Artificial intelligence is in the experimentation stage, with companies scrambling to come out on top, and IBM Corp. is no exception. The AI space is challenging even the most dominant tech companies.

During this week’s IBM Think keynote, Arvind Krishna, chief executive officer of IBM, predicted that AI alone would be responsible for a 600 million to billion increase in applications by the end of the decade. With the ongoing success of Red Hat Inc., which IBM acquired in 2018, the tech giant looks to be a dark horse in the AI race by homing in on infrastructure and automation software, such as IBM Concert, an AI-powered automation tool for simplifying app development.

TheCUBE’s set at IBM Think 2024, where analysts and experts discussed IBM’s evolving AI strategy and its expanding partnerships.

“Complexity is a killer, so everybody’s trying to get arms around that,” said Shelly Kramer (pictured, middle), principal analyst of theCUBE Research. “That’s really what IBM Concert does. It helps manage around controlling operations, reducing and mitigating risk, managing compliance with gen AI … all of these things that customers desperately want.”

Kramer and Sarbjeet Johal (right), founder and chief executive officer of Stackpane and a member of theCUBE Collective, spoke with theCUBE Research’s John Furrier (left) at IBM Think, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the biggest takeaways from the keynote and what to look for from IBM moving forward. (* Disclosure below.)

Red Hat acquisition continues to pay dividends for IBM

IBM has a long history with data, which could give the company an edge in the AI business, as long as the company keeps up with AI’s ongoing evolution, according to Furrier. In addition to application sprawl, AI will likely spur a transformation in hardware in the next decade.

“Form factors might change going forward. If we talk about universal application portfolio, that means consumer application as well,” Johal said. “We will get a lot more change in hardware. We will be doing more AI on the device, on the edge. As well as we’ll have better models, better cheaper, faster models on the back end. Cloud will flourish with it.”

Although Krishna stated that IBM will not use Red Hat to promote its products, the analysts agreed that Red Hat is a golden goose for IBM. The open-source platform will win IBM new business and could foster deeper collaboration with IBM’s partners, according to Furrier.

“Everyone’s infrastructure decision is hybrid,” he said. “IBM has an opportunity with Red Hat to be the operating environment with OpenShift and Red Hat at the bottom of the stack, and then use watsonx as a unifier as infrastructure software, middle layer, and then use the gen AI goodness at the top of the stack.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of IBM Think:

(* Disclosure: IBM sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither IBM nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE