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IBM to Grant $5 Million in-kind for Public Schools Globally to Better Prepare for Growing Ransomware Threat

ARMONK, N.Y., May 24, 2022 — IBM today announced it will provide in-kind grants valued at $5 million to help address cybersecurity resiliency in schools worldwide. For the second year in a row, six school districts in the United States will be awarded these grants. This year the program is also expanding overseas with four additional grants in Brazil, Costa Rica, Ireland, and the United Arab Emirates. As part of each grant, sponsor teams of IBMers will help schools proactively prepare for and respond to cyberattacks.

In 2021, in the U.S. alone over 1,000 schools across the country suffered from a ransomware attack, according to Emsisoft research. Financially motivated cybercriminals are taking advantage of schools’ need for uptime, their scarcity of cybersecurity defense resources, and lack of expertise compared to other potential targets. Cybercriminals’ focus on schools is also increasing on a global scale. In a recent report, IBM Security X-Force observed globally that the percentage of ransomware attacks against the education sector more than doubled from 2020 to 2021, with most cyberattacks taking the form of adware (33%) or ransomware (22%) attacks.

“For schools, a large barrier to strengthening their cybersecurity posture often comes down to constrained budgets, which financially motivated threat actors bet on,” said Charles Henderson, Global Managing Partner and Head of IBM Security X-Force. “By pursuing targets with lower defenses, threat actors can reap quick rewards and yield a higher return. In the event of ransomware attacks, the extreme added pressure schools experience to pay a ransom to recover their operations is a profitable wager for the bad guys. As a leader in the security community, it’s our duty to help our educational institutions strengthen their cyber preparedness.”

The grant, created as part of IBM’s Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, will be an in-kind contribution in the form of resources and hours performed by IBM Service Corps teams. Through IBM Service Corps, IBMers use their professional skills to help communities tackle complex challenges in education, humanitarian efforts, cybersecurity, and economic development. Through this grant program, volunteers will help schools establish programs to address cybersecurity resiliency and will provide services including developing incident response plans and ransomware playbooks. The programs will address the need for updating operating systems, providing cybersecurity training for staff, students, and parents, and implementing strategic communication plans to use in response to a cyber incident.

“Our access to IBM’s cybersecurity professionals allowed us to reframe our perspective on how vulnerabilities may originate, and how to educate our school community about cybersecurity safety practices,” said Ra’Chel Ford, Chief Operating Officer at KIPP Metro Atlanta Schools. “We thought cybersecurity concerns were limited to sharing passwords and email phishing, but we now realize that cybersecurity breaches come in many forms. Cybersecurity is now viewed as part of our School Safety Plan and Crisis Response Plan. Everyone plays a part – board members, families, scholars, staff, and vendors. This was one of the best decisions we made for our organization.”

Last year, IBM received more than 250 applications from school districts across the United States seeking to strengthen their security postures in response to the growing threats in the education space. After a careful review of applications, IBM selected six recipients based on their cybersecurity needs and experiences, community resources, and potential risks: Brevard Public Schools in Viera, Florida; Denver Public Schools in Denver, Colorado; KIPP Metro Atlanta Schools in Atlanta, Georgia; Newhall School District in Valencia, California; Poughkeepsie City School District in Poughkeepsie, New York; and Sheldon Independent School District in Houston, Texas. This year, IBM is increasing this program to a total of 10 grants, valued at $500,000 each ($5 million in total).

K-12 public school districts based in the United States that are interested in applying for IBM’s education cybersecurity grant can apply via IBM.com here: webportalapp.com/webform/ibm-cybersecurity. School districts in the United States can apply through June 21, 2022.

IBM to Grant $5 Million in-kind for Public Schools Globally to Better Prepare for Growing Ransomware Threat

ARMONK, N.Y., May 24, 2022 — IBM today announced it will provide in-kind grants valued at $5 million to help address cybersecurity resiliency in schools worldwide. For the second year in a row, six school districts in the United States will be awarded these grants. This year the program is also expanding overseas with four additional grants in Brazil, Costa Rica, Ireland, and the United Arab Emirates. As part of each grant, sponsor teams of IBMers will help schools proactively prepare for and respond to cyberattacks.

In 2021, in the U.S. alone over 1,000 schools across the country suffered from a ransomware attack, according to Emsisoft research. Financially motivated cybercriminals are taking advantage of schools’ need for uptime, their scarcity of cybersecurity defense resources, and lack of expertise compared to other potential targets. Cybercriminals’ focus on schools is also increasing on a global scale. In a recent report, IBM Security X-Force observed globally that the percentage of ransomware attacks against the education sector more than doubled from 2020 to 2021, with most cyberattacks taking the form of adware (33%) or ransomware (22%) attacks.

“For schools, a large barrier to strengthening their cybersecurity posture often comes down to constrained budgets, which financially motivated threat actors bet on,” said Charles Henderson, Global Managing Partner and Head of IBM Security X-Force. “By pursuing targets with lower defenses, threat actors can reap quick rewards and yield a higher return. In the event of ransomware attacks, the extreme added pressure schools experience to pay a ransom to recover their operations is a profitable wager for the bad guys. As a leader in the security community, it’s our duty to help our educational institutions strengthen their cyber preparedness.”

The grant, created as part of IBM’s Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, will be an in-kind contribution in the form of resources and hours performed by IBM Service Corps teams. Through IBM Service Corps, IBMers use their professional skills to help communities tackle complex challenges in education, humanitarian efforts, cybersecurity, and economic development. Through this grant program, volunteers will help schools establish programs to address cybersecurity resiliency and will provide services including developing incident response plans and ransomware playbooks. The programs will address the need for updating operating systems, providing cybersecurity training for staff, students, and parents, and implementing strategic communication plans to use in response to a cyber incident.

“Our access to IBM’s cybersecurity professionals allowed us to reframe our perspective on how vulnerabilities may originate, and how to educate our school community about cybersecurity safety practices,” said Ra’Chel Ford, Chief Operating Officer at KIPP Metro Atlanta Schools. “We thought cybersecurity concerns were limited to sharing passwords and email phishing, but we now realize that cybersecurity breaches come in many forms. Cybersecurity is now viewed as part of our School Safety Plan and Crisis Response Plan. Everyone plays a part – board members, families, scholars, staff, and vendors. This was one of the best decisions we made for our organization.”

Last year, IBM received more than 250 applications from school districts across the United States seeking to strengthen their security postures in response to the growing threats in the education space. After a careful review of applications, IBM selected six recipients based on their cybersecurity needs and experiences, community resources, and potential risks: Brevard Public Schools in Viera, Florida; Denver Public Schools in Denver, Colorado; KIPP Metro Atlanta Schools in Atlanta, Georgia; Newhall School District in Valencia, California; Poughkeepsie City School District in Poughkeepsie, New York; and Sheldon Independent School District in Houston, Texas. This year, IBM is increasing this program to a total of 10 grants, valued at $500,000 each ($5 million in total).

K-12 public school districts based in the United States that are interested in applying for IBM’s education cybersecurity grant can apply via IBM.com here: webportalapp.com/webform/ibm-cybersecurity. School districts in the United States can apply through June 21, 2022.

Global Data from IBM Shows Steady AI Adoption as Organizations Look to Address Skills Shortages, Automate Processes and Encourage Sustainable Operations

ARMONK, N.Y., May 19, 2022 — New market research commissioned by IBM revealed that global AI adoption grew steadily over the last year, to 35 percent of those surveyed in 2022, further underscoring that AI growth is poised to accelerate as it continues to mature, becoming more accessible and easier to implement.

Experience the interactive Multichannel News Release here: https://www.multivu.com/players/English/9002053-ibm-global-ai-adoption-index-2022/

Other data points from the “Global AI Adoption Index 2022,” conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of IBM, reveal this growth was due to companies recognizing the value of AI as they emerged from the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and invested in their digital transformation, while dealing with talent and skills shortages. In fact, the study shows that AI adoption was up 4 percentage points compared with 2021.

For the first time, the report also polled companies about their plans to use AI in their sustainability initiatives and found that AI is poised to play a significant role. 66% of IT professionals surveyed said that their company is either currently applying AI, or plans to apply AI, to accelerate ESG initiatives.

Highlights from the “Global AI Adoption Index 2022” include:

  • Global AI adoption is growing steadily, and most companies already use or plan to use AI: Today, 35% of companies reported using AI in their business. Compared with 2021, organizations are 13% more likely to have adopted AI in 2022. Additionally, 42% of companies report they are exploring AI. Large companies are more likely than smaller companies to use AI. Chinese and Indian companies are leading the way, with nearly 60% of IT professionals in those countries saying their organization already actively uses AI, compared with lagging markets like South Korea (22%), Australia (24%) the U.S. (25%), and the U.K. (26%). IT professionals in the financial services, media, energy, automotive, oil, and aerospace industries are most likely to report their company has actively deployed AI, while organizations in industries including retail, travel and government/federal services and healthcare are the least likely.
  • Setting clear data and AI strategies are key for horizontal deployment: A major explanation for gradual AI adoption is the need to implement a successful data management strategy and applying AI to that data achieve business goals. Companies that have not deployed AI are three times as likely to say that they have little to no confidence their company has the proper data management tools. Today, 37% of companies are developing an AI strategy, 28% already have a holistic strategy in place, and 25% have a strategy that is focused only on limited or specific use cases.
  • Automation is helping address skills gaps, labor shortages: More than costs, lack of tools, or project or data complexity, the skills gap remains the biggest barrier to AI adoption. At the same time, AI is also helping organizations address skills shortages, for example by automating tasks for skilled workers so they can be more productive, or by using AI-assisted learning or employee engagement. Almost one-in-four companies are adopting AI because of labor or skills shortages, and 30% of global IT professionals say employees at their organization are already saving time with new AI and automation software/tools.
  • A growing emphasis on trust – but few concrete actions: Establishing trustworthy, responsible AI practices and AI maturity go hand-in-hand: The more likely a company is to have deployed AI, the more likely they are to value the importance of trustworthiness. IT professionals at businesses currently deploying AI are 17% more likely to report that their business values AI explainability than those that are simply exploring AI. But while growing majorities of business leaders say that trustworthy AI is critical, a majority organizations have not taken key steps to ensure their AI is trustworthy and responsible, such as reducing bias (74%), tracking performance variations/model drift (68%), and making sure making sure they can explain AI-powered decisions (61%)
  • Building more sustainable operations: AI is poised to play a growing role in the sustainability initiatives of organizations around the world as more than two-thirds of businesses either use or plan to use AI today as part of their sustainability initiatives. One-in-five companies are already adopting AI because of environmental pressures.
  • Popular use cases like automation, security drive adoption: Organizations are applying AI in a wide variety of use cases today, with the most advanced adoption happening in areas like IT operations, security and threat detection and business process automation. Today, already a third of companies are already using AI for IT Operations (AIOps) to automate key processes, which helps them maintain application performance while also making resource-allocation more efficient. A third of companies deploying AI are applying such as natural language processing to fields like marketing, sales and customer care.

“More than one-third of organizations polled in the IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2022 say they are using AI today to respond to a myriad of different factors and pressures,” said Tom Rosamilia, Senior Vice President, IBM Software. “They’re looking to AI to help them address skills and labor shortages, respond to competitive pressures and, increasingly to respond to environmental pressures as well. Most respondents said they either are already using or plan to use AI as part of their sustainability initiatives. These trends all point to the growing role that AI is playing both within organizations but also in society.”

While AI investment continues to grow, barriers to adoption remain, particularly for smaller organizations who are significantly less likely to take advantage of AI. The survey determined top three barriers to AI adoption for businesses are: limited AI expertise or knowledge (34%), high prices (29%), and lack of tools and platforms for developing AI models (25%).

IBM is helping to address these barriers and deliver the benefits of AI to more people and organizations across industries with AI that is human-centered and designed for the needs of businesses. IBM is continually drawing on the latest innovations in AI from IBM Research to deliver new enterprise-ready capabilities, automate technical and manual processes like IT operations and develop new ways to operationalize and help ensure AI ethics are observed. Additionally, IBM Consulting brings deep technology, industry and process design expertise to co-create solutions with customers that embed AI into core business processes and create intelligent workflows at scale.

Global Data from IBM Shows Steady AI Adoption as Organizations Look to Address Skills Shortages, Automate Processes and Encourage Sustainable Operations

ARMONK, N.Y., May 19, 2022 — New market research commissioned by IBM revealed that global AI adoption grew steadily over the last year, to 35 percent of those surveyed in 2022, further underscoring that AI growth is poised to accelerate as it continues to mature, becoming more accessible and easier to implement.

Experience the interactive Multichannel News Release here: https://www.multivu.com/players/English/9002053-ibm-global-ai-adoption-index-2022/

Other data points from the “Global AI Adoption Index 2022,” conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of IBM, reveal this growth was due to companies recognizing the value of AI as they emerged from the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and invested in their digital transformation, while dealing with talent and skills shortages. In fact, the study shows that AI adoption was up 4 percentage points compared with 2021.

For the first time, the report also polled companies about their plans to use AI in their sustainability initiatives and found that AI is poised to play a significant role. 66% of IT professionals surveyed said that their company is either currently applying AI, or plans to apply AI, to accelerate ESG initiatives.

Highlights from the “Global AI Adoption Index 2022” include:

  • Global AI adoption is growing steadily, and most companies already use or plan to use AI: Today, 35% of companies reported using AI in their business. Compared with 2021, organizations are 13% more likely to have adopted AI in 2022. Additionally, 42% of companies report they are exploring AI. Large companies are more likely than smaller companies to use AI. Chinese and Indian companies are leading the way, with nearly 60% of IT professionals in those countries saying their organization already actively uses AI, compared with lagging markets like South Korea (22%), Australia (24%) the U.S. (25%), and the U.K. (26%). IT professionals in the financial services, media, energy, automotive, oil, and aerospace industries are most likely to report their company has actively deployed AI, while organizations in industries including retail, travel and government/federal services and healthcare are the least likely.
  • Setting clear data and AI strategies are key for horizontal deployment: A major explanation for gradual AI adoption is the need to implement a successful data management strategy and applying AI to that data achieve business goals. Companies that have not deployed AI are three times as likely to say that they have little to no confidence their company has the proper data management tools. Today, 37% of companies are developing an AI strategy, 28% already have a holistic strategy in place, and 25% have a strategy that is focused only on limited or specific use cases.
  • Automation is helping address skills gaps, labor shortages: More than costs, lack of tools, or project or data complexity, the skills gap remains the biggest barrier to AI adoption. At the same time, AI is also helping organizations address skills shortages, for example by automating tasks for skilled workers so they can be more productive, or by using AI-assisted learning or employee engagement. Almost one-in-four companies are adopting AI because of labor or skills shortages, and 30% of global IT professionals say employees at their organization are already saving time with new AI and automation software/tools.
  • A growing emphasis on trust – but few concrete actions: Establishing trustworthy, responsible AI practices and AI maturity go hand-in-hand: The more likely a company is to have deployed AI, the more likely they are to value the importance of trustworthiness. IT professionals at businesses currently deploying AI are 17% more likely to report that their business values AI explainability than those that are simply exploring AI. But while growing majorities of business leaders say that trustworthy AI is critical, a majority organizations have not taken key steps to ensure their AI is trustworthy and responsible, such as reducing bias (74%), tracking performance variations/model drift (68%), and making sure making sure they can explain AI-powered decisions (61%)
  • Building more sustainable operations: AI is poised to play a growing role in the sustainability initiatives of organizations around the world as more than two-thirds of businesses either use or plan to use AI today as part of their sustainability initiatives. One-in-five companies are already adopting AI because of environmental pressures.
  • Popular use cases like automation, security drive adoption: Organizations are applying AI in a wide variety of use cases today, with the most advanced adoption happening in areas like IT operations, security and threat detection and business process automation. Today, already a third of companies are already using AI for IT Operations (AIOps) to automate key processes, which helps them maintain application performance while also making resource-allocation more efficient. A third of companies deploying AI are applying such as natural language processing to fields like marketing, sales and customer care.

“More than one-third of organizations polled in the IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2022 say they are using AI today to respond to a myriad of different factors and pressures,” said Tom Rosamilia, Senior Vice President, IBM Software. “They’re looking to AI to help them address skills and labor shortages, respond to competitive pressures and, increasingly to respond to environmental pressures as well. Most respondents said they either are already using or plan to use AI as part of their sustainability initiatives. These trends all point to the growing role that AI is playing both within organizations but also in society.”

While AI investment continues to grow, barriers to adoption remain, particularly for smaller organizations who are significantly less likely to take advantage of AI. The survey determined top three barriers to AI adoption for businesses are: limited AI expertise or knowledge (34%), high prices (29%), and lack of tools and platforms for developing AI models (25%).

IBM is helping to address these barriers and deliver the benefits of AI to more people and organizations across industries with AI that is human-centered and designed for the needs of businesses. IBM is continually drawing on the latest innovations in AI from IBM Research to deliver new enterprise-ready capabilities, automate technical and manual processes like IT operations and develop new ways to operationalize and help ensure AI ethics are observed. Additionally, IBM Consulting brings deep technology, industry and process design expertise to co-create solutions with customers that embed AI into core business processes and create intelligent workflows at scale.

IBM Transforms Business Operations with the RISE with SAP Solution in Expanded Partnership with SAP

ARMONK, N.Y. and WALLDORF, Germany, May 11, 2022 — IBM (NYSE: IBM) and SAP today announced the latest milestone in their long-standing partnership as IBM undertakes one of the world’s largest corporate transformation projects based on SAP® ERP software, designed to fuel the company’s growth and better support its clients.

As part of the expanded partnership, IBM is migrating to SAP S/4HANA®, SAP’s next-generation ERP software, to perform work across more than 120 countries, 1,000 legal entities and numerous IBM businesses supporting software, hardware, consulting and finance. The project is focused on improving business processes with RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, premium supplier option with IBM Consulting, and will ultimately move more than 375 TB of data to IBM Power on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM Cloud. RISE with SAP brings together what businesses need to pursue their digital transformation objectives and accelerate their move to the cloud.

Driven by the need to modernize processes and deliver better insights to support clients running in the cloud, RISE with SAP is helping IBM centralize and standardize data worldwide. With access to the SAP HANA® database, data can be accessed in real time and shared more efficiently among business units and teams. The expanded partnership will also help with improved decision-making supported by AI and automated workflows. Once the transformation is completed, nearly all of IBM’s US$58 billion in revenue will flow through SAP software.

“This expanded partnership will enable IBM to accelerate its business transformation in the cloud and fuel its future growth,” said Christian Klein, CEO and Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE. “As a result, IBM will be positioned to provide the highest value of support and flexibility to its clients, allowing them to simplify and accelerate their business transformations while benefitting from the full value of RISE with SAP.”

This business transformation will eventually move more than 300 SAP instances and consolidate 500 servers with the RISE with SAP solution on IBM Power on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM Cloud. The migration to SAP S/4HANA is already in progress across the company’s software business unit. The initial deployment is focused on IBM’s software-as-a-service and billing system and is already benefiting clients and IBM business partners through simplified billing and payment systems while enabling orders and contracts to be processed quickly.

IBM Consulting, with more than 38,000 highly trained SAP consultants, is leading the transformation providing the advisory, implementation, security, industry and technical expertise required to move these complex systems and applications to a digital environment. This is another example of IBM and SAP’s accelerated ecosystem strategy, teaming up on both technology and consulting expertise while supporting most any cloud environment to help make it easier for clients to embrace a hybrid cloud approach and move their mission-critical SAP software workloads to the cloud.

“Enterprise clients are seeking increased choice and control as they modernize their mission-critical workloads. Enabled by RISE with SAP, this is a milestone business transformation initiative for both companies due to its complexity and scale,” said Arvind Krishna, IBM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “With this move, and IBM’s experience using RISE with SAP internally, we will be even better prepared to support our clients on their hybrid cloud and business transformation journeys.”

Expanded Premium Supplier Option for RISE with SAP on IBM Power on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM Cloud

To provide clients more flexibility and computing power, including those in highly regulated industries, IBM is making the same cloud-based computing power that is underpinning its own migration available to clients. For clients who run RISE with SAP on IBM Cloud, an expansion of the premium supplier option provides an additional choice to run workloads on IBM Power on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM Cloud.

As a premium supplier, IBM was the first cloud provider to offer infrastructure, technical managed services, business transformation and application management services as part of RISE with SAP. With clients increasingly leveraging hybrid cloud strategies to modernize their workloads, IBM and SAP are giving clients running on Power servers the ability to use RISE with SAP S/4HANA on Power infrastructure consistent with the architecture they run on premise. Underpinned exclusively by Red Hat Enterprise Linux, businesses running IBM Power on IBM Cloud will be able to achieve high levels of performance in a cloud environment for their mission-critical workloads, with the flexibility, resiliency and security features delivered by IBM and Red Hat.

To learn more about the RISE with SAP offering, please visit: https://www.ibm.com/cloud/services/rise-with-sap-premium.

About IBM

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

Visit www.ibm.com for more information.

Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and represent goals and objectives only.

About SAP

SAP’s strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent, sustainable enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: SAP customers generate 87% of total global commerce. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. SAP helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want – without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improve people’s lives. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of SAP’s 2021 Annual Report on Form 20-F.

SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices.

Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Red Hat logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.

IBM Kicks Off Think 2022 Conference, Convening a Worldwide Community of Clients and Partners

The annual Think conference unveils an expanded roadmap for quantum computing and plans for 4,000+ qubit system in 2025

ARMONK, N.Y., May 10, 2022 — IBM today kicked off its annual Think conference in Boston, bringing together clients and IBM Ecosystem partners around the world to discuss how technology drives organizations to excel in a digital world. During the event, IBM senior executives, global business leaders, and industry experts will discuss significant advances in technology and issues such as sustainability, innovation and research, talent retention, and automation.

“Technology is now the source of competitive advantage with digital transformation leading the way. Our clients and partners trust IBM to deliver the innovation behind hybrid cloud, AI, and consulting solutions that are helping to ensure their success,” said Arvind Krishna, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IBM. “Our Think events will showcase how IBM is co-creating with an expanding ecosystem to make progress on the most pressing issues enterprises and society face today.”

Major announcements from Think 2022 include:

Extending the Roadmap for Practical and Large-Scale Quantum Computing
Today’s announcement showcases the expansion of IBM’s roadmap to achieve practical quantum computing and deliver a 4,000+ qubit system in 2025. This roadmap lays out plans for new modular architectures and networking that will allow quantum systems to have larger qubit counts – up to hundreds of thousands of qubits. To enable these systems with the speed and quality necessary for practical quantum computing, IBM plans to continue building intelligent software to distribute workloads across quantum and classical resources, and abstract away infrastructure challenges.

  • On the hardware front, the company will deliver three new scalable architectures to enable a new class of modular and networked quantum processors. The combination of these techniques, along with software innovations, will be leveraged towards IBM’s 2025 goal: a 4,000+ qubit processor built with multiple clusters of modularly scaled processors.
  • In tandem, IBM will progress on its goals to build a frictionless development experience with Qiskit Runtime and workflows built right into the cloud to bring a serverless approach into IBM’s core quantum software stack and give developers advanced simplicity and flexibility. This approach will mark a critical step towards achieving the intelligent and efficient distribution of problems across quantum and classical systems, and lay the groundwork for an era of quantum-centric supercomputing.
  • Originally announced in 2020, IBM’s quantum roadmap has delivered on each of the targets on its timeline. This includes IBM Eagle, a 127-qubit processor with quantum circuits that cannot be reliably simulated exactly on a classical computer, and a 120x speedup in the ability to simulate a molecule using Qiskit Runtime, compared to a prior experiment in 2017. Later this year, IBM expects to unveil its 433-qubit processor, IBM Osprey, as well as IBM Condor, the world’s first universal quantum processor with 1000+ qubits, in 2023.

For more information on IBM’s expanded quantum roadmap, please visit the IBM Research blog: https://www.research.ibm.com/blog/ibm-quantum-roadmap-2025.

Global Insights from IBM Shows Steady Growth in AI and Sustainability Prioritization
IBM issued the Global AI Adoption Index 2022, which surveyed 7,502 senior business decision-makers and showed business adoption of AI grew steadily in the last 12 months.

  • Today, 35% of companies reported using AI in their business, up four points from 2021; and 30% say employees at their organization are already saving time with new AI and automation software and tools.
  • At the same time, responding companies that have not deployed AI are three times as likely to say that they have little to no confidence their company has the proper data management tools than companies with AI deployment, further evidence that effective data management and AI deployment go hand in hand.
  • Additionally, while trustworthy AI is a priority for businesses, many organizations reported that they haven’t taken steps to ensure AI is trustworthy and responsible, such as reducing bias (74%), tracking performance variations/model drift (68%), and making sure they can explain AI-powered decisions (61%).
  • Other key findings include that C-suite interest in sustainability goals is now a key driver of AI adoption as two-thirds (66%) of organizations surveyed are currently or planning to apply AI to address their sustainability goals.

Business leaders’ prioritization of sustainability on corporate agendas was further highlighted in a new IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) CEO study which surveyed more than 3,000 CEOs worldwide.

  • The annual study revealed that almost half (48%) of surveyed CEOs say sustainability is one of their highest priorities, and that growing pressures from boards and investors, along with a lack of reliable data insights and technology barriers, are hindering leaders’ ability to take action.
  • More than half (51%) of surveyed CEOs cite sustainability as among their greatest challenges in the near-term, a 59% jump since 2021.

Partnership Momentum Continues to Accelerate
As part of a long-standing partnership with SAP, IBM is undertaking one of the world’s largest corporate SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) transformation projects designed to better support clients and fuel its company growth.

  • IBM is currently migrating to SAP S/4HANA®, SAP’s next generation ERP system. The business-led project will ultimately move more than 375 TB of data from on premises and multiple cloud environments, accelerated by RISE with SAP on IBM Power on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM Cloud.
  • The major IT transformation, led by IBM Consulting, will eventually move more than 300 SAP instances and consolidate 500 servers with RISE with SAP on IBM Power on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM Cloud. The SAP S/4HANA® migration is currently in progress across the company’s $13B software business unit where it is now in production.

Tackling the Talent Shortage and Cybersecurity though Skills
Building on a commitment to skill 30 million people by 2030, IBM is addressing the talent shortage and cybersecurity crisis with new and expanded partnerships with six Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Specialisterne Foundation.

  • The first six of more than 20 planned Cybersecurity Leadership Centers with HBCUs and HBCU systems include: North Carolina A&T State University, Southern University System, Clark Atlanta University, Xavier University of Louisiana, Morgan State University, South Carolina State University.
  • These universities will have access to a customized multi-year cybersecurity experience with IBM, including online learning curricula, cloud access, and an immersive learning experience to expand HBCUs’ capacity to develop top talent in the cybersecurity sector.
  • IBM will also partner with U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Specialisterne Foundation to offer IBM SkillsBuild. Through this initiative, IBM is offering enhanced resources for transitioning Service members who are seeking job training and credentials through the VA to pursue customized learning paths and other accelerated, non-traditional job training for high demand technology careers. In addition, through IBM’s work with Specialisterne Foundation, job training will be provided to the neurodivergent community across 13 countries (Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Spain, UK, U.S.).

During his keynote today, Krishna will be joined on stage by three visionaries creatively applying technology to business to drive change. These “New Creators” include Bryan Young, Co-Founder & CEO, Home Lending Pal, who is using technology to make the homebuying process more equitable for underserved communities; Dr. Rania Khalaf, CIO & CDO, Inari, who is using AI to create a more sustainable future for the food system; and Kiersten Todt, Chief of Staff, U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), who is using technology to reduce risk to the cyber and physical infrastructures Americans rely on every day. “New Creators” will be featured throughout the Think on Tour events. In addition, various “New Creators” will be featured in print, digital, out-of-home, and video marketing assets as part of IBM’s “Let’s Create” integrated brand platform.

Think Broadcast, produced with WIRED Brand Lab, can be accessed at www.ibm.com/Think and will air 10 a.m. ET – 12 p.m. ET May 10 and 11 in English, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, and Simplified Chinese. Replays of the onstage sessions from Think Boston will also be available on-demand the day of the event at www.ibm.com/Think.

Following the flagship event in Boston, Think on Tour will travel to more than a dozen cities around the world. For updates on confirmed cities, please visit: https://www.ibm.com/events/think/on-tour/.

IBM Global Consumer Study: Sustainability Actions Can Speak Louder Than Intent

Companies can help break down barriers to meet a potentially sharp increase in consumer, investor and employee demand
Key study highlights:
– Almost half (49%) of respondents said they paid a premium—on average 59% more—for products branded as sustainable or socially responsible in the last year
– Two out of three respondents say they are more willing to apply for (67%) and accept (68%) jobs from organizations they consider to be environmentally sustainable
– Sixty-two percent of personal investors surveyed say their portfolios take environmental sustainability into account, up from 48% in 2021

ARMONK, N.Y., April 13, 2022 — More than half (51%) of respondents say environmental sustainability is more important to them today than it was 12 months ago, says a new IBM (NYSE: IBM) Institute for Business Value (IBV) study. They are demonstrating its importance through their purchases, household choices, investments, employment, and travel decisions. However, they need help from companies to make the most sustainable choices.

“Consumer respondents have signaled they’re willing to commit personal resources and give up conveniences to protect the planet, and we’re finally seeing their aspirations and actions merge,” said Sheri Hinish, global lead, IBM Consulting Sustainability Services.  “But they need businesses to help break down the persistent barriers that are impeding them from making the most sustainable choices possible.”

The IBM IBV study, Balancing sustainability and profitability: How businesses can protect people, planet and the bottom line, includes global insights from a survey of more than 16,000 respondents in ten countries to uncover the latest consumer and employee opinions and perspectives on environmental sustainability.

The study found that surveyed consumers’ actions are starting to match their intent. Back in 2021, half of respondents said they were willing to pay a premium for a sustainable brand or products. And this year, almost the same percentage (49%) of respondents say they did pay more—an average of 59% more—for products branded as sustainable or socially responsible.

And it’s not just buying goods: 77% of respondents share a desire to make more sustainable choices at home; 62% of personal investors surveyed say their portfolios now account for sustainability; two out of three respondents say they are more willing to work for organizations they consider to be environmentally sustainable; and roughly one in three respondents say environmental impact factors are now more important to them than convenience, cost, and comfort when purchasing travel.

Other key study findings include:

Consumers shop with a purpose

  • On average, three in five respondents say products branded environmentally sustainable or socially responsible made up at least half of their last purchase.
  • Forty-nine percent of surveyed consumers say they paid an average premium of 59% for products branded as environmentally sustainable or socially responsible.
  • It’s not just the wealthy who are willing to pay more for sustainability. Four out of ten respondents in the lower income bracket (two-thirds less than the median household income by country) also say they paid a premium for products that are branded as environmentally sustainable or socially responsible products.

Supporting sustainability at home can be challenging

  • Three out of four (77%) of the consumers surveyed say they want to make more sustainable choices at home, but in many instances, they don’t find it easy to do so. Respondents say businesses could take several actions to help them, including:
    • Offering greater personal incentives to make changes such as rebates or discounts (43%)
    • Creating different, more accessible ways to participate (41%)
    • Offering less expensive product options (40%)
    • Ensuring greater awareness of available choices (39%)

Sustainable investing matures

  • Nearly two-thirds of personal investors surveyed see climate risk and sustainability as key factors that will influence the performance of their portfolios.
  • Sixty-two percent of personal investors surveyed say their portfolios take environmental sustainability into account, up from 48% in 2021.
  • Nearly one in four (23%) respondents made a new investment in home renewable energy generation in the last 12 months and another one in four (26%) plan to do so in the next 12 months.
  • In terms of barriers to investing, money concerns, including the upfront cost (21%) and the cost over time (9%), top the list, though seven in ten respondents cite other factors as the biggest reason they haven’t taken more action. Nearly two in five respondents say they don’t have enough time to research and implement more sustainable investments (19%) or that the information is unclear, unavailable, or non-existent (18%).

Sustainability can be a talent advantage

  • Two out of three respondents say they are more willing to apply for (67%) and accept (68%) jobs from organizations they consider to be environmentally sustainable.
  • However, only 21% of respondents consider their current employers to be sustainable, which could translate to a major flight risk.
  • One in three of those surveyed who changed jobs last year accepted a job with an employer they consider to be environmentally sustainable (35%); one in three respondents (34%) accepted a job offer for a role where they can directly influence environmentally sustainable outcomes.
  • Roughly one in three of those surveyed who changed jobs in the last year say they accepted a lower salary to work for sustainable or socially responsible organizations. On average, they took an average pay cut of 28%.

Low carbon transportation gaining ground with consumers

  • Roughly one in three consumers surveyed say environmental impact factors are now more important to them than convenience, cost, and comfort when purchasing travel.
  • Electric vehicles (EVs) have made significant headway, with nearly four in ten respondents travelling by private electric car at least monthly in the last year, and more than one in three (35%) say they’ve either stopped using personal cars that run on gasoline or use them less due to environmental sustainability concerns.
  • Many consumers are ready to make a change to EVs. Roughly four in ten of those surveyed who care deeply about the environment say their environmental concerns compelled them to reduce or eliminate travel by traditionally powered private cars and airplanes in the last year. And almost half of all travelers surveyed increased their use of EVs in the last year for the same reason.
  • This shift has decreased demand for traditionally powered vehicles and airplanes by 15% and 14% respectively and increased demand for EVs by 23% in the last year among those respondents who care deeply about the environment.

“The decisions consumers make can have huge impacts on a company’s bottom line, and consumers have spoken—they want more sustainable choices possible. By paving a clearer, more accessible path to responsible consumption, executives can do even more to build a sustainable future—for the planet, for their customers, and for their businesses,” said Hinish.

To view the full report, visit ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/report/2022-sustainability-consumer-research

Methodology
The IBM Institute for Business Value surveyed more than 16,000 adults globally from ten countries (Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom and United States) during February 2022 to better understand consumers’ opinions and perspectives on environmental sustainability.

IBM WORKS WITH DISCOVER TO CO-CREATE TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS AND MIGRATE TO A HYBRID CLOUD PLATFORM

ARMONK, N.Y., March 30, 2022 — IBM Consulting is working with Discover Financial Services to help the leading digital bank and payments company enhance its digital transformation of applications and existing systems to a hybrid cloud architecture using Red Hat OpenShift.

«Consumers demand faster access to integrated digital banking and payments more than ever, with the assurance that their data will be protected,» said John Granger, Senior Vice President, IBM Consulting. «Embracing an open enterprise hybrid cloud strategy with a secure platform purpose-built for the financial services industry allows Discover to deliver differentiated new experiences.»

Discover plans to migrate and modernize its current systems and applications to an open and flexible hybrid cloud architecture. Red Hat OpenShift will help Discover leverage key capabilities such as security, automation and multicloud service integration to reduce operational costs, deliver better outcomes across business processes, enable faster application deployments, and bring agility with enhanced security and resilience.

«As we accelerate our digital transition journey as a leading direct bank and payments company, it is critical that we have technology solutions in place that help us improve the customer experience,» said Amir Arooni, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Discover. «Working with IBM will allow us to automate, react and deliver solutions more quickly, ultimately driving down costs and helping our customers.»

IBM Consulting also will collaborate with Discover’s teams to utilize IBM Garage and agile techniques to modernize existing applications and co-create new solutions to help Discover derive greater business and technical benefits.

Discover will use Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for hybrid cloud automation and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes (ACM) to achieve end-to-end management visibility and control of its cluster and application lifecycle across its hybrid cloud architecture.

Egypt’s Ministry of Finance Automates National Tax System in Collaboration with IBM and SAP

IBM provides an integrated system based on SAP® software
IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation designed to support a smoother, more automated, and well-governed taxation journey

Cairo, Egypt, 9 March 2022: The Egyptian Ministry of Finance announced its collaboration with IBM Consulting and SAP SE to help automate the Egyptian tax system as part of the Egyptian government’s digital transformation strategy.

With taxes representing more than 75% of the general revenues of the state*, the Egyptian Ministry of Finance kicked off a comprehensive national project for the automation and digitalization of the Egyptian Tax Authority processes and procedures to integrate the informal economy into the formal economy, enhance governance over tax return, list the tax community more accurately, and expand the tax base, to lay the foundations for tax justice, and fair competition in markets.

IBM Consulting, in collaboration with its strategic partner SAP, is providing an integrated solution that is based on the SAP® Tax and Revenue Management for Public Sector package. The package is designed to equip the Ministry of Finance with a comprehensive business operations automation platform to help streamline and automate its business processes into intelligent workflows, enhance collaboration and elevate its citizen experiences. The system was successfully piloted with 10 tax offices in Greater Cairo and will continue to expand across Egypt later this year.

As part of the collaboration, IBM implemented IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation designed to infuse AI into the Ministry’s processes and provide taxpayers, tax officers and collectors with a smoother, more automated, and well-governed taxation journey. This can enhance accuracy in taxpayers’ submissions, drive deeper understanding of the tax process and enable the Ministry to focus on higher-value work like minimizing tax evasion and helping increase national tax revenue.

Commenting on the achievement, Dr. Mohamed Maait, Minister of Finance, said: “The project is part of the digital transformation strategy that the government has launched to enhance the business ecosystem in Egypt. The modernization of the current taxation system is also part of the Unified Tax Law and the national vision to maximize public revenues.” Dr. Maait added, “The Ministry is keen to adopt advanced technology in its reform agenda which is why we selected IBM and SAP as partners for the modernization of the tax core system and empowering the e-payments strategy.”

Marwa Abbas, General Manager, IBM Egypt, stated: “We are honored to be leading such a complex project that can help supports the national economy. IBM delivered a tailored solution to the Ministry of Finance in the short term, and based on the roll-out pilot experience, the outcomes were quite successful. We are confident that the integrated core taxation model can support Egypt’s digital transformation journey.”

Jonathan Wright, IBM Consulting stated that: “The automation of the Egyptian Ministry of Finance’s tax system is a critical project to help drive forward the national agenda and elevate citizens’ experiences. We’ve brought our industry, process and technology experience together with SAP’s leading solutions, serving as their valued partner on this digital transformation journey.”

This is the latest example of how IBM is collaborating with ecosystem partners like SAP to help clients modernize their infrastructure and address the needs of the hybrid cloud era. IBM has committed to a $1 billion investment in its partner ecosystem over the next three years. This investment is already supporting collaborations to support customers as they migrate their mission-critical workloads to the hybrid cloud.

Worley, ABB, and IBM to collaborate to create an end-to-end green hydrogen solution

SYDNEY and ZURICH and ARMONK, N.Y., Feb. 22, 2022 — Worley (ASX: WOR), ABB (ABBN: SIX Swiss Ex) and IBM have signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on helping energy companies build and operate green hydrogen facilities more efficiently and at scale.

The planned three-party collaboration aims to develop an integrated, digitally enabled solution for facility owners to build green hydrogen assets more quickly, cheaply, and safely, and operate them more efficiently.

Green hydrogen is a form of clean energy made from water through electrolysis, which is powered by renewable energy. While many industries want to invest in green hydrogen, high production costs pose a barrier to driving market adoption and achieving scale over natural gas or blue hydrogen. In addition, production facilities require an accessible and abundant renewable energy supply. This collaboration aims to help customers address these challenges by scaling up technologies and reducing production costs to enable green hydrogen to become more widely used.

Under the collaboration, Worley will provide engineering, procurement, and construction expertise across all stages of the project. ABB will provide offerings for electrical infrastructure, automation, operations digitalization and optimization, and energy management. IBM will provide systems integration services, as well as data framework and management solutions. Together, the three parties will provide operations and maintenance services, leveraging their combined digital expertise.

“This collaboration aims to help turn net-zero solutions into reality. It will build on the key learnings of our ground-breaking Ambition to Reality paper, written in collaboration with Princeton University, USA. By fast-tracking and standardizing how we engineer-design-operate, this collaboration is expected to reduce the levelized cost of green hydrogen and help our customers to decarbonize their operations further,” says Chris Gill, Senior Vice President of Low-carbon Hydrogen at Worley.

“Hydrogen is at the heart of the energy transition and is essential to decarbonizing a wide range of hard-to-abate industries. Together with Worley and IBM, we’re dedicated to enable a new concept to accelerate the adoption of low carbon hydrogen and efficiently meet the growing demand. Complementing our partners expertise with our electrification, automation and digital solutions, we will aim to enable lower production costs through smart, safe and sustainable operations,” says Bruno Roche, Vice President, Energy Transition at ABB Energy Industries.

“While many industries have been able to adopt wind and solar to help decarbonize operations, energy-intensive industries, such as petrochemical, cement and steel, require heat temperatures and combustion that cannot be achieved with these renewables. Green hydrogen can help address these distinct needs in a more scalable sustainable way. IBM’s collaboration with Worley and ABB aims to address those challenges by combining expertise and solutions from all three companies into a distinct ecosystem of industry leaders to help form a repeatable process to build, operate and manage green hydrogen facilities. We believe this kind of collaboration is critical to achieving decarbonization goals,” says Zahid ‘Z’ Habib, Vice President, Global Energy & Resources Industry Leader, IBM Consulting.

The planned relationship is subject to the parties reaching definitive agreements.

About Worley: Worley is a global company headquartered in Australia and our purpose is delivering a more sustainable world.  Worley is a leading global provider of professional project and asset services in the energy, chemicals and resources sectors.  As a knowledge-based service provider, we use our knowledge and capabilities to support our customers to reduce their emissions and move towards a low carbon future.
Worley Limited is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX: WOR).

About ABB: (ABBN: SIX Swiss Ex) is a leading global technology company that energizes the transformation of society and industry to achieve a more productive, sustainable future. By connecting software to its electrification, robotics, automation and motion portfolio, ABB pushes the boundaries of technology to drive performance to new levels. With a history of excellence stretching back more than 130 years, ABB’s success is driven by about 105,000 talented employees in over 100 countries. www.abb.com