When it comes to artificial intelligence, enterprises want speed, lower cost and security. For IBM Corp., these are the value points it wants to provide for its hybrid AI customers.

The computing giant has wrapped this strategic approach in a model that is designed to deliver outcomes at the workflow level across regulated, complex environments. IBM’s hybrid AI narrative is a workload-first, run-anywhere, govern-centrally and abstract-infrastructure model. With 280,000 employees across 175 countries, IBM is the self-proclaimed “Client Zero,” embedding its own AI products and solutions into the company before bringing them to market.

“In our opinion, IBM has found a differentiated path in enterprise AI by productizing workflow-level outcomes across a stack that, while sometimes confusing, customers generally trust,” said theCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante. “Client Zero proof, a workload-first hybrid design, durable platforms reimagined for agents and a pragmatic quantum roadmap create a credible basis for sustained advantage.”

During theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Think on May 12, company executives and industry experts will explore how enterprises are operationalizing agentic AI, moving beyond experimentation into orchestrated, governed systems that can run at scale. Coverage will examine how IBM is positioning itself as the control layer for enterprise AI, with an emphasis on hybrid cloud integration, trusted data pipelines and the infrastructure required to manage multi-agent environments in production. (* Disclosure below.)

Tailwind for hybrid AI

IBM’s differentiated path appears to be providing a tailwind in today’s competitive IT market. In mid-April, the company reported growth in software and infrastructure revenue, aided by a 48% jump in sales of a new mainframe product line.

These results followed an unveiling of a slate of software and infrastructure updates designed to help enterprises implement artificial intelligence into operations across hybrid environments. These included agentic AI orchestration, mainframe automation and infrastructure intelligence as part of IBM’s strategy to embed AI across software and hardware lines.

Earlier this year, the company released IBM Sovereign Core, a platform to give enterprises and governments more direct control over artificial intelligence and cloud workloads in response to tightening sovereignty and compliance demands. This and other moves by IBM over the past year to offer semantic tooling, open frameworks and an expanding partner network reflect the firm’s interest in providing maximum flexibility within a hybrid ecosystem.

“We’re seeing a critical inflection point,” observed theCUBE Research’s Scott Hebner. “IBM is applying the same interoperability playbook that made it a leader in e-business and hybrid cloud.”

Moving forward with quantum

Previous IBM Think events have included news surrounding IBM’s latest work in the area of quantum computing, and this year’s event is expected to be no different. Quantum has been one of IBM’s key initiatives for several years.

This includes an ambitious plan to develop a “quantum internet” in partnership with Cisco Systems Inc. The goal would be to link two separate quantum computers and expand the network to dozens of machines over a distributed architecture.

IBM has also been closely focused on the thorny issue of post-quantum security, preparing for a world where quantum-vulnerable public-key algorithms that have protected data for decades will be deprecated and removed by 2035.

“Getting organized around cryptography now is essential — not just because of the quantum event, although that is absolutely a necessity,” said Mark Hughes, global managing partner of cybersecurity services at IBM, in a recent interview with theCUBE. “You need to be doing that now so we can get to a state of what we’re describing at IBM [as] ‘crypto agility,’ where we move away from how we’ve traditionally managed crypt, which is hard-coded crypt. It’s worked, and it’s worked really well for us, but that’s not relevant now in today’s environment.”

Collaborating on data access

Partnerships and acquisitions have played a central role in IBM’s go-to-market approach. In March, the company announced an expanded collaboration with Nvidia Corp. to help enterprises implement AI at scale. The partnership included linking IBM tools with Nvidia Nemotron to accelerate document extraction and pairing IBM’s unified data access layer with the chipmaker’s GPU pipelines.

In early April, IBM unveiled a partnership with Arm Holdings PLC to develop new dual-architecture hardware to improve flexibility, reliability and security in the execution of AI and other data-intensive workloads. Arm has already captured 13% of server sales revenue, and IBM’s collaboration addresses enterprise interest in access to multiple systems architectures.

IBM’s acquisition of the streaming data firm Confluent Inc. in December provided insight into IBM’s interest in supporting customer demand for trusted, real-time data in complex hybrid-cloud environments. It marked the continuation of a long-term enterprise AI computing strategy that has guided the company, and it will be on full display at IBM Think later this month.

“While others chase frontier models, IBM is betting on something harder: trusted AI in production,” said theCUBE Research’s John Furrier. “The question coming out of Think is simple — are they becoming the system of record for enterprise AI, or just another layer in the stack?”

TheCUBE event livestream

Don’t miss theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Think on May 12. Plus, you can watch theCUBE’s exclusive content on-demand after the event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Think, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE’s “theCUBE Pod” is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube, which you can enjoy while on the go. During each podcast, SiliconANGLE’s John Furrier and Dave Vellante unpack the biggest trends in enterprise tech — from AI and cloud to regulation and workplace culture — with exclusive context and analysis.

SiliconANGLE also produces our weekly “Breaking Analysis” program, where Dave Vellante examines the top stories in enterprise tech, combining insights from theCUBE with spending data from Enterprise Technology Research, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.

Guests

During theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Think, don’t miss insights from company executives and industry experts who will explore how agentic AI is moving from experiment to enterprise standard — and how IBM is positioning itself at the center of that shift. Tune in for exclusive insights and analysis as theCUBE examines how IBM is building the control layer for orchestrated, governed AI systems.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the IBM Think event. Sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: SiliconANGLE