IBM Consulting unveils Centre of Excellence for generative AI
As more firms invest in generative AI technology, IBM Consulting has bolstered its support for its implementation. The company’s new Centre of Excellence for generative AI has already supported more than 100 clients to get the most from their own AI developments.
Rebranded from IBM Global Business Services in 2021, IBM Consulting, is the professional services and consulting arm of IBM. The firm provides services to companies, global government organisations, non-profits and NGOs.
The firm’s heritage in computing means that it is naturally at the cutting edge when it comes to helping businesses get the most from new technology. For example, IBM’s quantum computing network community already helps clients to apply quantum solutions to some of the greatest problems businesses and governments face around the world.
As hype around artificial intelligence continues to grow, IBM Consulting has subsequently sought to apply its historic expertise to the sector, by founding a Centre for Excellence focusing on generative AI. The facility will stand alongside IBM Consulting’s existing global AI and automation practice, which includes 21,000 data and AI consultants who have conducted over 40,000 enterprise client engagements.
Generative AI is a type of AI system designed to generating text, images, or other media in response to text prompts – learning patterns and structure of their input training data, and then generate new data that has similar characteristics. While debate is raging about the potential for violating intellectual property, and undercutting the creative industry that this presents, businesses are enthusiastic about the opportunities this presents to put out as much content as possible, for less money.
To that end, market research firm IDC recently estimated that the AI services market will grow from approximately $36 billion in 2023 to approximately $65 billion in 2026.
Rapid start
IBM Consulting has already been helping dozens of clients use generative AI, from The Masters to Mitsui Chemicals, building on our years of experience with enterprise-grade AI. Those cases will have benefitted from access to technology from the large IBM group’s partner ecosystem as well as the newly announced IBM Watsonx, the firm’s next-generation platform for AI and data designed to scale and accelerate the impact of the most advanced AI with trusted data.
Looking ahead, IBM Consulting will maintain 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 the firm’s clients define the right models and the right architecture to deliver the best outcomes.
A release from IBM Consulting stated, “The Centre of Excellence is off to a fast start. In 2023 alone, IBM Consulting has interacted with more than 100 clients and completed dozens of engagements infusing generative AI alongside classical machine learning AI strategies. In our early work applying foundation models, IBM Consulting has seen some clients experience up to 70% acceleration in time-to-value with foundation models, as compared to traditional AI approaches.”
IBM Consulting is not the only firm to be investing in its generative AI offering. Earlier in the year, Publicis Sapient purchased a complete stake in its Publicis Sapient AI Labs line.
Meanwhile, Bain & Company also announced a new partnership with OpenAI, helping its clients integrate the technology developer’s innovations into daily tasks, reducing waste and supercharging productivity.
