IBM Corp. today announced the general availability of a new tool that’s designed to address application sprawl and boost the efficiency of business operations.

It’s called IBM Concert, and it’s said to use generative artificial intelligence to streamline the way in which users can control how applications work, provide insights into connected apps and toolsets, and simplify compliance processes.

The company unveiled IBM Concert at its annual IBM Think 2024 conference, which took place in Boston last month. At the time, it explained that it helps to give developers and site reliability engineers more control over their rapidly growing application installations, across any cloud or on-premises environment.

IBM says it’s trying to combat growing app sprawl, which is now accelerating much faster thanks to the rush to embrace generative AI applications and services. It cited data from an internal study that shows how the number of cloud-native apps in the world will grow from 531.3 million now to more than 1 billion by 2028.

As a result, enterprises have a pressing need to get a grip on the explosion of data and complexity this growth will bring. They also want to harness insights from the data generated by those new applications so they can improve the efficiency of their business operations.

“Gone are the days of easy-to-track, simple, monolithic applications,” Bill Lobig, vice president of product management at IBM Automation, said in a blog post last month. “Now, business applications are a complex ecosystem built and managed using an ever-expanding arsenal of tools and services deployed across hybrid cloud environments. Deciphering, analyzing, and making informed decisions from the vast data created can become a Herculean task.”

IBM believes that in order to navigate and tame this complexity, enterprises are going to have rely on AI-driven automation, and that is what IBM Concert is all about.

It’s an automated application management and monitoring tool that’s powered by AI built on the watsonx platform. It’s designed to put users in the driver’s seat, giving them a more detailed understanding of their applications, the environments they run in, and the various tools they can use to control them.

IBM Concert can reportedly do many things, such as generating analysis, visualization and recommendations, enabling users to speed up actions and processes, discover gaps, reduce complexity, boost resiliency, streamline operations, accelerate innovation and better control their information technology costs.

Last month, Ajay Patel, general manager of Apptio, an IBM company, and IBM IT Automation, appeared on SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio theCUBE. There, he explained why AI-powered automation is destined to become a central part of every business ecosystem in future.

“Given the breadth of the automation portfolio and the complexity and how they all need to come together and break the silos, it was important for us to start painting a vision and a brand that brought all our capabilities together,” Patel said. “Concert is the next generation management platform that brings best-of-breed solutions that’s AI enabled and has an AI-enabled action framework. “

With today’s launch in general availability, every IBM customer can start using Concert to gain a more detailed view of their applications and environments, and quickly apply generative AI to obtain more insights on those apps. The tool is designed to instantly connect with customer’s existing environments and toolsets, so they can get started immediately with real-time data and dependency mapping to uncover operational challenges. It will help customers to understand the root cause of those challenges, and then quickly implement ways to address them by following its recommended actions.

IBM said the initial focus of IBM Concert is on use cases such as application risk and compliance management, but there are plans to expand its capabilities well beyond that. In the coming weeks, the company plans to enable better cost management and address other challenges associated with application sprawl.

Check out Patel’s full interview to learn more about how IBM Concert will automate application management:

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