Middleware Consulting International

ARMONK, N.Y., Aug. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Today, IBM is expanding its collaboration with Microsoft to help joint clients accelerate the deployment of generative AI – and deliver a new offering that will provide clients with the expertise and technology they need to innovate their business processes and scale generative AI effectively.

With today’s news, IBM Consulting, in collaboration with Microsoft, will focus on helping clients to implement and scale Azure OpenAI Service. The new IBM Consulting Azure OpenAI Service offering, which is available on Azure Marketplace, is a fully managed AI service that allows developers and data scientists to apply powerful large language models, including their GPT and Codex series. It aims to help businesses define an adoption strategy and an initial set of specific and value-add generative AI use cases.

In addition to the new offering, IBM and Microsoft have been collaborating around AI, leveraging IBM Consulting skills and Azure OpenAI Service to create potential solutions and address specific use cases, including:

• Procurement and source to pay: Together the companies are offering a solution that combines Microsoft Power Platform and Azure OpenAI Service to help businesses automate the highly manual and fragmented sourcing and procurement process as well as drive new insights about their supply chain. The solution is designed to improve operational efficiency, save time, and generate new actionable insights for users.
• Summarization and content generation: Financial institutions and banks are exploring how generative AI can accelerate the development of personalized content for their customers through summarization. For example, IBM Consulting and Microsoft worked on a use case in a hackathon with Julius Baer Group to efficiently process and summarize financial reports while automatically creating an audio version of the report.
• Streamline healthcare processes: IBM Consulting is leveraging Azure OpenAI Service to offer a solution that is designed to automatically ingest and analyze complex medical records and policy documents to help automate the prior authorization process. In addition, it is built to provide nurses and doctors with a virtual assistant to help collect information from patient records. The solution aims to help decrease the time needed to process prior authorization requests, reducing administrative burdens and improving the clinician experience.
• Enterprise search and knowledge base: For many organizations the information employees need to do their jobs is dispersed and siloed. Working together, IBM Consulting and Microsoft helped Wintershall Dea implement a knowledge extraction tool designed for information retrieval within vast knowledge bases. By integrating OCR and Microsoft Azure OpenAI, a user-friendly tool is created that eliminates the need for manual browsing, allowing users to effortlessly search for valuable insights.

“Businesses are looking for responsible ways to adopt and integrate multi-model generative AI solutions that augment the work their teams are doing in areas such as creative content and code creation, content summarization and search,” said Francesco Brenna, Global VP & Senior Partner, Microsoft Practice at IBM Consulting. “Our work with Microsoft is another example of IBM’s open ecosystem model designed to bring value to clients while helping them responsibly build and scale generative AI across their businesses.”

As part of the new solution, enterprise customers will also have access to IBM Consulting experts, including 21,000 data, AI and experience consultants, who can help them effectively implement generative AI models to advance their business transformation.

An open ecosystem approach to AI
IBM Consulting takes an open and collaborative approach to plan, build, implement and operate generative AI solutions that embrace multiple models on multiple clouds from industry leaders. An open ecosystem approach helps clients define the right models and the right architecture to deliver the desired outcomes. As part of this open approach, IBM Consulting works with clients across industries to assess their generative AI readiness, define the right strategies for their business and help them implement and responsibly govern generative AI in production.

Getting to enterprise AI at scale requires a human-centric, principled approach, and IBM Consulting helps clients establish guardrails that align with the organization’s values and standards, mitigates bias and manages data security, lineage and provenance.

Proven work, expertise and partnership momentum
To help clients prepare data to fuel their generative AI models, select IBM AI technology is currently available on the Azure Marketplace and can be deployed on Azure. Together we’re enabling clients to accelerate the impact of generative AI using their trusted data.

This work builds on recent momentum with IBM and Microsoft to help clients transform their businesses. IBM Consulting, which has a dedicated global practice focused on Azure Data and AI, has focused on training its consultants, who now have over 40,000 Azure certifications. Additionally, IBM Consulting brings expertise and capabilities to help Microsoft clients through its acquisition of Neudesic, which specializes primarily in Microsoft Azure.

IBM Consulting and Neudesic together were also recognized with Microsoft’s 2023 Partner of the Year Award in 13 categories. IBM Consulting is this year’s U.S. Partner of the Year Winner for GSI Growth Champion, which distinguishes IBM as the partner that’s demonstrated the most significant growth – a partner that best offers solutions aligned with Microsoft’s in driving digital innovation and cloud transformation for our joint customers in the U.S.

“Together, Microsoft and IBM are collaborating to deliver innovative solutions, that will help customers responsibly accelerate deployment of generative AI,” said Dinis Couto, GM Global Partner Solutions, Microsoft. “As a leader in the delivery of generative AI and data solutions, we believe that partners like IBM are critical to enabling customers successful use of generative AI to advance business transformation.”

IBM Consulting’s AI Capabilities
IBM Consulting recently announced its Center of Excellence for generative AI, which includes more than 1,000 consultants with specialized generative AI expertise ready to help accelerate its clients’ business transformations with enterprise-grade AI, including technology from Microsoft, IBM and other ecosystem partners.

The Center of Excellence stands alongside IBM Consulting’s existing global AI and Automation practice and leverages proven methods like the IBM Garage for Generative AI, where IBM consultants apply a comprehensive, collaborative method to help clients fast-track innovation in the emerging category of foundation models for generative AI. That includes rapid use case ideation and prioritization, an open, multi-model approach to selecting architectures and training, as well as fine tuning and scaling models to unique business needs.

IBM Consulting accelerates business transformation for our clients through hybrid cloud and AI technologies, leveraging our open ecosystem of partners. With deep industry expertise spanning strategy, experience design, technology, and operations, we have become the trusted partner to many of the world’s most innovative and valuable companies, helping modernize and secure their most complex systems. Our 160,000 consultants embrace an open way of working and apply our proven co-creation method, IBM Garage, to scale ideas into outcomes.

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

About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. 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. More than 4,000 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 consulting 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.

ARMONK, N.Y., Aug. 15, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — IBM and the United States Tennis Association (USTA) today announced digital fan features to appear on USOpen.org and the US Open app, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated spoken commentary. Designed to give fans a more insightful and engaging experience when catching up on key moments from the tournament, IBM watsonx powered AI Commentary utilizes models built, trained, and deployed with watsonx, IBM’s AI and data platform. Throughout the entire tournament, AI technology will automate the production of detailed audio narration and captions to accompany US Open highlight videos at unprecedented scale – for every match in the singles draw, across all seventeen courts.

To implement the IBM watsonx powered AI Commentary, experts from IBM iX, the experience design partner within IBM Consulting, worked with the USTA to leverage foundation models within watsonx to build and train AI models in the unique language of tennis. Operating across a hybrid cloud infrastructure enabled by Red Hat OpenShift, generative AI built on these foundation models was applied to produce commentary with varied sentence structure and vocabulary to make the clips informative and engaging.

“Fans accessing the US Open digital experiences this year will be able to experience every singles match, across all seventeen courts, with detailed audio narration and captions accompanying each video – thanks to the power of IBM’s watsonx generative AI, specifically trained on the language of tennis,” said Jonathan Adashek, Senior Vice President of Communications and Marketing at IBM. “The AI Commentary feature was developed based on the watsonx enterprise-ready data and AI platform, designed to enable businesses to accelerate generative AI work by leveraging foundation models and machine learning in one place, with their own data.”

Also new at this year’s US Open, the IBM watsonx powered AI Draw Analysis is a first-of-its-kind tennis statistic for the US Open that utilizes both structured and unstructured data from IBM Power Index & Likelihood to Win to project the level of advantage or disadvantage of all players in the singles draw. Each player will receive an IBM AI Draw Analysis at the start of the tournament, which will be updated daily as the tournament progresses and players are eliminated. Every draw is ranked, allowing fans to click into individual matches and see the projected difficulty of their draw and potential opponents.

“Delivering a digital fan experience that showcases every key moment and storyline from the US Open is always our top priority, and IBM’s development leadership continually enables our fans to connect with the US Open in deeper ways every year,” said Brian Ryerson, Senior Director, Digital Strategy, USTA. “We’re particularly excited this year for fans to experience IBM’s AI commentary with watsonx for all Singles Highlights, providing deeper insights into our video highlights than ever before. Additionally, with the watsonx powered AI Draw Analysis fans can easily visualize each player’s potential opponents and highlight their complete path to the finals allowing greater insight into each round’s potential match ups.”

IBM has been the official technology partner of the USTA for more than 30 years. The introduction of these new fan features showcase how they continue to co-create world-class digital experiences that bring the drama and excitement of the US Open to more than 12 million people around the world each year. The watsonx powered AI Commentary and AI Draw Analysis join an already expansive suite of digital fan features including the IBM Power Index, Match Insights, and Likelihood to Win. The US Open’s digital experiences are run on the USTA’s flexible, open hybrid cloud platform, which integrates technology from dozens of partners, automates key business processes, and secures the entire world-class digital experience of the US Open.

The 2023 US Open, including its Fan Week, during which the Qualifying tournament is held, runs from August 22 through September 10. 

To see IBMs technology in action, including generative AI Commentary and the daily updated IBM Draw Analysis, visit USOpen.org or on your mobile device via the US Open app, available in the Apple and Android app stores.

About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. 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 4,000 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. For more information, visit www.ibm.com.

About USTA
The USTA is the national governing body for the sport of tennis in the U.S. and the leader in promoting and developing the growth of tennis at every level — from local communities to the highest level of the professional game. A not-for-profit organization, it invests 100% of its proceeds in growing the game. It owns and operates the US Open, one of the highest-attended annual sporting events in the world, and launched the US Open Series, linking summer WTA and ATP World Tour tournaments to the US Open. In addition, it owns approximately 120 Pro Circuit events throughout the U.S. and selects the teams for the Davis Cup, Billie Jean King Cup, Olympic and Paralympic Games. The USTA’s philanthropic entity, the USTA Foundation, provides grants and scholarships in addition to supporting tennis and education programs nationwide to benefit under-resourced youth through the National Junior Tennis & Learning (NJTL) network. For more information about the USTA, go to USTA.com or follow the official accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X) and TikTok.

ARMONK, N.Y., Aug. 10, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — IBM today announced it has completed its acquisition of Apptio Inc. after receiving all required regulatory approvals. The acquisition gives clients the ability to derive additional value through the powerful combination of Apptio and IBM.

Technology is a competitive differentiator for today’s enterprises. Organizations are accelerating their IT investments, spreading workloads and applications across public and private clouds, using multiple service providers. As a result, their expenses are increasing, and they need simplified, integrated, and automated solutions to optimize their IT spend, improve operations, and drive greater financial returns.

Today’s close brings together the industry-leading solutions of Apptio’s FinOps offerings, including ApptioOne, Cloudability and Targetprocess, and IBM’s automation portfolio of Turbonomic, AIOps and Instana to give clients a “virtual command center” for managing, optimizing and automating technology spending decisions.

With AI and foundation models top of mind for clients and partners, IBM will also augment its watsonx AI and data platform with Apptio’s $450 billion in anonymized IT spend data, unlocking new innovation, insight and value.

“The combination of Apptio products and IBM’s IT automation portfolio will give businesses a 360-degree technology management platform they can use to optimize and automate decisions across their IT landscapes,” said Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President, Software and Chief Commercial Officer, IBM. “We are bringing together market-leading and best-in-class solutions to continue to reshape IT from a cost center to a true competitive advantage, powered by automation and AI.”

Starting immediately, clients can leverage the early integration between Apptio and IBM through their Cloudability and Turbonomic offerings. This is an important first step as IBM looks to drive significant synergy across several key growth areas, including automation, Red Hat, IBM Consulting, and IBM’s broader AI portfolio.

Cloudability gives organizations the data, insights and recommendations needed to understand and eliminate waste from their cloud spend, while Turbonomic generates trustworthy optimization decisions that can be automated to unlock true cloud elasticity, getting rid of overprovisioning to protect performance. Together, these products can give clients full coverage for the “Inform,” “Optimize” and “Operate” stages of the FinOps Framework, providing what they need to control cloud spend without slowing innovation or negatively impacting operational performance.

Cloudability can ingest Turbonomic executed and proposed actions to provide a shared, single view across services that helps stakeholders understand the impact that has been, and can be, achieved by bringing these two leading IT automation offerings together.

Clients are already seeing the benefits of these solutions. With Cloudability, organizations can reduce cloud costs by 30% or more¹ while allocating 100% of cloud program costs² and increasing reservation coverage to over 90%³. With Turbonomic, they can improve cloud investments by 33% and get 30% of engineering time back.⁴

The close of the Apptio acquisition is one of a series of investments in IT Automation by IBM over the last three years to help solve the problems facing today’s IT and business leaders. In 2020, IBM launched its IT Automation portfolio when it announced its AIOps offerings that used AI and automation to help enterprises self-detect, diagnose and respond to IT anomalies in real time. Later that year, IBM acquired Instana, recognizing that modern applications and operations required real-time observability. Then, in 2021, IBM acquired Turbonomic which has specialized in helping clients optimize for application performance at the lowest cost with automation. Now, with the acquisition of Apptio, IBM will provide real-time data and actionable insights for leaders to make smarter spending decisions and realize value faster as they transform their operations.

Apptio is an established, growing, and profitable technology business management and FinOps leader with over 1,500 clients, serving more than half of the Fortune 100.

IBM previously announced a definitive agreement to acquire Apptio from Vista Equity Partners on June 26, 2023.

“Our journey with Apptio is a testament to Vista’s ability to create consistent outcomes that drive value for our stakeholders,” said Robert F. Smith, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners. “We are proud of our continued momentum, even amidst these challenged market conditions, and look forward to seeing how Apptio’s technology will bolster IBM’s IT automation and AI capabilities in the years ahead. It’s been an honor to partner with a visionary founder like Sunny and we wish the entire Apptio team the best in the next phase of their growth with IBM.”

About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. 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. Thousands of 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 consulting 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.

ARMONK, N.Y., Aug. 9, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — As part of the continued roll-out of our enterprise-ready AI and data platform, watsonx, IBM  plans to host Meta’s Llama 2-chat 70 billion parameter model in the watsonx.ai studio, with early access now available to select clients and partners. This will build on IBM’s collaboration with Meta on open innovation for AI, including work with open source projects developed by Meta – such as the PyTorch machine learning framework and the Presto query engine used in watsonx.data.

This will also support IBM’s strategy of offering both third-party and its own AI models. Currently in watsonx.ai, AI builders can leverage models from IBM and the Hugging Face community, which are pre-trained to support a range of Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks including question answering, content generation and summarization, text classification and extraction.

The future availability of Llama 2 in watsonx.ai will be another milestone on IBM’s generative AI roadmap and is expected to be followed by the coming releases of its AI Tuning Studio, additional AI models in watsonx.ai, and FactSheets in watsonx.governance.

IBM is committed to keeping trust and security principles at the forefront as it continues to roll out its generative AI capabilities. For instance, when users run the Llama 2 model through the prompt lab in watsonx.ai, they can toggle on the AI guardrails function to help automatically remove harmful language from the input prompt text as well as the output generated by the model. Meta also provides an account of their fine-tuning methodology used in their large language models.

Furthermore, IBM Consulting has the expertise of 21,000 data, AI and automation consultants in addition to its Center of Excellence for Generative AI comprised of more than 1,000 consultants with specialized generative AI expertise. These experts can work with clients to help tune and operationalize models for targeted use cases aligned to their specific business requirements.

IBM, like Meta, is a supporter of open innovation. There is value in engaging a robust and diverse community of AI builders and researchers to test, share feedback and collaborate on these technologies to drive further innovation. We are excited to see what these innovators will build with Llama 2 and other models on the watsonx platform.

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

AI builders can explore watsonx.ai today via the free trial: https://www.ibm.com/products/watsonx-ai

About IBM

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider, helping 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 3,800 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. For more information, visit www.ibm.com.

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y., Aug. 3, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — IBM and open-source AI platform Hugging Face today announced that IBM’s watsonx.ai geospatial foundation model – built from NASA’s satellite data – will now be openly available on Hugging Face. It will be the largest geospatial foundation model on Hugging Face and the first-ever open-source AI foundation model built in collaboration with NASA.

Access to the latest data remains a significant challenge in climate science where environmental conditions change almost daily. And, despite growing amounts of data — estimates from NASA suggest that by 2024, scientists will have 250,000 terabytes of data from new missions — scientists and researchers still face obstacles in analyzing these large datasets. As part of a Space Act Agreement with NASA, IBM set out earlier this year to build an AI foundation model for geospatial data. And now, by making a geospatial foundation model available via Hugging Face — a recognized leader in open-source and a well-known repository for all transformer models — efforts can advance to democratize access and application of AI to generate new innovations in climate and Earth science.

“The essential role of open-source technologies to accelerate critical areas of discovery such as climate change has never been clearer,” said Sriram Raghavan, Vice President, IBM Research AI. “By combining IBM’s foundation model efforts aimed at creating flexible, reusable AI systems with NASA’s repository of Earth-satellite data, and making it available on the leading open-source AI platform, Hugging Face, we can leverage the power of collaboration to implement faster and more impactful solutions that will improve our planet.”

“AI remains a science-driven field, and science can only progress through information sharing and collaboration,” said Jeff Boudier, head of product and growth at Hugging Face. “This is why open-source AI and the open release of models and datasets are so fundamental to the continued progress of AI, and making sure the technology will benefit as many people as possible.”

“We believe that foundation models have the potential to change the way observational data is analyzed and help us to better understand our planet,” said Kevin Murphy, Chief Science Data Officer, NASA. “And by open sourcing such models and making them available to the world, we hope to multiply their impact.”

The model – trained jointly by IBM and NASA on Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 satellite data (HLS) over one year across the continental United States and fine-tuned on labeled data for flood and burn scar mapping — has demonstrated to date a 15 percent improvement over state-of-the-art techniques using half as much labeled data. With additional fine tuning, the base model can be redeployed for tasks like tracking deforestation, predicting crop yields, or detecting and monitoring greenhouse gasses. IBM and NASA researchers are also working with Clark University to adapt the model for applications such as time-series segmentation and similarity research.

The news follows IBM’s announcement earlier this year to collaborate with NASA to build an AI model that could speed up the analysis of satellite images and boost scientific discovery. It’s also part of NASA’s decade-long Open-Source Science Initiative to build a more accessible, inclusive, and collaborative scientific community. NASA, along with the White House and other federal agencies, has declared 2023 a Year of Open Science to celebrate the benefits and successes created through the open sharing of data, information, and knowledge.

The model leverages IBM foundation model technology and is part of IBM’s larger effort to create and train AI models that can be used for different tasks and apply information from one situation to another. In July, IBM announced the availability of watsonx, an AI and data platform that allows enterprises to scale and accelerate impact of the most advanced AI with trusted data. A commercial version of the geospatial model, which is part of IBM watsonx, will be available through the IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite (EIS) later this year.

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

About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. 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. More than 4,000 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 consulting 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.

Armonk, Ehningen, 1. August 2023 — IBM: 2023: Wintershall Dea, one of the leading independent natural gas and oil companies in Europe that is now evolving into a leading gas and carbon management company, is working with IBM Consulting to establish an AI Center of Competence (CoC) while progressing multiple value-generating AI use cases that support an efficient energy production. Together, both companies maintain strong relationships with Microsoft as a technology partner: On the one hand, Wintershall Dea was already using Microsoft Azure for its data platform while IBM Consulting maintains a collaboration with Microsoft for delivering data and AI projects based on Azure.

Wintershall Dea has launched a comprehensive initiative for scaling AI to better capitalize on data and drive process and production improvement across the enterprise.

Formed by the merger of Wintershall and DEA (Deutsche Erdoel AG) in 2019, Wintershall Dea is committed to technological innovation, employee empowerment and environmentally responsible energy production. As the two companies joined forces, the need for AI to connect and capitalize on data from across the larger organization became clear. Furthermore, the company acts in a standardized environment, relies on strong partner ecosystem, and needs to meet regulatory guidelines. To better capitalize on a huge amount of enterprise data assets, the company established a holistic AI approach. Implementing AI at the heart of the company allows Wintershall Dea to coordinate AI usage across the company: as small, easy-to-implement “fireflies” but also as traditional, large-scale projects. This enables the company to work more efficiently and save costs which allows further investment in innovative ways of energy production. Furthermore, efficient data exchange and access can be guaranteed for the large eco-system of partners of Wintershall Dea.

“We are exchanging more data internally and externally than in the past,” says Kathrin Dufour, Senior Vice President of Digitization and Technology at Wintershall Dea. “And a smooth and efficient data exchange is a crucial process for us as we are working in a standardized environment, and we want to make cooperation within our ecosystem as easy as possible. Harnessing AI is key to reach this goal.”

To optimize their AI approach, Wintershall Dea selected a centralized platform and methodology working with IBM Consulting to support its data journey. IBM Consulting provides access to a huge reservoir of AI experience and the experts have a track record from working with Wintershall Dea on previous projects for more than 4 years now. For the technical foundation of the AI approach, the team at Wintershall Dea developed a component-based architecture using state-of-the art services for data management, data visualization, Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service as well as AI model development and execution on Azure. In particular, IBM provided an adapted version of its IBM® AI at Scale methodology for Azure to maximize the power of the existing platform.

Ulrich Lorang, Vice President of Data Science, Data Governance, and Data Hub at Wintershall Dea summarizes the core idea of the AI initiative: “Driving value through AI definitely is top of mind at every step we are conducting at the CoC. And we already have several proof points that the AI projects empower our workforce and support our business objectives. Looking back, we build up everything from having just a vision until the complete implementation of the CoC in only 2,5 years and I am deeply impressed how fast we as a team managed this.”

With their new AI at Scale approach, Wintershall Dea can build AI projects that are scalable from the beginning. The CoC community was formed not only with data scientists in the headquarter, but also with Citizen Data scientists with different backgrounds e.g., geoscientists, engineers, economists, and others with strong mathematical programming skills – all who could help drive data science projects within their respective teams on site. Through a series of workshops and trainings, the oil and gas company up skills its employees to ensure the growing community is familiar with the business value of AI and the benefits of cooperation with the CoC.

Wintershall Dea primarily conducts two types of AI projects: small, easy-to-implement “fireflies” and traditional, large-scale projects. A “firefly” is a Wintershall Dea concept for conducting a quick, scalable AI project to solve a simple problem, e.g., extracting key values from more than 2,000 PDF documents and feeding that data automatically into a spreadsheet. Other “fireflies” use the power of Generative AI to efficiently summarize reports or search for relevant information in Wintershall Dea’s knowledge base to increase productivity across the company. “Generative AI can fuel a new era of efficiency and optimization, helping to unlock untapped reservoirs of productivity,” says Max Schemmer, Engagement Lead at IBM Consulting.

Besides the “fireflies”, the company pursues larger-scale AI projects that generate foundational technology leadership within the industry. One example includes an AI-driven solution for maintaining its gas and oil wells, started in Norway and now rolled out globally. Especially data from subsea wells in operation are today analyzed with AI capabilities which allows the engineers to detect potential leakages more accurate. This benefit of AI usage not only helps Wintershall Dea to maintain their wells, but also helps to protect the environment and to make energy production safer and cleaner.

Reflecting on the collaboration, Stephan Bloehdorn, Practice Leader AI & Analytics at IBM Consulting says: “Getting to a maturity level where AI is routinely and effectively leveraged at corporate scale requires a dedicated effort that combines business strategy, organization, technology, and company culture. We are very happy that Wintershall Dea has the confidence in us to support their AI journey. With their holistic and integrated approach as well as their drive and energy to achieve real results at every stage of the journey they are a pioneer in AI management.”

IBM Consulting accelerates business transformation for our clients through hybrid cloud and AI technologies, leveraging our open ecosystem of partners. With deep industry expertise spanning strategy, experience design, technology, and operations, we have become the trusted partner to over 3,000 of the world’s most innovative and valuable companies, helping modernize and secure their most complex systems. Our 160,000 consultants embrace an open way of working and apply our proven co-creation method, IBM Garage, to scale ideas into outcomes.

About Wintershall Dea:

Wintershall Dea is transforming from the leading European independent gas and oil company to become a leading European independent gas and carbon management company. We have more than 120 years of experience as an operator and project partner along the entire E&P value chain. The company with German roots and headquarters in Kassel and Hamburg explores for and produces gas and oil in 11 countries worldwide in an efficient and responsible manner. With activities in Europe, Latin America and the MENA region (Middle East & North Africa), Wintershall Dea has a global upstream portfolio and, with its participation in natural gas transport, is also active in the midstream business. And we develop carbon management and low carbon hydrogen projects to contribute to climate goals and secure energy supplies. More in our Annual Report.

As a European gas and oil company, we support the EU’s 2050 carbon neutrality target. As our contribution we have set ourselves ambitious targets: We want to be net zero across our entire upstream operations – both operated and non-operated – by 2030. This includes Scope 1 (direct) and Scope 2 (indirect) greenhouse gas emissions on an equity share basis. Wintershall Dea will also bring its methane emissions intensity below 0.1 per cent by 2025. We endorsed the World Bank’s Initiative ‘Zero Routine Flaring by 2030’ and continue to support the initiative aimed at eliminating routine flaring in operated assets by 2030. In addition, we plan to support global decarbonisation efforts by building up a carbon management and hydrogen business to potentially abate 20-30 million tonnes of CO2 per annum by 2040. You can find more about this in our Sustainability Report.

Wintershall Dea was formed from the merger of Wintershall Holding GmbH and DEA Deutsche Erdoel AG, in 2019. Today, the company employs more than 2,000 people worldwide from almost 60 nations.

About IBM:

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. 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. More than 4,000 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 consulting 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.

MOUNT PROSPECT, IL, and ARMONK, NY – The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy^® (NABP^®) and IBM  Consulting are pleased to announce their collaboration to build Pulse by NABP™, a new digital platform that is intended to bring visibility to the drug supply chain and help protect patients from counterfeit or substandard prescription medications. Launching in late summer 2023, the platform is designed to facilitate manufacturers, wholesalers, pharmacies, and regulators to identify counterfeit or substandard prescription medications and connect with each other when required; provide authorized partners with capabilities to help them accurately trace prescription medications throughout the supply chain; and give patients more confidence that their prescriptions are legitimate.

Pulse can help users improve patient safety by assisting them in identifying the threats created due to the ever-increasing complexity of the supply chain, including falsified, substandard, or counterfeit drugs and “grey market” companies.

Pulse is expected to address the urgent and critical industry need for compliance with the United States Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), which must be fully implemented in November 2023. NABP and IBM Consulting are incorporating solutions into the platform that will address gaps in interoperability identified during workshops and pilots conducted with stakeholders from across the supply chain. For example, trading partners are currently required to participate in “systems of systems” that are often fragmented and focused on single-solution providers. When launched, Pulse is intended to serve as a single, voluntary directory for trading partners. Through this independent platform, authorized trading partners will also have access to product tracing tools, be able to determine the legitimacy of trace requests, and communicate in a mode suited to their needs.

“Patients need to be able to trust the safety of the drugs they’re prescribed,” said NABP Executive Director/Secretary Lemrey “Al” Carter, PharmD, MS, RPh. “We’re excited to launch Pulse by NABP because we believe it can significantly improve the safety and transparency of the drug supply chain in the US, benefiting patients as well as regulators, manufacturers, wholesalers, and dispensers. We selected IBM Consulting as our implementation partner because they have the deep business and product strategy, technology, and industry expertise to help us build and maintain a digital platform that’s secure, user friendly, and can integrate seamlessly with participating organizations’ IT architectures.”

“NABP is the right organization to convene the ecosystem and establish a truly industry-changing solution to improve the safety and visibility of the pharmaceutical supply chain in the US,” said Luq Niazi, Global Managing Partner, Industries, IBM Consulting. “The more connected the pharmaceutical supply chain is, with the right technology platform, the easier it can be for drug manufacturers, drug distributors and pharmacies to improve patient safety. We’re proud to be NABP’s implementation partner to build a platform that can meet the ecosystem’s needs for data security, reliability, and scale.”

Meeting the Requirements of DSCSA

The DSCSA includes the requirement to electronically track and make available prescription drugs’ ownership transaction records. Pulse can serve as the critical tool that connects state regulators and trading partners, helping them ensure the legitimacy of prescription medications.

To support organizations navigating the complex process of DSCSA compliance, Pulse will provide access to user-friendly tools and a comprehensive network of verified relationships, enabling consistent communication with trusted trading partners of all sizes across the pharmaceutical supply chain. Pulse will also offer educational programs to help platform users prepare for DSCSA compliance.

A Digital Platform Designed to Support an Ecosystem

NABP began working on the network for the Pulse platform in fall 2021 after stakeholders from across the industry requested assistance identifying and addressing gaps in interoperability among all sectors and state regulators. The platform has been informed by collaborative input from all sectors of the supply chain, including 12 state boards of pharmacy, 22 solution providers, and over 40 trading partners (consisting of large and small dispensers, wholesalers, and manufacturers). Pilot participants included AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, CVS Health, Genentech, Johnson and Johnson, McKesson, Pfizer, Rite Aid, Sanofi, Walgreens, and other leading organizations.

Powered by automation and other technologies, such as MediLedger Product Verification System, Pulse is designed to integrate application programming interfaces (APIs) from solution providers that allow for searching trading partners, verifying authorized trading partner status, transmitting digital credentials, and electronic tracing. Manufacturers, distributors, dispensers, regulators, and solution providers will have the opportunity to benefit from the secure, efficient, and trusted communications provided by the Pulse platform. Providing options for small- to large-scale organizations across the supply chain, the intuitive user experience is designed to help reduce manual work.

Learn more about Pulse and DSCSA compliance at https://pulse.pharmacy.

For more information about IBM Consulting, visit www.ibm.com/consulting.

About NABP

NABP is the independent, international, and impartial 501(c)(3) nonprofit Association that assists its state member boards and jurisdictions for the purpose of protecting the public health. NABP was established in 1904 to assist the state boards of pharmacy in creating uniform education and licensure standards. Today, we help support patient and prescription drug safety through examinations that assess pharmacist competency, pharmacist licensure transfer and verification services, and various pharmacy accreditation and inspection programs.

About IBM

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. 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. More than 4,000 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 consulting 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.

ARMONK, N.Y., July 26, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Today, IBM  launched a new tool to help enterprises track greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across cloud services and advance their sustainability performance throughout their hybrid, multicloud journeys. Now generally available, the IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator – an AI-informed dashboard – can help clients access emissions data across a variety of IBM Cloud workloads such as AI, high performance computing (HPC) and financial services.

Across industries, enterprises are embracing modernization by leveraging hybrid cloud and AI to digitally transform with resiliency, performance, security, and compliance at the forefront, all while remaining focused on delivering value and driving more sustainable business practices. According to a recent study by IBM, 42% of CEOs surveyed pinpoint environmental sustainability as their top challenge over the next three years¹. At the same time, the study reports that CEOs are facing pressure to adopt generative AI while also weighing the data management needs to make AI successful. The increase in data processing required for AI workloads can present new challenges for organizations that are looking to reduce their GHG emissions. With more than 43% of CEOs surveyed already using generative AI to inform strategic decisions, organizations should prepare to balance executing high performance workloads with sustainability.

To help clients respond to these challenges, the IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator is designed to quickly spot patterns, anomalies and outliers in data that are potentially associated with higher GHG emissions. Based on technology from IBM Research and through a collaboration with Intel, the tool uses machine learning and advanced algorithms to help organizations uncover emissions hot spots in their IT workload and provide them with insights to inform their emissions mitigation strategy².

“As part of any AI transformation roadmap, businesses must consider how to manage the growth of data across cloud and on-premise environments. This is especially critical today as we see organizations face increasing pressure from investors, regulators, and clients to reduce their carbon emissions,” said Alan Peacock, General Manager, IBM Cloud. “For IBM, reducing environmental impact to help create a more sustainable future is a top priority and we are committed to helping clients achieve both sustainability and business goals. With the AI-enabled IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator, we’re helping clients better understand the greenhouse gas emissions associated with their IT workloads and giving them the insights to adjust their strategies and further their sustainability objectives.”

Clients are already using the IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator to address their sustainability goals. This includes e.tres, an Argentinian ecommerce platform, who is using the dashboard to measure greenhouse gas emissions.

“The way people shop is changing, and we’re committed to helping our customers deliver frictionless online shopping experiences backed by high levels of sustainability. As we help our customers power their digital businesses with our innovative e-commerce platform, sustainability is at the center of everything we do, with our e3Eco solution. With the IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator, enabled by AI, we can boost the sustainability of our clients’ operations, their technology and logistics shipments, so any ecommerce portal can become sustainable by measuring and offsetting greenhouse gas emissions.” said Diego Gorischnik, CEO of e.tres.

The IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator is designed to give clients access to standards-based GHG emissions data for IBM Cloud workloads with just a few clicks. Its capabilities include:

• Track emissions across various workloads down to the cloud service level for enterprise accounts: By helping deliver access to detailed GHG emissions data for their workloads on IBM Cloud, the tool is designed for clients to visualize and track GHG emissions associated with individual cloud services and locations, in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Clients can use filters to see emissions profiles across locations and a variety of services – starting with commonly used classic and cloud native infrastructure services, with more service coverage planned quarterly.
• Identify GHG emissions hot-spots and opportunities for improvement: Clients can analyze emissions by month, quarter and year, enabling enterprises to gain a regular view of progress towards targets. Having access to emissions trends and patterns helps to uncover anomalies and hotspots, and clients can use the insights they gained to adjust their strategies in near real time to optimize workloads across locations and ultimately help reduce emissions.
• Leverage data for GHG emission reports: Clients can access the output and audit trails generated by the IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator to help meet their reporting needs. Additionally, enterprises can integrate their emissions data into the IBM Envizi ESG suite³, which can help enhance their ability to conduct further analysis and reporting.

The availability of the IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator is a new milestone in our commitment to helping clients turn sustainability ambition into action and create a more energy efficient future. It complements IBM’s existing portfolio of sustainability solutions and consulting expertise, including the IBM Envizi ESG Suite, IBM Turbonomic, IBM Planning Analytics  and IBM LinuxONE, that help organizations set, operationalize, and achieve their environmental sustainability goals.

Building on IBM and Intel’s deep commitment to helping enterprises solve their unique business challenges and prioritize their compute performance capabilities, IBM Cloud was among the first cloud providers to deliver Intel’s most sustainable data center processors, 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, earlier this year. With energy efficiency innovations and designed to deliver superior performance, 4th Gen Intel Xeon processors can help IBM Cloud clients reduce GHG emissions associated with computing — with the performance being tracked via the IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator dashboard.

As companies embrace hybrid cloud, IBM Cloud and IBM Research plan to continue their close collaboration and work with its partners, such as Intel, to execute programs and activities aimed at helping clients reduce compute-related GHG emissions and increase energy efficiency.

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

About IBM

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. 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. More than 4,000 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 consulting 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.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 24, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — IBM Security today released its annual Cost of a Data Breach Report,¹ showing the global average cost of a data breach reached $4.45 million in 2023 – an all-time high for the report and a 15% increase over the last 3 years. Detection and escalation costs jumped 42% over this same time frame, representing the highest portion of breach costs, and indicating a shift towards more complex breach investigations.

According to the 2023 IBM report, businesses are divided in how they plan to handle the increasing cost and frequency of data breaches. The study found that while 95% of studied organizations have experienced more than one breach, breached organizations were more likely to pass incident costs onto consumers (57%) than to increase security investments (51%).

The 2023 Cost of a Data Breach Report is based on in-depth analysis of real-world data breaches experienced by 553 organizations globally between March 2022 and March 2023. The research, sponsored and analyzed by IBM Security, was conducted by Ponemon Institute and has been published for 18 consecutive years. Some key findings in the 2023 IBM report include:

• AI Picks Up Speed – AI and automation had the biggest impact on speed of breach identification and containment for studied organizations. Organizations with extensive use of both AI and automation experienced a data breach lifecycle that was 108 days shorter compared to studied organizations that have not deployed these technologies (214 days versus 322 days).
• The Cost of Silence – Ransomware victims in the study that involved law enforcement saved $470,000 in average costs of a breach compared to those that chose not to involve law enforcement. Despite these potential savings, 37% of ransomware victims studied did not involve law enforcement in a ransomware attack.
• Detection Gaps – Only one third of studied breaches were detected by an organization’s own security team, compared to 27% that were disclosed by an attacker. Data breaches disclosed by the attacker cost nearly $1 million more on average compared to studied organizations that identified the breach themselves.

“Time is the new currency in cybersecurity both for the defenders and the attackers. As the report shows, early detection and fast response can significantly reduce the impact of a breach,” said Chris McCurdy, General Manager, Worldwide IBM Security Services. “Security teams must focus on where adversaries are the most successful and concentrate their efforts on stopping them before they achieve their goals. Investments in threat detection and response approaches that accelerate defenders speed and efficiency – such as AI and automation – are crucial to shifting this balance.”

Every Second Costs 
According to the 2023 report, studied organizations that fully deploy security AI and automation saw 108-day shorter breach lifecycles on average compared to organizations not deploying these technologies – and experienced significantly lower incident costs. In fact, studied organizations that deployed security AI and automation extensively saw, on average, nearly $1.8 million lower data breach costs than organizations that didn’t deploy these technologies – the biggest cost saver identified in the report.

At the same time, adversaries have reduced the average time to complete a ransomware attack. And with nearly 40% of studied organizations not yet deploying security AI and automation, there is still considerable opportunity for organizations to boost detection and response speeds.

Ransomware ‘Discount Code’
Some studied organizations remain apprehensive to engage law enforcement during a ransomware attack due to the perception that it will only complicate the situation. For the first time this year, the IBM report looked closer at this issue and found evidence to the contrary. Participating organizations that did not involve law enforcement experienced breach lifecycles that were 33-days longer on average than those that did involve law enforcement – and that silence came with a price. Ransomware victims studied that didn’t bring in law enforcement paid on average $470,000 higher breach costs than those that did.

Despite ongoing efforts by law enforcement to collaborate with ransomware victims, 37% of respondents still opted not to bring them in. Add to that, nearly half (47%) of studied ransomware victims reportedly paid the ransom. It’s clear that organizations should abandon these misconceptions around ransomware. Paying a ransom, and avoiding law enforcement, may only drive-up incident costs, and slow the response.

Security Teams Rarely Discover Breaches Themselves
Threat detection and response has seen some progress. According to IBM’s 2023 Threat Intelligence Index, defenders were able to halt a higher proportion of ransomware attacks last year. However, adversaries are still finding ways to slip through the cracks of defense. The report found that only one in three studied breaches were detected by the organization’s own security teams or tools, while 27% of such breaches were disclosed by an attacker, and 40% were disclosed by a neutral third party such as law enforcement.

Responding organizations that discovered the breach themselves experienced nearly $1 million less in breach costs than those disclosed by an attacker ($5.23 million vs. $4.3 million). Breaches disclosed by an attacker also had a lifecycle nearly 80 days longer (320 vs. 241) compared to those who identified the breach internally. The significant cost and time savings that come with early detection show that investing in these strategies can pay off in the long run.

Additional findings in the 2023 IBM report include:

• Breaching Data Across Environments – Nearly 40% of data breaches studied resulted in the loss of data across multiple environments including public cloud, private cloud, and on-prem—showing that attackers were able to compromise multiple environments while avoiding detection. Data breaches studied that impacted multiple environments also led to higher breach costs ($4.75 million on average).
• Costs of Healthcare Breaches Continue to Soar – The average costs of a studied breach in healthcare reached nearly $11 million in 2023 – a 53% price increase since 2020. Cybercriminals have started making stolen data more accessible to downstream victims, according to the 2023 X-Force Threat Intelligence Report. With medical records as leverage, threat actors amplify pressure on breached organizations to pay a ransom. In fact, across all industries studied, customer personally identifiable information was the most commonly breached record type and the costliest.
• The DevSecOps Advantage – Studied organizations across all industries with a high level of DevSecOps saw a global average cost of a data breach nearly $1.7 million lower than those studied with a low level/no use of a DevSecOps approach.
• Critical Infrastructure Breach Costs Break $5 Million – Critical infrastructure organizations studied experienced a 4.5% jump in the average costs of a breach compared to last year – increasing from $4.82 million to $5.04 million – $590K higher than the global average.

Additional Sources

• To download a copy of the 2023 Cost of a Data Breach Report, please visit: https://www.ibm.com/security/data-breach.
• Read more about the report’s top findings in this IBM Security Intelligence blog.
• Sign up for the 2023 IBM Security Cost of a Data Breach webinar on Tuesday, August 1, 2023, at 11:00 a.m. ET here.
• Connect with the IBM Security X-Force team for a personalized review of the findings: https://ibm.biz/book-a-consult.
• For a closer look at the report recommendations visit: Cost of a Data breach Action Guide.

About IBM Security

IBM Security helps secure the world’s largest enterprises and governments with an integrated portfolio of security products and services, infused with dynamic AI and automation capabilities. The portfolio, supported by world-renowned IBM Security X-Force® research, enables organizations to predict threats, protect data as it moves, and respond with speed and precision without holding back business innovation. IBM is trusted by thousands of organizations as their partner to assess, strategize, implement, and manage security transformations. IBM operates one of the world’s broadest security research, development, and delivery organizations, monitors 150 billion+ security events per day in more than 130 countries, and has been granted more than 10,000 security patents worldwide.

ARMONK, N.Y., July 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — IBM today announced that Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR) is using the IBM Envizi ESG Suite to collect, analyze and report on its environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance across its portfolio of 300+ data centers across 50+ metros across 27 countries on six continents.

According to an IBM Institute for Business Value report (“The ESG data conundrum”), while 95% of organizations surveyed have developed ESG propositions, only 10% say they have made significant progress toward their goals, and 73% cited a struggle to manage an overload of manual data.

Digital Realty is one of the largest global providers of cloud and carrier-neutral data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions for major metros globally including Chicago, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, London, New York, Northern Virginia, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo. With a commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship, the company will use IBM Envizi as a centralized hub for collecting, managing, and deriving insights from its ESG data, to track progress, identify areas for improvement, report performance to stakeholders, and accommodate disclosure requirements. The software provides a comprehensive and integrated solution for managing ESG performance, environmental impact, and sustainability goals.

“By leveraging the capabilities of IBM Envizi, we will transform our ability to collect, analyze and report on our ESG performance across our global data center portfolio. It will help track and manage our environmental performance, while enabling us to better meet the sustainability needs of our customers and other stakeholders,” says Aaron Binkley, VP Sustainability, Digital Realty.

“Organizations globally are simply buried in a massive amount of ESG-related data—from operations, sensors on factory floors, and more. But it is often siloed across databases, spreadsheets, and business units,” says Christina Shim, Vice President, Global Head of Product Management and Strategy, IBM Sustainability Software. “The IBM Envizi ESG Suite helps our clients, like Digital Realty, gain insights from data to fuel smarter, more sustainable decisions every day.”

Working with IBM, Digital Realty uses Envizi to help manage and accelerate sustainability initiatives across its portfolio. For example:

• Create a single system of record for ESG data: Envizi enables Digital Realty to streamline the collection of data from a wide range of sources such as utility data, power usage efficiency (PUE), renewable energy certificates, waste data, business travel, purchased goods and services. This makes it easier for Digital Realty to provide consistent data for reporting, analysis and decision making – for example, to support Scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emission calculations and to create its annual ESG report.
• Analyze data to inform sustainability decision-making: Digital Realty can apply Envizi’s advanced analytics to transform this data into insights on the performance of its portfolio, which helps drive better decisions and address sustainability goals. For example, Envizi could help Digital Realty assess its current portfolio and drive change in its three focus areas: designing and building more sustainable data centers, finding new ways to power them, and driving improvements in how it operates them.
• Streamline ESG and sustainability reporting: Digital Realty is committed to transparent ESG disclosures and reports its performance annually, including progress against its SBTi target to reduce its Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 68% and Scope 3 emissions by 24% by 2030. Envizi’s ESG reporting capabilities is designed to make it easier to streamline these reporting processes, with reporting questions and responses managed within a single software interface.

IBM itself is a user of Envizi for inputting, storing, and managing operational data such as energy and water consumption; planning and tracking energy and water conservation projects; and supporting external reporting and disclosures. IBM is also an important client of Digital Realty, hosting part of its portfolio of global data centers with them. The IBM Global Real Estate team is sharing insights and experience on Envizi with Digital Realty as they advance towards more sustainable operations.

The IBM Envizi ESG Suite is part of IBM’s portfolio of sustainability solutions and consulting expertise, including the IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite, IBM Turbonomic, IBM Planning Analytics, IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator and IBM LinuxONE, that help organizations set, operationalize, and achieve their ESG goals.

About IBM
For more information about IBM Sustainability solutions, please visit www.ibm.com/sustainability.

About Digital Realty
Digital Realty brings companies and data together by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL®, the company’s global data center platform, provides customers with a secure data meeting place and a proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx®) solution methodology for powering innovation and efficiently managing Data Gravity challenges. Digital Realty gives its customers access to the connected data communities that matter to them with a global data center footprint of 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 27 countries on six continents.