Persistent Systems Ltd. has its fingers in many pies, with the goal of spurring digital transformation across diverse industries. The technology services company, which has been operating for over 30 years, continues to foster strategic partnerships in areas including healthcare, financial services, strategic procurement and even intelligent coaching.

“From a time-to-market standpoint, we are helping [customers] beat their competition,” said Ayon Banerjee, chief strategy and growth officer of Persistent, in an interview with theCUBE. “We are trying to help take legacy brick and mortar companies—and they’re all on this accelerated path from a digital transformation standpoint—we are helping accelerate those journeys.”

Artificial intelligence has been a transformative force in many of Persistent’s partnerships. Collaborations with companies such as Google LLC and Neo4j Inc. have focused on leveraging generative AI, advanced data analytics and cloud migration tools.

“We are very deep from a data standpoint,” Banerjee said. “Over the years, the entire data stack is something that we take to our clients and help them unlock the value of the data that they have both internally and externally.”

Persistent’s strategy is part of the best-of-breed trend. Because AI can cause costs to skyrocket, customers are looking for combined services that offer a high return on investment while meeting all of their business needs, according to Banerjee.

“It is almost impossible for a company of our size and scale to be able to solve our customer’s problems if we were to try and do it all by ourselves,” he said. “And one of the mottos that we as a company have is that we like to be seen as the orchestrator of choice for our customers.”

This feature is part of SiliconANGLE Media’s exploration of how Persistent has leveraged strategic partnerships and AI and cloud technologies to drive digital transformation across diverse industries. (* Disclosure below.)

Revolutionizing healthcare through tech innovation

Persistent and Google have a ten year partnership, with an emphasis on industry-specific solutions for AI, according to Banerjee. He was joined by Pallab Deb, managing director of system integrator and industry GTM partnerships at Google Cloud, in an interview with theCUBE.

“Persistent really stands out as one of those partners that we really want to engage with and build scale with to go after this new set of buying behaviors in the market, which we think will just accelerate quarter to a quarter as we look forward to the future,” Deb said. “The strategic partnership agreement is nothing but formalizing that motion by bringing to bear what both parties can bring to the table to capitalize on this opportunity that’s here right now.”

Persistent is an ideal partner because of its nimble and agile deployment, and its focus on the customer, according to Deb. Together, the two companies have boosted digital transformation across the United States, India, Australia and the United Kingdom.

“We don’t spread ourselves thin, so we are centered around three primary industry verticals,” said Banerjee, referencing Persistent’s expertise in the banking, healthcare and communications industries. “What we are doing right now is … really take our combined assets to our clients and really help them, whether it’s a set of horizontal solutions or whether it’s a set of vertical solutions.”

Last year, Persistent launched a suite of gen AI solutions powered by Google Cloud and the company is continuing to explore the potential of gen AI, particularly in healthcare. Through their collaboration, the cycle of developing a commercial drug has shrunk dramatically, according to Banerjee.

Persistent has fostered further efforts by partnering with Swan AI, a company focused on AI healthcare solutions. Their ease of collaboration was due in part to Persistent being ahead of the curve on the AI trend, according to Rahul Bajaj, senior vice president of Microsoft sales at Persistent.

“At Persistent, we’ve been incubating gen AI for a while now, ensuring we have the right pool of resources for engagement like this,” he said. “And we started this journey around, in early 2022, launched more than 50 solutions, which are very focused in gen AI … I think the approach came out naturally.”

Swan AI and Persistent have collaborated to address administrative inefficiencies in the healthcare system. Their efforts include developing solutions for remotely detecting patient safety issues within hospital wards.

“The advent of machine learning is disrupting every industry,” Bajaj said. “There’s a lot of impact of AI/ML into healthcare already, and we are trying to harness that focus toward administrative efficiency for payers and providers.”

Here are theCUBE’s complete video interviews:

Fostering growth across industries with AI and digital transformation

Persistent has become involved with AI services at every level, including a collaboration with Neo4j. Their project streamlines the integration of unstructured data into knowledge graphs, which provide frameworks for large language models to understand data and communicate accurate insights to users.

“What graph databases and knowledge graphs bring to the table is they allow us to … pull in data from disparate data sources within the enterprise, build out those relationships so that you can pull a deeper context and insight to give to the LLM,” said Pandurang Kamat (pictured, left), chief technology officer of Persistent Systems, in an interview with theCUBE. “Graph databases and knowledge graphs have been a big boon in driving up the quality, accuracy and contextual relevance of the answer that we are giving with these AI services.”

Knowledge graphs also enhance vector databases, a vital tool which gives unstructured data a mathematical representation that an AI model can understand. The inner workings of AI can often seem mysterious but knowledge graphs allow users to track what models are doing.

“Knowledge graphs provide that traceability, the visibility that you can give even to the end user depending on the user experience you’re creating to build further trust into the system,” Kamat said. “So it’s not only about getting the accuracy right, but also about bringing trust and traceability to a system that when it went off the gate, was very opaque in that sense. ”

Persistent has even brought its expertise in data and AI into the arena, partnering with Blast Motion Inc. and Amazon Web Services Inc. to provide intelligent coaching services. The collaboration aims to use gen AI to perfect athletes’ swings. The model, based on Amazon Bedrock’s framework, analyzes data from motion sensors and video capture.

“Generative AI, just like any other technology, is a means to an end,” Kamat said. “Companies that have a very distinctive advantage, which Blast Motion has, [are] the companies that create unique and frictionless experiences leveraging generative AI rather than treating it as a fancy tagline to put on a product.”

Here are theCUBE’s complete video interviews:

A digital transformation strategy based on collaboration

Persistent’s push for digital transformation has been especially effective in the financial sector. In its partnership with Mastercard International Inc., Persistent has used data-driven, strategic procurement to deliver greater business value.

Procurement actually has enormous amount of data,” said Barath Narayanan, global head of the BFSI Unit and head of the Europe region at Persistent, in an interview with theCUBE. “That decision analytics that you can adopt on top of your data that is available through advanced analytics becomes very crucial. But there … the fundamental data quality becomes very crucial.”

Having quality data is part of eliminating risk for Persistent and Mastercard’s customers, as well as ensuring that all suppliers understand the data processing agreements. Narayan describes Persistent as “the first and last line of defense,” managing risk through every step of the procurement process.

“When you think about procurement, we want people to think about a value enabler. We want people to think about [being a] gatekeeper of risk,” Pratik Patel (right), director of category management, labor, at Mastercard International. “It’s important to ensure that there is a brand established for what procurement stands for, and it all centers on better, faster, cheaper.”

“Better, faster, cheaper” has also been a part of Persistent’s strategy in its partnership with Onclusive Inc., a media intelligence services company which was recently carved out of Kantar Group and became an independent entity. Persistent has been essential in offering smooth, speedy transition services for the brand new company, according to Simon Ingram, senior vice president of technology at Onclusive, who spoke with theCUBE alongside Rajasekar Sukumar (right), senior vice president and head of Europe at Persistent.

“It’s important to forge the right partnerships, bring in partners like us with the right cultural fit to be able to navigate the waters,” Sukumar said. “There are several things involved here, and we have a good foundation in digital engineering. That’s our primary focus that really allows us to be ahead of the technology trends and stay closer to our customers.”

Persistent has supported Onclusive’s journey to a target operating model, from picking the right multicloud infrastructure to figuring out an IT strategy. As it promotes AI and cloud-based digital transformation for all of its partners and customers, Persistent continues to see collaboration as a core strength.

“How do you bring the whole dance together?” Sukumar asked. “It’s about people, the platforms, the required customization for the business … This really needs specialist skill sets and a very strong partner ecosystem to be able to bring it together.”

Here are theCUBE’s complete video interviews:

(* Disclosure: Persistent Systems Ltd. sponsored these segments of theCUBE. Neither Persistent nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE/Canva