Middleware Consulting International

AI training initiative is first in new GSMA Advance series aims to build skills, foster innovation and champion workforce diversity

LONDON and NEW YORK, Jan. 30, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — The GSMA and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a new collaboration to support the adoption and skills of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the telecom industry through the launch of GSMA Advance’s AI Training program and the GSMA Foundry Generative AI program.

The AI training program, the first in a new series of courses by GSMA Advance, seeks to prepare telco leaders for the AI-era and bridge skills gaps in the telecom industry, by equipping members with skills and knowledge to help effectively leverage Gen AI technologies utilizing watsonx, IBM’s AI and data platform with AI assistants.

The training program, designed for telecoms leaders, will span a wide range of topics, from fundamental AI principles to specialized Gen AI applications in telecoms. To ensure a wide-range of participants can benefit, GSMA Advance AI Training sessions will take place at IBM offices in five locations around the world in 2024, including Dubai, London, Mexico, New York and Seoul, and an online training program will be available in multiple languages.

A digital version of the program will be available to help address both the business strategy and technology fundamentals of Generative AI. This program will leverage IBM watsonx to deliver hands-on training designed to equip architects and developers with in-depth practical Gen AI knowledge.

The GSMA Foundry Generative AI program will provide GSMA members with access to IBM’s watsonx. This platform is intended to help telecom industry players explore innovative industry-specific use cases of Generative AI, enabling members to improve cost leadership, revenue growth and enhance customer experience. As part of the ongoing collaboration GSMA Foundry and IBM will drive a series of Gen AI industry programs and challenges to investigate the use of Generative AI in various functional areas of a telecom provider. 

Bridging The AI Adoption Gap 

Through both the GSMA Advance AI Training and Foundry Gen AI programs, the GSMA and IBM will help address the gap in AI skills, training and tools, supporting GSMA’s commitment to operators of all sizes across the world.

IBM’s latest AI Adoption Index found 40% of telecoms surveyed are exploring or experimenting with generative AI, and 45% have accelerated the rollout of AI. Research from GSMA Intelligence also shows that while 56% of operators surveyed are actively trialing generative AI solutions – at a rate higher than any other priority technology – adoption is less prevalent amongst mid-sized and smaller operators surveyed.

Through this initiative, the GSMA and IBM aim to allow operators, including those supporting the world’s least connected communities, to benefit from AI technology, and develop new innovative and inclusive solutions to help connect those in society who are not yet online.

Generative AI holds tremendous potential to help improve all manner of operations and customer engagement. Specifically, generative AI can help transform customer care, IT and network optimization —all areas in which automation can notably help increase agility and efficiency. Through their commitment to developing generative AI skills and training for the telecom industry, the GSMA and IBM want to enable mobile operators to provide better services and, ultimately, help more people benefit from digital connectivity.

“Artificial Intelligence provides the telecoms industry, and the societies it serves, with huge opportunities to launch new services, improve connectivity and customer experience. Overall, it’s estimated that AI could contribute $15.7 trillion¹ to the global economy by 2030,” said Alex Sinclair, Chief Technology Officer at the GSMA. “However, it’s critical that AI is democratized to ensure that all parts of the connectivity industry and their customers, wherever they are in the world, benefit. Bringing operators access to AI tools and knowledge, alongside the necessary skills, access and training, is key to achieving this.”

“As a world leader in AI for business, IBM will provide critical support to this training for the telecom industry through this collaboration with the GSMA,” said Stephen Rose, GM, Global Industries, IBM. “Generative AI can create massive opportunities for communication service providers as they look to optimize current processes, and like the GSMA, our goal is to offer this technology within the industry, which we’re making possible through watsonx.”

With Mobile World Congress around the corner, the GSMA will share more on the future of the program and additional initiatives to address the AI skills gap. For more on watsonx, please visit ibm.com/watsonx

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

About GSMA
The GSMA is a global organization unifying the mobile ecosystem to discover, develop and deliver innovation foundational to positive business environments and societal change. Our vision is to unlock the full power of connectivity so that people, industry, and society thrive. Representing mobile operators and organizations across the mobile ecosystem and adjacent industries, the GSMA delivers for its members across three broad pillars: Connectivity for Good, Industry Services and Solutions, and Outreach. This activity includes advancing policy, tackling today’s biggest societal challenges, underpinning the technology and interoperability that make mobile work, and providing the world’s largest platform to convene the mobile ecosystem at the MWC and M360 series of events.

We invite you to find out more at gsma.com

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 long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

Visit www.ibm.com for more information.

Bielefeld, Germany / Copenhagen, Denmark — January 24, 2024 — NTT DATA Business Solutions and IBM (NYSE: IBM) have announced the establishment of a Center of Excellence (CoE) for the watsonx generative AI platform. The joint CoE will focus on the use of the IBM watsonx AI and data platform with watsonx AI assistants for the development of embedded generative AI solutions for clients. The CoE combines the industry expertise of NTT DATA Business Solutions with IBM technology to help NTT DATA Business Solutions clients scale and accelerate the impact of generative AI.

“While currently anchored in Denmark, this initiative is a global endeavor, empowering our customers worldwide,” explains Norbert Rotter, CEO of NTT DATA Business Solutions and EVP NTT DATA, Inc.

The CoE is also instrumental in helping to extend new use cases for generative AI to NTT DATA’s it.human platform which incorporates IBM watsonx capabilities, machine learning, speech recognition, natural language processing and conversational AI to enhance the customer experience.

“As businesses move to adopt generative AI, they need the right client and industry expertise, combined with the best open technology,” said Kate Woolley, General Manager, IBM Ecosystem. “IBM’s partnership with NTT DATA Business Solutions allows us to co-develop solutions for clients that are purpose-built with flexibility, governance and openness.”

The collaboration also leverages IBM’s training, education and technology resources, including IBM Cloud, to build use cases and provide access to foundation models and best practices to assist with client projects using the watsonx platform. NTT DATA Business Solutions provides the CoE with sales resources to engage with customers, build use cases and implement AI products.

“We expect an increased investment in AI on the customer side this year,” says Nicolaj Vang Jessen, EVP, Global Innovation & Industry Consulting, NTT DATA SAP TFA and responsible for the Region NEE at NTT DATA Business Solutions. “The CoE harmonizes our resources, methodologies and industry expertise, reinforced by the exceptional competence of IBM.”

A preview into the work underway will be offered at the IBM TechXchange Summit EMEA in Barcelona, where Thomas Noermark, Global Head of Innovation at NTT DATA Business Solutions, and Thor Hauberg, Director Venture Lab and Digital Business Transformation at NTT DATA Business Solutions, will share their knowledge in several sessions.

For more information visit nttdata-solutions.com.
 

SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE (or an SAP affiliate company) in Germany and other countries. See http://www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx for additional trademark information and notices. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

About NTT DATA Business Solutions

NTT DATA Business Solutions drives innovation – from advisory and implementation, to managed services and beyond, continuously enhances SAP solutions to make them work for companies – and for their people. Aiming to help companies to transform, grow and become more successful, NTT DATA Business Solutions connects with a more than in-depth expertise for SAP solutions its clients´ business opportunities with the latest technologies – individually and across all business areas. As part of the NTT DATA group and as a global strategic partner of SAP, with close ties to other partners, NTT DATA Business Solutions gives clients and prospects access to innovative solutions and developments and thus makes an important contribution to innovation and long-term business success. NTT DATA Business Solutions employs more than 15,000 people in more than 30 countries.

About NTT DATA

NTT DATA – a part of NTT Group – is a trusted global innovator of IT and business services headquartered in Tokyo. We help clients transform through consulting, industry solutions, business process services, digital & IT modernization and managed services. NTT DATA enables them, as well as society, to move confidently into the digital future. We are committed to our clients’ long-term success and combine global reach with local client attention to serve them in over 50 countries around the globe. Visit us at nttdata.com.

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 long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

NEW YORK, Jan. 15, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — As we enter 2024, the retail landscape is undergoing a transformation, propelled by changes in consumer preferences and advancements in new technologies. According to a recent IBM (NYSE: IBM) Institute for Business Value study today’s discerning shoppers expect a tailored shopping journey, complete with the convenience of product choices, detailed information, diverse payment methods and a seamless integration of in-store and online experiences that cater to their individual preferences.

Generative AI can help address these expectations, creating retail environments as intuitive and unified as they are finely tuned to individual needs. AI-driven solutions are at the heart of IBM’s offerings, focus, and solutions at NRF’24.

Consumers Welcome AI-Driven Advancements to Improve the Retail Experience

A global IBM Institute for Business Value study has laid bare the discrepancy between consumer expectations and the current state of retail offerings. The “Revolutionize retail with AI everywhere: Consumers won’t wait” study, unveiled ahead of NRF, surveyed nearly 20,000 individuals worldwide, revealing a dissatisfaction with retail experiences. Just 9% of consumers surveyed said they are content with in-store shopping and just 14% are content with online shopping.

Technology could play an integral role in enhancing the overall shopping experience. Most consumers (59%) surveyed said they would like to use AI applications as they shop and 4 in 5 consumers who haven’t used the technology for shopping reported being interested in trying it, including in product research (86%), deal hunting (79%) and customer service (82%). Personalization and targeted offerings present opportunities for retailers, with 52% of surveyed consumers interested in receiving information, advertisements, and offerings from stores that are relevant to their specific interests.

Still, there remains a clear satisfaction gap for current AI assistant users surveyed. Only about one-third of consumers surveyed who have used virtual assistants are satisfied with the experience and nearly 20% were so disappointed that they don’t want to use virtual assistants again, signaling a mismatch between current tech offerings and shopper expectations.

IBM, Samsung, and Workday partner to empower frontline retail workers through technology

As the retail sector grapples with inflation, rising labor costs, shifting workforce expectations, and hiring challenges, C-Suite executives are confronted with challenges and mounting pressure to boost revenue and expand margins.

IBM has collaborated with Samsung and Workday to provide a strategic answer—Workforce Experience (WEx). The bespoke retail solution combines the power of IBM Consulting‘s iX application design and watsonx AI capabilities with Samsung mobile devices, while leveraging Workday’s Human Capital Management (HCM) and Workday workforce management applications, to equip frontline retail workers with technology to streamline operations.

WEx was built to promote associate and manager productivity, boost employee retention and improve customer satisfaction. The solution uses automation to help solve common challenges like task management and employee onboarding, and generative AI to measure store metrics and performance and help associates with product availability. It is designed to help reduce the time to train associates using a centralized, easy-to-use interface with nudges and notifications and offers on-the-go training and development opportunities through Workday. WEx also offers store associates more detailed information about product availability, in turn helping the customer.

At NRF, IBM will demonstrate how WEx can equip employees with technology to help them  provide the level of service that customers expect. Stop by booth #5006 at NRF to see a demo.

Enhancing the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry with SAP

In addition to enhancing the customer experience and helping retail employees better meet customer expectations, AI has an important back-office role to play across the industry. At NRF, IBM and SAP will discuss how they seek to combine their expertise to help CPG and retail clients enhance their supply chain, finance operations, sales and services using AI and gen AI.

The goal of the AI-powered solutions is to address the complexities of direct store delivery business process and product portfolio management. IBM Consulting and SAP are already working with CPG clients worldwide to gather detailed requirements to create secured and scalable AI solutions that can be integrated with the SAP Direct Distribution solution.

The new solutions would be designed to help CPG companies, wholesale distributors and retailers more efficiently manage store-level assortments, improve product distribution, and drive incremental revenue by using AI and gen AI to:

• Enhance transportation planning and execution — By incorporating data such as weather, traffic and local events into SAP Direct Distribution, CPG companies could enhance delivery routes to help reduce costs, and lower their carbon footprint.
• Optimize store-level assortments – The solutions could use the market dynamics of each store, sales patterns, anticipated demand and current product mix to make product recommendations and include preliminary planning so enough products are added to the assortment to help maximize sales. Joint clients of SAP and IBM Consulting could be able to manage their last-mile distribution to help effectively identify the most profitable selections and minimize waste.
• Automate order settlement – CPG companies could use intelligent workflows to help proactively achieve operational efficiencies and increase settlement accuracy based on AI in the SAP Direct Distribution last-mile distribution component.

IBM will also use NRF to demonstrate various aspects of our watsonx generative AI platform, particularly watsonx.governance, a powerful set of tools to help manage enterprise-wide governance processes and control risk. To see how watsonx can help retailers, enhance from customer engagement and personalization to operational efficiency, stop by booth #5006 at NRF to see a demo.

Revolutionizing the grocery aisle with Kroger

Looking beyond NRF’24, gen AI can help transform the way businesses across sectors operate, and grocery retail is no exception. The consumer sector is ready to embrace this disruptive technology: 42% of retail CEOs and 59% of consumer products CEOs expect AI—including gen AI, deep learning, and machine learning—to be the technology that can best deliver desired results in the next three years.

Following NRF, join IBM on January 23rd for the latest installment in our retail-focused LinkedIn Live series. Cathy Reese, Senior Partner for Data & Technology Transformation services at IBM, will speak with Jamie Lancaster, Vice President, Contact Centers and G&A Expense Optimization at Kroger, about the gen AI opportunity in grocery, current and potential use cases and how industry players are navigating the implementation and integration journey.

New solution intended to help enterprises seeking to better manage training data for generative AI systems across organizations

NEW YORK AND ARMONK, N.Y., Jan. 11, 2023 – Casper Labs, the enterprise blockchain software and services provider, and IBM (NYSE: IBM) Consulting today announced they will work to help clients leverage blockchain to gain greater transparency and auditability in their AI systems. Together, Casper Labs and IBM Consulting plan to develop a new Casper Labs solution, designed with blockchain and built leveraging IBM watsonx.governance, that establishes an additional analytics and policy enforcement layer for governing AI training data across organizations.

The process of training, developing and deploying generative AI models happens across multiple organizations, from the original model creator to the end user organization. As different organizations integrate new data sets or modify the models, their outputs change accordingly, and many organizations need to be able to track and audit those changes as well as accurately diagnose and remediate issues. Blockchain can help organizations share their trusted context information via metadata in the ledger documenting that the models have changed while mitigating the risk of intellectual property crossover or unnecessary data sharing across organizational lines.

Casper Labs’ solution is planned to be built on Casper,  a tamper-resistant and highly serialized ledger, and leverage IBM watsonx.governance and watsonx.ai to monitor and measure highly serialized input and output data for training generative AI systems across organizations. Thanks to the Casper Blockchain’s hybrid nature and permissioning system, organizations can expect to be able to better protect sensitive data stored in the solution from being accessible to external actors; they have control over who can access what data. The solution will also be built to support version control using the serialization capabilities of blockchain, so organizations can efficiently revert to previous iterations of an AI system if performance issues or biased outputs occur.

IBM Consulting’s AI governance and technology experts will assist Casper Labs in building the solution, which Casper Labs expects to be available for clients in beta in first quarter 2024 and later available more broadly in their channels and in the IBM Cloud Marketplace.

“An AI system’s efficacy is ultimately as good as an organization’s ability to govern it,” said Shyam Nagarajan, Global Partner, Blockchain and Responsible AI Leader at IBM Consulting. “Companies need solutions that foster trust, enhance explainability, and mitigate risk. We’re proud to bring IBM Consulting and technology to support Casper Labs in creating a new solution offering an important layer to drive transparency and risk mitigation for companies deploying AI at scale.”

The new solution is planned to help companies across industries, including financial services, healthcare, and retail, deploy AI responsibly at scale across their ecosystem of technology and services providers. Among other features, the solution aims to offer:    

• Compliance Dashboard: A centralized dashboard for monitoring and managing AI systems as they’re applied across organizations to support their compliance processes with an organization’s ethical guidelines.
• Quality Control Toolkit: Tools for monitoring the quality and performance of AI systems, along with an interface to enhance the transparency and explainability of AI outputs.
• Version Control: The ability to correct for performance or other issues by “rolling back” to previous iterations of a given AI system that didn’t display issues.
• Audit and Reporting System: A system for auditing AI processes and generating detailed reports based on context metadata captured by Casper Labs’ ledger.

“While generative AI has justifiably excited organizations for its transformative potential, its practical applications have been severely limited by an inability to monitor and react to the data feeding AI systems,” said Mrinal Manohar, CEO at Casper Labs. “With IBM’s help, we’re committed to delivering a better way to not only understand why AI systems behave the way that they do but also a clearer path to remediate behavior if hallucinations or performance issues occur. AI’s long-term potential will be dictated by how effectively and efficiently organizations can understand, govern and react to increasingly massive AI training data sets.”

– About 42% of enterprise-scale companies surveyed (> 1,000 employees) report having actively deployed AI in their business.

– An additional 40% are currently exploring or experimenting with AI but have not deployed their models.

– However, 59% of those companies surveyed already exploring or deploying AI say they have accelerated their rollout or investments in the technology.

– The top barriers preventing deployment include limited AI skills and expertise (33%), too much data complexity (25%), and ethical concerns (23%).

ARMONK, N.Y., Jan. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — New research commissioned by IBM (NYSE: IBM) found that about 42% of enterprise-scale organizations (over 1,000 employees) surveyed have AI actively in use in their businesses. Early adopters are leading the way, with 59% of responding enterprises already working with AI intending to accelerate and increase investment in the technology. Ongoing challenges for AI adoption in enterprises remain, including hiring employees with the right skillsets, data complexity, and ethical concerns continue to inhibit businesses from adopting AI technologies into their operations. 

Experience the interactive Multimedia News Release here: https://www.multivu.com/players/English/9240059-ibm-2023-global-ai-adoption-index-report/ 

“We’re seeing that the early adopters who overcame barriers to deploy AI are making further investments, proving to me that they are already experiencing the benefits from AI. More accessible AI tools, the drive for automation of key processes, and increasing amounts of AI embedded into off-the-shelf business applications are top factors driving the expansion of AI at the enterprise level,” said Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President, IBM Software. “We see organizations leveraging AI for use cases where I believe the technology can most quickly have a profound impact like IT automation, digital labor, and customer care. For the 40% of companies surveyed stuck in the sandbox, I am confident 2024 will be the year of tackling and overcoming barriers to entry like the skills gap and data complexity.” 

Highlights from the “IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2023,” conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of IBM, include: 

Over the last several years, AI adoption has remained steady at large organizations surveyed:  

• Today, 42% of IT professionals at large organizations report that they have actively deployed AI while an additional 40% are actively exploring using the technology. 
• Additionally, 38% of IT professionals at enterprises report that their company is actively implementing generative AI and another 42% are exploring it. 
• Organizations in India (59%), the UAE (58%), Singapore (53%), and China (50%) are leading the way in active use of AI, compared with lagging markets like Spain (28%), Australia (29%), and France (26%).
• Companies within the financial services industry are most likely to be using AI, with about half of IT professionals within that industry reporting their company has actively deployed AI. 37% of IT professionals within the telecommunications industry state that their company is also deploying AI. 

The majority of surveyed companies actively deploying or exploring AI have accelerated their rollout or investments in the past 24 months:  

• 59% of IT professionals at companies deploying or exploring AI indicate that their company has accelerated their investments in or rollout of AI in the past 24 months.
• China (85%), India (74%), and the UAE (72%) are the markets most likely to be accelerating AI rollout, while businesses in the UK (40%), Australia (38%) and Canada (35%) were the least likely to accelerate the rollout. 
• Research and development (44%) and reskilling/workforce development (39%) are the top AI investments at organizations exploring or deploying AI. 

Easier to use AI tools and the need to reduce costs and automate processes are driving AI adoption among surveyed companies: 

• Advances in AI tools that make them more accessible (45%), the need to reduce costs and automate key processes (42%), and the increasing amount of AI embedded into standard off the shelf business applications (37%) are the top factors driving AI adoption. 
• For IT professionals, the two most important changes to AI in recent years are solutions that are easier to deploy (43%) and the increased prevalence of data, AI, and automation skills (42%). 
• The AI use cases driving adoption for surveyed companies currently exploring or deploying AI are not limited, but cut across many key areas of business operations:
  • Automation of IT processes (33%)
  • Security and threat detection (26%)
  • AI monitoring or governance (25%) 
  • Business analytics or intelligence (24%) 
  • Automating processing, understanding, and flow of documents (24%)
  • Automating customer or employee self-service answers and actions (23%) 
  • Automation of business processes (22%) 
  • Automation of network processes (22%)
  • Digital labor (22%)
  • Marketing and sales (22%)
  • Fraud detection (22%)
  • Search and knowledge discovery (21%)
  • Human resources and talent acquisition (19%)
  • Financial planning and analysis (18%)
  • Supply chain intelligence (18%) 

The same set of barriers are keeping the next wave of surveyed companies from benefiting from AI:

• The top barriers hindering successful AI adoption at enterprises both exploring or deploying AI are limited AI skills and expertise (33%), too much data complexity (25%), ethical concerns (23%), AI projects that are too difficult to integrate and scale (22%), high price (21%), and lack of tools for AI model development (21%). 

Generative AI poses different barriers to entry from traditional AI models: 

• Data privacy (57%) and trust and transparency (43%) concerns are the biggest inhibitors of generative AI according to IT professionals at surveyed organizations not exploring or implementing generative AI.
• 35% also say that lack of skills for implementation are a big inhibitor. 

Among surveyed organizations, AI is already having an impact on the workforce:  

• One-in-five organizations report they do not have employees with the right skills in place to use new AI or automation tools and 16% cannot find new hires with the skills to address that gap.
• Among companies citing AI’s use to address labor or skills shortages, they are tapping AI to do things like reduce manual or repetitive tasks with automation tools (55%) or automate customer self-service answers and actions (47%).
• Only 34% are currently training or reskilling employees to work together with new automation and AI tools. 

The need for trustworthy and governed AI is understood by IT professionals, but barriers are making it difficult for surveyed companies to put into practice: 

• IT professionals are largely in agreement that consumers are more likely to choose services from companies with transparent and ethical AI practices (85% strongly or somewhat agree) and say being able to explain how their AI reached a decision is important to their business (83% among companies exploring or deploying AI).
• But, with many companies already deploying AI facing multiple barriers in the process, well under half report they are taking key steps towards trustworthy AI like reducing bias (27%), tracking data provenance (37%), making sure they can explain the decisions of their AI models (41%), or developing ethical AI policies (44%). 

Methodology:
This survey was conducted in November 2023 among a representative sample of 8,584 IT Professionals in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, UAE, UK, US and LATAM (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru). To qualify for the survey, participants must be employed full-time, work at companies with more than 1 employee, work in a manager or higher-level role, and have at least some knowledge about how IT operates and is used by their company. The global results have a margin of error of +/- 1 percentage point.