IBM: Transition to cloud now ‘an existential question’

At its virtual Think Digital conference, IBM has unveiled a new toolset designed to bring artificial intelligence (AI) to hybrid cloud environments and help businesses refire operations in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Watson AIOps examines log data held across a business’ IT infrastructure, uses AI and machine learning models to assess systems and applies those learnings to anticipate potential problem areas and rectify issues before they arise.

Harnessing technology developed by the celebrated IBM Research department, the new AI service is infrastructure agnostic - and therefore flexible to rapidly changing business circumstances in the current climate.

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With hybrid cloud models made essential by the mandated transition to remote working, the firm hopes Watson AIOps can help businesses automate IT infrastructure and better insulate themselves from future disruption.

IBM Watson AIOps

According to Hillery Hunter, CTO IBM Cloud, the ongoing pandemic has served to accelerate the plodding transition to the cloud, which has become fundamental to business continuity as organisations are forced to embrace remote working.

“Transitioning to the cloud two months ago was in essence a strategic question, where now it’s an existential one,” she said in a pre-event press conference.

With security perimeters having expanded by magnitudes overnight as a result of coronavirus lockdown measures, the ability of a company to conduct business has come down to the extent to which it is able to lean on the cloud - and to do so securely.

According to IBM, working an IT anomaly takes on average five hours and costs a business $135,000. With Watson AIOps, however, issues are rooted out and remedied within 14 minutes and cost is reduced to circa $5,000.

“We want to arm every CIO in the world with the ability to detect problems before they occur,” declared Rob Thomas, IBM’s SVP Cloud and Data Platform.

“Able to monitor everything happening in the business’ infrastructure in real time, CIOs are able to act instead of react.”

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