IBM Corp. was an early adopter of AI with its “Jeopardy!”-winning Watson computer. Now, Big Blue looks to make a comeback by positioning itself as the “glue layer” for enterprises trying to integrate AI across platforms.

At IBM Think 2024, the company announced a series of products based on its AI platform, watsonx, and showcased its dedication to developing a network of partnerships. Its acquisition of Red Hat Inc., a leader in open-source solutions, has continued to pay off. IBM is expanding on that ethos of collaboration by releasing Granite models into open source.

John Furrier, co-founder and host of theCUBE, and Zeus Kerravala, principal of ZK Research, talk about IBM’s long history with AI.

“The reality today is strong partnerships and strong alliances not only benefits the vendors, but it really benefits customers too,” said Shelly Kramer (pictured, middle), principal analyst of theCUBE research, in theCUBE’s analysis of the event. “When we look at the ecosystem that was announced … it’s AWS and IBM and Adobe and Meta and Microsoft and Mistral and Palo Alto. All of this demonstrates to me [IBM’s] commitment to actually making this work across a broad ecosystem.”

Throughout IBM Think, theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, interviewed analysts and IBM leaders, exploring how the company’s foothold in cross-platform integration is looking auspicious. (*Disclosure below)

“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,” said John Furrier, executive analyst of theCUBE (left). “IBM wants to own the middleware of this next wave.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete IBM Think event analysis:

1. IBM is homing in on AI middleware

Becoming the middle layer appears to be the core of IBM’s AI strategy, with the company announcing the launch of IBM Concert, an AI automation platform that helps users manage their applications.

“They’ve zeroed in on what I’ll call AI middleware,” said Crawford Del Prete, president of International Data Corp., in an analyst assessment of IBM Think. “They’re going after making sure that customers can take their enterprise data, use open source LLMs, use the tools that they have that IBM is providing to really start to apply AI in a way that’s valuable for those customers.”

Although IBM could try to be one of the big hyperscalers, such as Amazon Web Services Inc. or Microsoft Azure, the company is instead finding success by partnering with those companies and forming the integrating layer between different cloud environments.

TheCUBE’s John Furrier  and analyst Sanjeev Mohan talk about how IBM is becoming the go-to vendor for AI middleware.

“All the power is concentrating in hyperscalers, but then there’s a cost to that, and the cost is that now you’re locked into their own stack or their own ecosystem,” said Sanjeev Mohan, principal at SanjMo, in an interview with theCUBE. “IBM actually has a huge advantage because IBM can be that cross cloud, like what you call super cloud, and hybrid because of Red Hat OpenShift … IBM has a very key role to play as a glue between all these different islands.”

Because of AI, the modern data stack has crumbled, according to Mohan, so IBM has an opportunity to rebuild the tech ecosystem through its watsonx platform, and partnerships with AWS and Azure.

“The pendulum is once again shifting towards unification and a little bit of hybrid model with centralizing the infrastructure,” he said. “Unifying the storage for structured, unstructured for batch, for streaming, and then putting a common layer of metadata and a semantic layer so that we can disaggregate compute.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete interview with Crawford Del Prete and Sanjeev Mohan:

2. AI and hybrid cloud form a symbiotic relationship.

There was a lot of talk at IBM Think about the hybrid cloud, the multicloud and how IBM is taking advantage of that ecosystem with its watsonx platform. AI could significantly advance the development of hybrid cloud, according to Varun Bijlani, global managing partner of hybrid cloud services at IBM.

“There is a very significant symbiotic relationship between hybrid cloud and AI,” he said in an interview with theCUBE. “AI is supremely accelerating the execution of hybrid cloud. At the same time, you can’t really go from pilot to production to scale without a robust architecture.”

Under IBM, Red Hat has continued to offer highly desirable hybrid cloud and automation services and, according to Furrier, that acquisition could be IBM’s golden ticket to AI success.

IBM’s Varun Biljani and Hillery Hunter talk about how their AI platform navigates the cloud landscape, with theCUBE’s Dave Vellante.

“This is the Trojan horse I think IBM has with Red Hat because the hybrid play right now is so hot. Everyone’s infrastructure decision is hybrid,” Furrier said during the show. “In comes agents and generative AI, you’re going to start to see a lot of innovation in the infrastructure software area … Red Hat will win them new business. Then IBM can bring watsonx and modernize it.”

IBM offers a comprehensive platform that allows developers to access their data and AI in different environments, creating a more seamless and cost-efficient experience. The company has also created watsonx Code Assistant for enterprise Java, which is coming out this summer, and watsonx for Z, to increase the platform’s flexibility.

“Our platform approach to AI means then that both conversations, managing, viewing, optimizing a bunch of different environments, and the developer experience can all be consistent,” said Hillery Hunter, chief technology officer of infrastructure and general manager of innovation at IBM. “Then an AI platform that enables you to bring together the data needed for AI, those models, the governance of those models, monitoring of all of that, those can each be in any location across the hybrid cloud landscape, from on-premises to public cloud and out to the edge.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete interview with Varun Biljani and Hillery Hunter:

3. To do AI right, get your data in order.

AI runs on data, so having it organized and vetted is crucial. IBM’s focus on cross-platform services could support companies as they get their data-related ducks in row, fostering smoother AI integration.

Analyst Sanjeev Mohan and IBM’s Ritika Gunnar talk about IBM’s AI strategy with host of theCUBE, Dave Vellante.

“Only 1% of enterprise data is actually being used to fuel LLMs today. So, that’s where the big gap is. It’s not the models per se, it’s the data. I think that’s where companies struggle,” said Zeus Kerravala, principal of ZK Research, in an interview with theCUBE. “Every CIO I’ve talked to about AI talks about data being the number one inhibitor. So if IBM and its services group and its massive partner organization can help companies get a handle on data, then yeah, they are back and I think they’re back in a big way.”

IBM and Red Hat have jointly launched InstructLab, which allows open-source developers to customize Granite models. This kind of platform empowers employees who might not be experts in data analytics to work with AI.

“Our flows engine set of capabilities that really helps the developer be able to create new AI applications seamlessly and easily with enterprise capabilities like observability, like model accuracy, etc.,” said Ritika Gunnar, general manager of data and AI at IBM, in an interview with theCUBE. “Generative AI really unpacks the ability for not just the data scientist but the rest of the business, and it really is about making every developer an AI developer.”

A lot of data is trapped in silos or in on-premises data centers, so IBM’s focus on hybrid cloud could allow companies to give their AI models more access to data. AI will also automate previously tedious procedures for moving data across cloud and on-prem centers.

“The whole ethos of IBM now is use what you have, have a wide spectrum of hardware to run it on, and infuse AI across that entire end to end,” said Mohan in the same interview. “The goal is to make consumption frictionless. That is where IBM is going.”

Here is theCUBE’s complete interview with Sanjeev Mohan and Ritika Gunnar:

To watch more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE Research’s coverage of IBM Think, here’s our complete video playlist:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the IBM Think event. Neither IBM, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE