers who do not understand how their health plan works or how to estimate out-of-pocket costs are more likely to delay or avoid essential care. Watson Assistant for Health Benefits aims to help address this issue by leveraging conversational AI to streamline the engagements between agents, employers, and Humana Employer Group members with clear and accurate information on benefits, healthcare costs and providers.

As part of the agreement, Humana will deploy IBM Watson Assistant for Health Benefits, an AI-enabled virtual assistant built in the IBM Watson Health cloud. Initially, the service will be available to all of Humana’s 1.3 million Employer Group medical members, and 1.8 million of Humana’s Employer Group dental members. Watson Assistant for Health Benefits provides rapid, accurate and helpful information utilizing a conversational virtual assistant with member benefits, coverage, claims, referrals and healthcare costs for Humana Employer Group members, agents and employer-customers. The objective is the creation of a cloud native AI platform powered by IBM Watson with the conversational AI virtual assistant solution.

“Humana is excited to team up with IBM Watson Health to help our employer-customers and their employees better manage their healthcare benefits and costs through a more innovative, personalized experience,” said Chris Hunter, Segment President of Humana’s Group and Military Business. “At Humana, we strive to use technology to better serve our members with simple and convenient healthcare experiences. By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence fused with embedded analytics in the Watson Health platform, we can help our employer-customers, members, agents and broker partners enhance their knowledge so they can all make more informed decisions.”

“Navigating our health coverage without the right support can potentially serve as a barrier to care. An AI-enabled conversational agent that is trained to understand health plan benefits logic can play a role in helping to simplify complex or possibly confusing plan information,” said Paul Roma, General Manager, IBM Watson Health. “We are proud to support Humana in leading the effort to deploy conversational AI to help enhance and improve the consumer experience.”

Humana and IBM plan to deploy Watson Assistant for Health Benefits to help many aspects of the Humana Employer Group member benefits experience, including:

  • Addressing questions directly from members with speed, accuracy and personalized answers
  • Assisting Humana employees and call center personnel to accurately answer questions quickly – helping to free up more time for customer care representatives to provide concierge-level customer service
  • Using historical claims and provider data to calculate personalized cost estimates for medical services that can help Humana members better manage their healthcare spending

The IBM Watson Assistant for Health Benefits solution is designed to understand the logic of health plan eligibility and incorporate it into the member conversation, enabling improved interaction with each member, and personalizing each answer to the Humana member based on his or her active or future health plan.

DIA Leverages IBM Cloud and Confidential Computing to Help Secure its Decentralized Financial Information Platform

IBM Cloud confidential computing capabilities are designed to protect mission-critical decentralized finance (DeFi) data and applications in a cloud environment

ARMONK, N.Y. and ZUG, Switzerland, Jan. 26, 2021 — IBM and DIA announced today that DIA migrated its platform to IBM Cloud and is leveraging IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services to manage how financial data is sourced, stored, processed and published. IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services is a hybrid cloud offering designed to deliver sophisticated encryption capabilities to help secure highly sensitive data, which is especially important in the age of hybrid cloud. The migration of DIA’s platform to a cloud environment backed by IBM Cloud confidential computingcapabilities is designed to protect data and applications from potential malicious inside and external attacks.

DIA is located in Crypto Valley in Zug, Switzerland and is an open-source financial information platform that incentivizes the sourcing and validation of data and provides the data via traditional APIs as well as oracles. Oracles are the third-party trust mechanisms that allow smart contracts to receive data from sources outside of the blockchain.

Data security is key for success of the fast-growing decentralized finance space
DeFi is an emerging area of digital finance that leverages blockchain-based smart contracts to execute and validate transactions, rather than relying on centralized financial institutions. As the industry grows, transparent data sources and oracles become critical to its reliability and success. Data sources that can be compromised and provide little transparency can lead malicious actors to manipulate attacks on DeFi platforms. To help mitigate this risk, DIA is leveraging the IBM Cloud – the industry’s most secure and open public cloud for business.

IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services help enable protection and privacy of data infrastructure
Using IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services, DIA can help provide technical assurance to its clients and users that their workloads are secured by protecting backend infrastructure against attacks on hardware, servers, applications and data layers. By taking advantage of ‘Keep Your Own Key’ (KYOK) and confidential computing capabilities delivered via hybrid cloud capabilities from IBM, DIA can protect data with complete authority for their data and workloads.

IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services provide confidential computing capabilities designed to enable data integrity and confidentiality for current and future workloads within hybrid cloud environments by employing isolation and encryption in security-rich enclaves to run cloud software.

This concept allows the platform’s users to retain sole access to their crypto keys – meaning not even IBM can access them – and helps mitigate the risk of malicious actors viewing or modifying the confidential data. Built on IBM LinuxONE, by using IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services, DIA has access to the highest level of security offered commercially by any cloud provider in the industry for cryptographic modules.

“IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services, confidential computing capabilities and IBM LinuxONE enable us to help implement a high security standard in the oracle landscape,” says Samuel Brack Co-Founder and CTO at DIA. “Being able to assure that no third party can view or manipulate our off-chain computing operations effectively protects DIA and its users from potential malicious inside and outside attacks.”

“As reliance on data grows, especially in the era of hybrid cloud, the need for cutting-edge security to protect digital assets becomes even more critical,” said Hillery Hunter, IBM Fellow, VP & CTO, IBM Cloud. “On its mission to source and validate financial data, DIA’s move toward a confidential computing environment bolsters security for all existing participants within its ecosystem. Now, DIA can work with clients in highly regulated industries and address their higher demand for confidentiality as they access their open source financial information platform.”

DIA continues to explore opportunities to increase security, scalability and compliance of data delivery for both institutional and DeFi actors to help grow the ecosystem and to further increase trust in the still nascent DeFi industry.

IBM Helps Audi UK Reimagine the Digital Customer Experience

Online sales inquiries increase 59%; car buying experience puts prospective customers in the driver’s seat

ARMONK, N.Y. and LONDON, Jan. 14, 2021 — IBM and Audi UK, one of the world’s leading premium automotive manufacturers, collaborated to redesign Audi’s website to deliver a far more engaging digital customer experience. During the course of 2020, Audi has seen a 59% increase in UK online sales inquiries despite an almost 30% industry decline in new UK car sales during the pandemic.

With 90% of its car purchases starting online, Audi UK turned to IBM iX, the business design arm of IBM Global Business Services, to help it reimagine its customers’ digital journey from initial inquiry to ownership. COVID-19 has made “contact-less” online experience paramount as car dealerships had to close or limit in-person operations.

Audi UK’s digital transformation unified its mobile and desktop shopping experiences, enabled by a cloud platform and supported by the latest marketing insights data from Adobe Analytics and agile software development practices.

Audi UK tailors the customers’ online experience to their prime motivations for car-buying – be it price, driving experience, technology or safety. Visitors are now asked fewer questions, can reach relevant information more quickly and are offered more contact options to take their inquiry further than they could before.  Audi UK broke its own online sales inquiries record three times in June 2020 alone.

Antony Roberts, Head of Digital at Audi UK, says: “In a matter of 12 months, our leads have grown exponentially and our sales conversions have improved. We have gone from being poor in terms of the data analytics to being incredibly rich. Through our collaboration with IBM, Audi UK now has the most effective cloud-based online platform across the entire VW Group, building a smarter experience for customers interacting with our brand.”

Like most organizations, Audi’s IT architecture was built over many years and had become challenging to maintain. Applying the agile, user-focused IBM Garage Methodology, the Audi and IBM iX team co-created a strategic roadmap for their digital transformation, resulting in new customer-centric tools designed to enhance the user experience. IBM implemented Adobe Experience Manager along with Adobe Analytics to facilitate faster content-led experiences on their website that helped enable Audi to make business and customer-experience decisions based on data rather than assumptions, with a full view into how consumers interact with the new site:

  • IBM built the Audi analytics platform using Adobe Analytics which has helped provide actionable marketing insights, and pinpoints site performance improvement opportunities, resulting in Audi reducing customer submission errors by 90%.
  • Audi content editors are now able to complete everyday changes themselves, freeing developers to focus on more complex tasks. Audi has created libraries of reusable components that has reduced initial setup time of new features from weeks to minutes.
  • Adopting more agile practices, developers are now able to deliver functionality up to 75% faster than before; new solutions built this year include a test-drive booking application, a vehicle maintenance scheduler and a part-exchange calculator.

Debbie Vavangas, IBM Global Garage lead, IBM iX, said: “Audi has prided itself on its commitment to apply smart design across its business. With the COVID-19 pandemic up-ending the way consumers make large purchases, there was a critical need to apply its design principles to its customers’ digital experiences. By embracing cloud technologies and data analytics, Audi UK helped accelerate its digital transformation with an online platform that delivers a smarter, more engaging experience that puts customers in the driver’s seat.”

Thai Re launches ASEAN’s first reinsurance smart contract platform using IBM’s blockchain and hybrid cloud technology

New contract platform makes processing reinsurance contracts more efficient for Thai insurers

Bangkok, Thailand – 06 January 2021: IBM today announced that Thai Reinsurance Public Company Limited (Thai Re), Thailand’s leading technology-driven professional non-life reinsurer, has successfully launched “Insurer Network,” a reinsurance smart contract production network using IBM blockchain technology on IBM Cloud. Available through ThaiRe Innovation Co., Ltd., the Thai Re subsidiary and IT engine, “Insurer Network” is designed to bring transparency and speed to its clients in Thailand.

The insurance industry is in a period of disruption not seen in decades, with business restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic heightening the need for insurers to improve efficiencies and remove business barriers. Through the launch of its “Insurer Network” platform on IBM Cloud, Thai Re will streamline how it handles more than 10,000 annual reinsurance contracts with its insurance partners, making it easier for those insurers to grow their businesses.

Using blockchain technology on the highly secured IBM Cloud, the platform will allow Thailand’s insurance industry to gain efficiency and speed in processing the reinsurance contracts. Expected benefits will also include reduction of forgery risk through a traceable, highly-secured single version of truth documentation, and a decrease in potential data inaccuracies from manual multi-party reconciliation reinsurance contracts.

“The COVID-19 pandemic and the need to digitally transform have urged organizations, not only in insurance industry but all, to bring efficiency to the way we work,” said Oran Vongsuraphichet, Chief Executive Officer of Thai Reinsurance Public Company Limited. “Thai Re has continuously focused on prudent underwriting professional portfolio management as well as business innovation throughout the past 40 years of our operations, and our ‘Insurer Network’ platform, now live, will today bring efficiency and transparency to all our stakeholders, while also opening the new chapter of insurance industry in Thailand.”

“The pandemic and the ongoing disruption has shown how important it is for businesses to be built for change and resilience,” said Patama Chantaruck, VP for Indochina Expansion and MD of IBM Thailand. “Thai Re’s ‘Insurer Network’ platform can improve operational scalability and flexibility, in addition to speed and transparency, to the ecosystem of insurers in Thailand. IBM is proud to support Thai Re and its growing platform network today with our blockchain technology on the highly-secured IBM Cloud environment.”

“Our goal is to make this platform beneficial to Thailand’s insurance industry while also serving the need of consumers. We plan to invite almost 100% of all insurers and brokers in Thailand to leverage this “Insurer Network” blockchain-based smart contract platform within the next two years,” said Pojaman Fuangaromya, Executive Vice President of Thai Reinsurance Public Company Limited and General Manager of ThaiRe Innovation Company Limited, “We want to be a strategic partner that helps our customers stay ahead of the game, and more quotation, underwriting claim and reconciliation capabilities will soon be added to our “Insurer Network” platform to bring the best reinsurance service innovation to our stakeholders.”