Middleware Consulting International

ARMONK, N.Y., June 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Today, as enterprises scale AI agents across their organizations, IBM (NYSE: IBM) is announcing the industry’s first software to bring AI security and AI governance teams together and provide a unified view of enterprises’ risk posture.

The new capabilities enhance and integrate watsonx.governance and Guardium AI Security to help clients keep their AI systems, including agents, secured and responsible at scale. Watsonx.governance is IBM’s end-to-end AI governance tool and Guardium AI Security is IBM’s tool for securing AI models, data, and usage.

“AI agents are set to revolutionize enterprise productivity, but the very benefits of AI agents can also present a challenge,” said Ritika Gunnar, General Manager, Data and AI, IBM. “When these autonomous systems aren’t properly governed or secured, they can carry steep consequences.”

Today’s new offerings include:

Integrating and Automating Agentic AI Security 

IBM is enhancing the integration of IBM Guardium AI Security and watsonx.governance, providing enterprises with the first unified solution to manage security and governance risks associated with AI use cases. The integration supports users’ processes to validate compliance standards against 12 different frameworks, including the EU AI Act and ISO 42001.

IBM is also introducing new capabilities to Guardium AI Security through a collaboration with AllTrue.ai, including the ability to detect new AI use cases in cloud environments, code repositories, and embedded systems –providing broad visibility and protection in an increasingly decentralized AI ecosystem. Once identified, IBM Guardium AI Security can automatically trigger appropriate governance workflows from watsonx.governance.

Recent updates to IBM Guardium AI Security also include automated red teaming to help enterprises detect and fix vulnerabilities and misconfigurations across AI use cases. And to help mitigate risks such as code injection, sensitive data exposure, and data leakage, the tool enables users to define custom security policies that analyze both input and output prompts. These features are available now in IBM Guardium AI Security, and their integration with watsonx.governance will roll out throughout the remainder of the year.

“The future of AI depends on how well we secure it today. Embedding security from the start is essential to protecting data, supporting compliance obligations, and building lasting trust,” said Suja Viswesan, Vice President, Security and Runtime Products, IBM.

“One of the biggest challenges for security teams is translating incidents and compliance violations into quantifiable business risk. The rapid adoption of AI and agentic AI amplifies this issue,” said Jennifer Glenn, Research Director for the IDC Security and Trust Group. “Unifying AI governance with AI security gives organizations the necessary context to find and prioritize risks, as well as the information to clearly communicate the consequences of not addressing them.”

Enhanced Agentic AI Evaluation and Lifecycle Governance

IBM watsonx.governance can now monitor and manage AI agents across their entire lifecycle, from development to deployment. Evaluation nodes can be built directly into agents, allowing users to carefully monitor metrics like answer relevance, context relevance, and faithfulness – and help identify the root cause of poor performance. Planned future capabilities also include agent onboarding risk assessment, agent audit trails, and an agentic tool catalogue, which are expected to be available June 27.

Off-the-Shelf Compliance Capabilities 

IBM watsonx.governance Compliance Accelerators provide select pre-loaded regulations, standards, and frameworks from around the globe, enabling users to identify relevant obligations and map them onto their own AI use cases. Content covers key regulations like the EU AI Act, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s SR 11-7, and New York City Local Law 144, along with global standards like ISO/IEC 42001 and frameworks like the NIST AI RMF. Watsonx.governance Compliance Accelerators is available now as an add-on.

Expertise to Scale AI Responsibly

To help clients scale AI responsibly, IBM Consulting Cybersecurity Services is introducing a new set of services that brings together data security platforms, like IBM Guardium AI Security, with deep AI technology and domain consulting. The new services will support organizations through their AI transformation journey: from discovering AI deployments and potential vulnerabilities, to implementing secure-by-design practices across AI layers, to governance guidance for a constantly evolving regulatory landscape. The new services build on IBM Consulting’s experience helping hundreds of clients worldwide on AI strategy and governance, including Nationwide Building Society and e&.

To provide AWS clients with increased value and convenience, watsonx.governance is now also available on AWS data center in India with enhanced model monitoring capabilities.

Today’s new capabilities and integrations give businesses the comprehensive governance and security they need to thrive in the agentic AI era. The innovations also dovetail with IBM’s broader suite of IBM watsonx AI solutions, built to help companies accelerate the impact of generative AI, responsibly and securely.

• IBM Quantum roadmap, processors, and infrastructure outline clear path to IBM Quantum Starling, expected to be first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer 
• Breakthrough research defines key elements for an efficient fault-tolerant architecture — charting the first viable path toward a system projected to run 20,000 times more operations than today’s quantum computers
• Representing the computational state of IBM Starling would require the memory of more than a quindecillion (10⁴⁸) of the world’s most powerful supercomputers

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y., June 10, 2025/PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) unveiled its path to build the world’s first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer, setting the stage for practical and scalable quantum computing.

Delivered by 2029, IBM Quantum Starling will be built in a new IBM Quantum Data Center in Poughkeepsie, New York and is expected to perform 20,000 times more operations than today’s quantum computers. To represent the computational state of an IBM Starling would require the memory of more than a quindecillion (10⁴⁸) of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. With Starling, users will be able to fully explore the complexity of its quantum states, which are beyond the limited properties able to be accessed by current quantum computers.

IBM, which already operates a large, global fleet of quantum computers, is releasing a new Quantum Roadmap that outlines its plans to build out a practical, fault-tolerant quantum computer.

“IBM is charting the next frontier in quantum computing,” said Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO, IBM. “Our expertise across mathematics, physics, and engineering is paving the way for a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer — one that will solve real-world challenges and unlock immense possibilities for business.”

A large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer with hundreds or thousands of logical qubits could run hundreds of millions to billions of operations, which could accelerate time and cost efficiencies in fields such as drug development, materials discovery, chemistry, and optimization.

Starling will be able to access the computational power required for these problems by running 100 million quantum operations using 200 logical qubits. It will be the foundation for IBM Quantum Blue Jay, which will be capable of executing 1 billion quantum operations over 2,000 logical qubits.

A logical qubit is a unit of an error-corrected quantum computer tasked with storing one qubit’s worth of quantum information. It is made from multiple physical qubits working together to store this information and monitor each other for errors.

Like classical computers, quantum computers need to be error corrected to run large workloads without faults. To do so, clusters of physical qubits are used to create a smaller number of logical qubits with lower error rates than the underlying physical qubits. Logical qubit error rates are suppressed exponentially with the size of the cluster, enabling them to run greater numbers of operations.

Creating increasing numbers of logical qubits capable of executing quantum circuits, with as few physical qubits as possible, is critical to quantum computing at scale. Until today, a clear path to building such a fault-tolerant system without unrealistic engineering overhead has not been published.

The Path to Large-Scale Fault Tolerance

The success of executing an efficient fault-tolerant architecture is dependent on the choice of its error-correcting code, and how the system is designed and built to enable this code to scale.

Alternative and previous gold-standard, error-correcting codes present fundamental engineering challenges. To scale, they would require an unfeasible number of physical qubits to create enough logical qubits to perform complex operations – necessitating impractical amounts of infrastructure and control electronics. This renders them unlikely to be able to be implemented beyond small-scale experiments and devices.

A practical, large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer requires an architecture that is:

• Fault-tolerant to suppress enough errors for useful algorithms to succeed.
• Able to prepare and measure logical qubits through computation.
• Capable of applying universal instructions to these logical qubits.
• Able to decode measurements from logical qubits in real-time and can alter subsequent instructions.
• Modular to scale to hundreds or thousands of logical qubits to run more complex algorithms.
• Efficient enough to execute meaningful algorithms with realistic physical resources, such as energy and infrastructure.

Today, IBM is introducing two new technical papers that detail how it will solve the above criteria to build a large-scale, fault-tolerant architecture.

The first paper unveils how such a system will process instructions and run operations effectively with qLDPC codes. This work builds on a groundbreaking approach to error correction featured on the cover of Nature that introduced quantum low-density parity check (qLDPC) codes. This code drastically reduces the number of physical qubits needed for error correction and cuts required overhead by approximately 90 percent, compared to other leading codes. Additionally, it lays out the resources required to reliably run large-scale quantum programs to prove the efficiency of such an architecture over others.

The second paper describes how to efficiently decode the information from the physical qubits and charts a path to identify and correct errors in real-time with conventional computing resources.

From Roadmap to Reality

The new IBM Quantum Roadmap outlines the key technology milestones that will demonstrate and execute the criteria for fault tolerance. Each new processor in the roadmap addresses specific challenges to build quantum computers that are modular, scalable, and error-corrected:

• IBM Quantum Loon, expected in 2025, is designed to test architecture components for the qLDPC code, including “C-couplers” that connect qubits over longer distances within the same chip.
• IBM Quantum Kookaburra, expected in 2026, will be IBM’s first modular processor designed to store and process encoded information. It will combine quantum memory with logic operations — the basic building block for scaling fault-tolerant systems beyond a single chip.
• IBM Quantum Cockatoo, expected in 2027, will entangle two Kookaburra modules using “L-couplers.” This architecture will link quantum chips together like nodes in a larger system, avoiding the need to build impractically large chips.

Together, these advancements are being designed to culminate in Starling in 2029.

NEW YORK, June 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced watsonx AI Labs, a new, developer-first innovation hub in New York City, designed to supercharge AI builders and accelerate AI adoption at scale. watsonx AI Labs connects IBM’s enterprise resources and expertise with the next generation of AI developers in order to build breakthrough AI applications for business.

Located in the heart of Manhattan at IBM’s new offices at One Madison, watsonx AI Labs extends IBM’s global network of engineering labs, bringing together IBM researchers and engineers in a collaborative hub dedicated to co-creating and advancing meaningful, agentic AI solutions. The lab will work side-by-side with startups, scale-ups, and the world’s largest enterprises to help clients unlock real-world value from their AI.

The lab benefits from – and helps fuel – New York City’s status as a global AI hub. New York City has more than 2,000 AI startups, and its AI workforce grew by nearly 25% from 2022 to 2023, according to Tech:NYC. Since 2019, more than 1,000 AI-related companies in New York City have raised $27 billion in funding.

Also today, continuing its commitment to the local startup ecosystem, IBM announced it will acquire expertise and license technology from Seek AI, the New York City-based startup building AI agents to harness enterprise data. Seek AI helps businesses leverage agentic AI to mine value from enterprise data, and their expertise will serve as a foundational part of watsonx AI Labs.

“This isn’t your typical corporate lab. watsonx AI Labs is where the best AI developers gain access to world-class engineers and resources and build new businesses and applications that will reshape AI for the enterprise,” said Ritika Gunnar, General Manager, Data & AI, IBM. “By anchoring this mission in New York City, we are investing in a diverse, world‑class talent pool and a vibrant community whose innovations have long shaped the tech landscape.”

“IBM’s launch of watsonx AI Labs signals a transformative investment in New York’s innovation ecosystem. By bringing together world-class engineering talent, emerging startups, and deep enterprise expertise right here in the heart of the city, this initiative strengthens New York’s position as a global hub for responsible and cutting-edge AI development,” said Julie Samuels, President and CEO of Tech:NYC. “It’s a win for our tech sector, communities, workforce, and economy. We’re thrilled to see IBM betting big on the extraordinary talent and entrepreneurial spirit that make this city so unique.”

The lab seeks to tap into New York City’s rich technology landscape by attracting local talent, pursuing collaborations with local universities and research institutions, and supporting local entrepreneurs. Consistent with IBM’s long-standing investment in New York State, over the next five years, local startups that successfully launch AI enterprise solutions at the lab will have access to technical experts, mentorship and amplification, as well as potential investment from IBM Ventures and its global $500M Enterprise AI Venture Fund.

“Building a foundational part of watsonx AI Labs allows us to pair our expertise building data agents with IBM’s engineering depth to solve clients’ toughest AI challenges,” said Sarah Nagy, CEO of Seek AI. “We’re excited to tackle these challenges here in New York City, where Seek AI was founded and the AI talent and innovation ecosystem is thriving.”

watsonx AI Labs will focus on co-creation of domain‑specific AI solutions to solve enterprises’ most complex challenges – from customer service and supply‑chain optimization to cybersecurity, responsible AI governance, and open-source AI.

To learn more about participating in the watsonx AI Labs, visit www.ibm.com/products/watsonx-ai-labs.

ARMONK, N.Y., May 6, 2025 /PRNewswire/ – IBM is working with Oracle to bring the power of watsonx, IBM’s flagship portfolio of AI products, to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Leveraging OCI’s native AI services, the latest milestone in IBM’s technology partnership with Oracle is designed to fuel a new era of multi-agentic, AI-driven productivity and efficiency across the enterprise.

Organizations today are deploying AI throughout their operations, looking to take advantage of the extraordinary advancements in generative AI models, tools, and agents. AI agents that can provide a single, easy-to-use interface to complete tasks are emerging as key tools to help simplify the deployment and use of AI across enterprise operations and functions.

“AI delivers the most impactful value when it works seamlessly across an entire business,” said Greg Pavlik, executive vice president, AI and Data Management Services, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “IBM and Oracle have been collaborating to drive customer success for decades, and our expanded partnership will provide customers new ways to help transform their businesses with AI.”

Watsonx Orchestrate to support multi-agent workflows

To give customers a consistent way to build and manage agents across multi-agent, multi-system business processes, spanning both Oracle and non-Oracle applications and data sources, IBM is making its watsonx Orchestrate AI agent offerings available on OCI in July. This multi-agent approach using wastonx Orchestrate is designed to work with the expansive AI agent offerings embedded within the Oracle AI Agent Studio for Fusion Applications, as well as OCI Generative AI Agents, and OCI’s other AI services. It extends the ecosystem around Oracle Fusion Applications to enable further functionality across third-party and custom applications and data sources. The first use cases being addressed are in human resources. The watsonx Orchestrate agents will perform AI inferencing on OCI, which many customers use to host their data, AI, and other applications.

IBM agents run in watsonx Orchestrate on Red Hat OpenShift on OCI, including in public, sovereign, government, and Oracle Alloy regions, to enable customers to address specific regulatory and privacy requirements. The agents can also be hosted on-premises or in multicloud environments for true hybrid cloud capabilities.

IBM Granite Models Hosted on OCI Data Science

To give customers more choice of fit-for-purpose, compact and efficient models, Oracle intends to make the IBM Granite family of AI models available through its OCI Data Science via AI Quick Actions. To streamline Granite access, the open-source Granite models are expected to be available within OCI as a cached LLM in the second half of this year.

“By integrating our AI with Oracle’s offerings, we’re enabling businesses to easily deploy and manage AI agents across their enterprise,” said Kareem Yusuf Ph.D, Senior Vice President, Ecosystem, Strategic Partners & Initiatives, IBM. “Our collaboration with Oracle illustrates how IBM and our partners offer clients a seamless and flexible path to scale AI.”

IBM Software to be Available on OCI

Oracle and IBM also plan to make IBM Envizi ESG Suite available on OCI, with an initial release in Saudi Arabia expected within the next 12 months. IBM Envizi is an enterprise sustainability solution that automates the capture, management and reporting of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data.

IBM’s watsonx.ai is now certified to run on OCI, enabling customers to leverage its industry-leading scalability and performance for bare metal and virtual machine instances with the benefits of the Red Hat OpenShift. Watsonx.ai is an enterprise-grade developer studio for building, running, and managing AI applications. Bringing  watsonx.ai to OCI can help organizations develop AI services on OCI, where they may already have applications and data, and deploy them into their application of choice with a collection of the APIs, tools, models, and runtimes.

Expanded Oracle Services from IBM Consulting

IBM is introducing expanded consulting services to help customers turn enterprise strategy into enterprise outcomes by enabling the use of AI agents across multiple platforms to transform end-to-end business processes. Leveraging deep technology and industry expertise, IBM Consulting will help customers orchestrate their agentic ecosystem by integrating, building, and scaling AI agents, including native Oracle AI agents, watsonx Orchestrate AI agents, and agents from across IBM’s partner ecosystem. IBM Consulting will also advise customers on how AI agents impact enterprise operating models and the workforce, including change management and enabling new ways of working. IBM consultants bring deep expertise in transforming core business processes like HR and supply chain as well as capabilities in its AI-powered delivery platform, IBM Consulting Advantage, to deliver value quickly.

IBM Consulting is offering new services that leverage AI-powered assets and methods to help Oracle customers migrate their workloads from on-premises virtual machines to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization on OCI bare metal cloud. This service helps customers migrate and modernize their infrastructure as they deploy with the proven virtualization of the OpenShift container platform running on OCI to provide flexible infrastructure for both legacy applications and AI and hybrid multicloud workloads.

IBM brings deep expertise in business transformation with OCI and Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications, backed by a 38-year strategic partnership spanning technology and services, thousands of consultants who are certified across core Oracle technologies, and the acquisitions of Oracle consultancies Accelalpha and Applications Software Technology LLC.

Oracle and IBM also intend to pilot a joint go-to-market approach in select markets to help bring these new services and capabilities to customers.

“Agents are becoming an important strategic advantage for organizations to optimize operations and deliver better customer and employee experiences,” said Ritu Jyoti, IDC General Manager and Group Vice President. “Today’s most advanced agents are able to interact across different systems and processes, unleashing greater productivity and driving wider adoption. The Agentic AI approach IBM is taking with Oracle is a leading example of how the ability to orchestrate agentic workflows across systems can drive significant advantages, streamlining how work gets done and unlocking growth and innovation.”

For more information about this collaboration between IBM and Oracle, please visit:  https://www.ibm.com/consulting/oracle.
Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and represent goals and objectives only.

ARMONK, N.Y., April 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — IBM today introduced new agentic and automation capabilities to its managed detection and response service offerings to help enable autonomous security operations and predictive threat intelligence for clients.

IBM is launching Autonomous Threat Operations Machine (ATOM), an agentic AI system providing autonomous threat triage, investigation, and remediation with minimal human intervention. IBM is also introducing the new X-Force Predictive Threat Intelligence (PTI) agent for ATOM, which leverages industry vertical-specific AI foundation models to generate predictive threat insights on potential adversarial activity and minimize manual threat hunting efforts.

“Organizations continue to be challenged by increasingly stealthy and persistent cyber threats, which are slowing detection and response times,” said Mark Hughes, Global Managing Partner for Cybersecurity Services, IBM. “By delivering agentic AI capabilities, IBM is automating threat hunting to help improve detection and response processes so clients can unlock new value from security operations and free up already scarce security resources.”

Autonomous Threat Operations Machine (ATOM)
Powering IBM’s Threat Detection and Response (TDR) services, ATOM’s AI agentic framework and orchestration engine leverages multiple individual agents to augment an organization’s existing security analytics solution and help accelerate threat detection, analyze alerts with enrichment and contextualization, perform risk analysis, create and execute investigation plans, and perform remediation actions which enhance the security analyst experience. This orchestration allows security teams to focus on high priority threats, rather than spending valuable time on false positives or lower-priority risks.

As a global systems integrator and managed security services provider, IBM Consulting helps clients manage their security operations center (SOC) outcomes, including the delivery of AI-based orchestration for threat detection and response. Within the TDR platform, ATOM acts as a vendor-agnostic digital operator and provides AI capabilities that integrate with existing solutions from IBM and partners including Google Cloud, Microsoft, and more.

Predictive Threat Intelligence (PTI)
IBM X-Force Predictive Threat Intelligence (PTI) integrates AI with expert human analysis to help curate proactive threat intelligence. Built on proprietary AI foundational models and trained on cybersecurity data, PTI provides a tailored, contextualized threat intelligence feed and predicts potential threats based on adversary behavior.

To extract early indicators of behavior and compromise, PTI gathers data from more than 100 sources including X-Force Threat Intelligence, open-source RSS feeds, APIs and other automated sources, as well as user-supplied organizational context. PTI synthesizes that information into collective intelligence reports that include recommended threat hunt queries tailored to the organization’s specific needs. By focusing on indicators of behaviors, instead of just indicators of compromise, businesses can get ahead of threats.

RSAC 2025 Conference
This week, during the RSAC 2025 Conference in San Francisco, attendees can find IBM on-stage and at the booth on the Moscone Center’s North expo floor (#N-5871). For more details on IBM’s presence at the RSAC 2025 Conference, visit: https://www.ibm.com/events/rsa-conference.

ARMONK, N.Y., April 7, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has acquired Hakkoda Inc., a leading global data and AI consultancy. Hakkoda will expand IBM Consulting’s data transformation services portfolio, adding specialized data platform expertise to help clients get their data ready to fuel AI-powered business operations.

Hakkoda has leading capabilities in migrating, modernizing, and monetizing data estates and is an award-winning Snowflake partner. This acquisition amplifies IBM’s ability to meet the rapidly growing demand for data services and help clients build integrated enterprise data estates that are optimized for speed, cost and efficiency across multiple business use cases.

Hakkoda also brings a strong portfolio of generative AI powered assets that can speed up data modernization projects. Their industry solutions complement and build on their consultants’ deep expertise in industries like financial services, public sector, and healthcare and life sciences. Hakkoda will further expand IBM’s ability to bring both consulting expertise and AI to clients using its AI-powered delivery platform, IBM Consulting Advantage.

“IBM is at the leading edge of the consulting industry with how we’re supercharging our consultants with AI,” said Mohamad Ali, Senior Vice President and Head of IBM Consulting. “With Hakkoda’s data expertise, deep technology partnerships and asset-centric delivery model, IBM will be even better positioned to deliver value faster to clients as they transform with AI.”

“From the beginning, Hakkoda has committed to being ‘in the arena’, not observing the greatest transformation in history but shaping it,” said Erik Duffield, CEO and Co-founder of Hakkoda. “It is because of this that we are excited to join IBM at this critical moment when organizations are looking for a trusted partner to help them modernize their data for the AI era. IBM’s heritage of innovation, their commitment to discovery and deep partnerships with clients on their most technical challenges is a perfect pairing to take Hakkoda’s industry focused modern data consulting to the global marketplace.”

Estimated global spending for enterprise intelligence services initiatives stands at $169 billion and, with a five-year CAGR of about 13 percent, is expected to grow to more than $243 billion by 2028, according to IDC¹. To extract value from their data, business leaders need a thoughtful data migration strategy and a modern, multi-use case data platform on the cloud.

As an Elite Snowflake partner, Hakkoda brings hundreds of SnowPro core and advanced certifications. They were named the 2024 Snowflake Healthcare & Life Sciences Services Partner of the Year and 2023 Snowflake Americas System Integrator Innovation Partner of the Year. Hakkoda is also an advanced-tier partner of AWS.

Hakkoda is headquartered in New York and brings hundreds of experts across the United States, Latin America, India, Europe, and the United Kingdom to IBM Consulting. For more information on Hakkoda, visit https://hakkoda.io/.

The acquisition closed on April 2, 2025, and financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

In its eighth year, Call for Code presents a series of SDG-focused hackathons throughout the year, kicking off with a competition to build AI agents

BOULDER, Colo., March 5, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Today, Call for Code Creator David Clark Cause, Founding Partner IBM, Global Impact Partner United Nations Human Rights, and Program Affiliate the Linux Foundation invite developers and problem solvers to participate in the 2025 Call for Code program to create projects and solutions that use AI to help tackle United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Since its launch in 2018, Call for Code has rallied developers globally to come together and create innovative solutions to help solve the world’s largest problems with technology. In 2025, the Call for Code Global Challenge will again ask how AI can address humanitarian issues to make a real difference for communities around the world.

“Call for Code is a unique global tech initiative, that inspires and empowers developers and problem-solvers from around the world to use their talent to innovate for social good,” said David Clark, Founder and CEO of Call for Code. “I am immensely proud that Call for Code, alongside its founding partner IBM, and with UN Human Rights, has helped ensure that technology serves as a catalyst for sustainability, climate and humanitarian action.”

This year, participants will have the opportunity to take part in five qualifying hackathon events as part of the year-long Call for Code Global Challenge in collaboration with IBM’s TechXchange Client Advocacy team. For each event, teams will build an original proof-of-concept solution based on a different SDG with technologies like watsonx, IBM’s portfolio of AI products, and IBM Cloud services. Each hackathon will include a different theme linked to one of the 17 SDGs.

The first qualifying hackathon will be held March 20 through March 31, 2025. In honor of UN World Water Day on March 22, it calls on participants to build a proof-of-concept for an AI virtual agent using watsonx.ai that can be put to work to address an issue that falls under the SDG6: Clean Water and Sanitation. In addition, Call for Code will host a hackathon to tackle SDG 13: Climate Action as part of the 2025 Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit, the world’s largest human rights-based climate forum, hosted by UN Human Rights, the University of Oxford, and co-hosted by leading universities worldwide.

“From the very beginning, UN Human Rights has been honored to support Call for Code, recognizing that technology—when grounded in human rights—can be a powerful force for good,” said Ansar Mahfoudh, head of the Innovation and Analytics Hub at UN Human Rights. “Since helping launch this groundbreaking initiative almost a decade ago, we have supported those projects that champion innovation that serves humanity. We remain committed to ensuring Call for Code grows from strength to strength, by drawing on a community of socially-minded coders who place humans at the centre of tech and innovation solutions.”

“Call for Code is a unique opportunity to get hands-on with AI, build new skills, network with a community of like-minded problem solvers, and create solutions,” said Dinesh Nirmal, IBM Senior Vice President, IBM Software. “This year, there’s no-cost access to industry leading, enterprise-grade IBM software like watsonx.ai for participants. I am excited to see what teams build to make a positive difference.”

Teams, made up of one to five developers, can compete for prizes awarded in each hackathon. The top Call for Code solution from each qualifying hackathon will win $5,000 USD and one conference pass per team member to the IBM TechXchange Conference 2025 in Orlando. This is IBM’s biggest technical learning conference of the year (official rules apply, tickets are non-transferable, and travel and lodging are not included). The qualifying teams will also have the chance to advance to compete for the 2025 Call for Code Global Challenge Grand Prizes, including a top cash prize of $50,000 USD. Top teams will also have the opportunity for open-source project support from the Linux Foundation. Grand prize winners will be announced in December.

ARMONK, N.Y., Jan. 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced its intent to acquire Applications Software Technology LLC¹, a global Oracle consultancy. Applications Software Technology brings deep expertise driving business transformations with Oracle Cloud Applications, including for clients in the public sector such as local government and K-12 education.

Public sector cloud transformations frequently face issues that include difficulty transitioning legacy systems, scarce skills or high security and compliance requirements. This acquisition will further enhance IBM’s Oracle solutions to help clients across North America, the UK and Ireland address those complexities and drive lasting results in their digital transformations with Oracle Cloud Applications. It will build on IBM’s 2024 acquisition of Accelalpha, expanding IBM’s ability to help clients deploy, manage and drive value from their Oracle cloud solutions.

“Public sector clients’ cloud transformations often require a consulting partner with industry, domain and technology expertise,” said Kelly Chambliss, Senior Vice President, IBM Consulting, Americas. “The acquisition of Applications Software Technology will boost IBM’s public sector and Oracle Cloud Application skills to help clients confidently navigate their business transformations.”

Applications Software Technology’s large team of consultants brings expertise across the Oracle Cloud Applications Suite, particularly around Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) including Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Oracle Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM), and Oracle Fusion Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ), as well as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), JD Edwards, and NetSuite. Applications Software Technology also brings expertise and partnerships with Salesforce and MuleSoft, specializing in public sector solutions and more.

This acquisition supports IBM’s open ecosystem approach which allows us to meet clients where they are, bringing together whatever technology and expertise are needed across our expanding partner ecosystem to solve the client challenge.

Applications Software Technology has been an Oracle partner since 1996 and a leading provider of Oracle solutions covering areas like business process redesign and Oracle Cloud deployment. In addition to its strong public sector presence, Applications Software Technology also serves commercial clients in the manufacturing, energy and consumer packaged goods industries.

“We are excited to join IBM and open up new opportunities for our people and expand transformative solutions to deliver business outcomes for our customers,” said Justin Winter, CEO, Applications Software Technology. “Applications Software Technology and IBM have complementary capabilities, client relationships, service offerings and values around our people, innovation and commitment to client success. Together, we will continue to grow in the market for cloud transformation solutions.”

Headquartered in Lisle, Illinois, Applications Software Technology has teams across the US, UK, Canada and India. Notable past acquisitions contributing to its growth include Symatrix Limited, 9EDGE Inc. and Computer Technology Resources Inc. Applications Software Technology is currently a portfolio company of funds managed by Recognize Partners LP. Upon close, Applications Software Technology will join IBM Consulting.

IBM and Oracle’s partnership spans almost 40 years. IBM was named a Leader in the 2023 IDC MarketScape for Oracle Implementation Services Ecosystem Worldwide².

The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of 2025, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

For more information on Applications Software Technology, visit https://astcorporation.com/