IBM Transforms Workplace Experiences With New AI Capability For Intelligent Real Estate And Facility Management

TRIRIGA helps The IBM Global Real Estate team to optimize space and boost productivity for approximately 1,300 locations worldwide

ARMONK, N.Y., Jan. 28, 2020 — IBM today introduced artificial intelligence (AI) into its TRIRIGA solution to help real estate and facility management professionals better utilize office space and deliver a more engaging workplace experience. TRIRIGA, one of the leading Integrated Workplace Management Systems in the world, includes TRIRIGA Building Insights, and combines occupancy data from sources, such as WIFI and/or IoT sensors, with newly embedded AI. This provides customers operating large real estate portfolios with insights to help them make smarter data-driven decisions about the way they manage their workspace. Greater visibility into space management can help organizations improve facility utilization to reduce space wastage, which can potentially result in savings on real estate operating costs.

Real estate today represents an increasing expense for organizations, yet older, siloed systems can make it difficult for facility operators to understand space usage throughout their properties. According to a report from commercial real estate services firm JLL, 30 – 40% of commercial space1 is underutilized based on organizations surveyed. With TRIRIGA, customers can have an enterprise-wide view of their valuable workspaces. Embedded AI can help identify occupant trends and patterns, down to a single floor, to better anticipate and manage employee occupancy needs, adjust office layouts and address relocation requests.

Building occupants will have access to the new TRIRIGA Assistant, a smart, conversational AI tool which uses natural language processing to help users quickly and easily engage with the spaces around them. TRIRIGA Assistant can help remove the hassle of coordinating with colleagues to schedule and reserve conference rooms, submit service requests such as lighting and catering, or locate a colleague’s assigned workspace.

“Employees and real estate are key elements to organizational growth and development, driving companies to create cost-effective and engaging workplaces that help attract and retain top talent,” said Kareem Yusuf, Ph.D., general manager, AI Applications, IBM. “The implementation of TRIRIGA with embedded AI provides corporations and facility managers with insights into how they can more effectively utilize space across their enterprise. This technology can help companies address the growing expectations of today’s modern workforce and achieve better business results.”

IBM Global Real Estate uses AI to help deliver a better workplace experience
The IBM Global Real Estate (GRE) team is tasked with overseeing approximately 1,300 office locations that cover 78 million square feet, across 110 countries. With such a large, global footprint, the GRE team is beginning to integrate new AI capabilities from TRIRIGA to help overcome the challenge of creating a portfolio that addresses the needs of employees while helping to control costs and deliver the best value to the business. In the past, each office location used its own applications to manage space that often resulted in manual and time-consuming workflow. TRIRIGA enables the GRE team to create a single source for data that provides an instant view into its diverse portfolio that includes space for offices, labs, data and educational centers, and warehouses. Consolidating space and lease information provides the GRE team with a holistic view of IBM’s real estate portfolio data and prepares the way for AI-generated insights. Applying AI to understand how employees are actually using office space will help GRE improve overall utilization by offering the right mix of space and amenities.

“TRIRIGA’s embedded AI will allow us to collect and analyze information quickly at a global level,” said Marianne Flores, director, Global Real Estate Integrated Solutions, IBM. “With this information, we will be able to address one of our biggest challenges – balancing our portfolio while creating an environment that is attractive to our employees, helps boost their productivity and improves our bottom line.”

Banco Sabadell Signs Ten-Year Agreement with IBM Services, Aiming to Provide Innovative Digital Client Experiences Through Hybrid Cloud Strategy

IBM Cloud and Red Hat technology to help the bank to roll out new digital offerings, while reinforcing security and compliance readiness

MADRID and ARMONK, N.Y., Jan. 15, 2020 — Today, Banco Sabadell, Spain’s fourth largest private banking group, and IBM Services announced the signing of a ten-year services agreement designed to help the bank boost digitization and support the strategic evolution of its business model with IBM cloud capabilities.

The financial services industry can face intense challenges related to regulatory compliance, the emergence of new business models and the demand for the digitalization of financial consumption. With IBM, Banco Sabadell plans to transform its IT infrastructure to a modern technology platform that integrates all its data and applications enabling a broader client-centric view.

The new agreement extends IBM’s relationship with Banco Sabadell and is planned to make it possible to leverage IBM cloud capabilities, helping drive modernization of the bank’s IT environment. IBM Services will help Banco Sabadell migrate its existing applications to a hybrid cloud environment, meeting required cybersecurity standards, to help it meet continuous regulatory changes.

The collaboration is intended to simplify the bank’s dispersed technological infrastructure so that it can move and manage data, services and workflows across multiple clouds to allow it to continue to offer its global clients its products and services in a manner that is focused on speed fast, security and compliance.

“This agreement with IBM helps enable us to advance into the modernization and transformation of our technology infrastructure and in the simplification of our operational model,” said Miguel Montes, Banco Sabadell Chief Operations and People Officer. “With this, we are not only continuing to increase our resilience, security and scalability capabilities, but we can also adopt key elements of the new technology paradigm like cloud, the intense use of data and artificial intelligence.”

Red Hat OpenShift technology, together with IBM Services, will also support Sabadell in managing a hybrid cloud environment to deploy on-container architecture, new cloud-native applications and modernize current ones designed for more flexibility and speed to help drive a more agile customer-oriented innovation.

This solution provides capabilities such as scalability to help face the continuous increase in demand for resiliency and security provided by cloud solutions, and speed to launch new digital projects to overcome the traditional friction between applications and infrastructure.

“We are excited to collaborate with Banco Sabadell to help advance its cloud journey that can bring innovation to meet the everchanging demands of its clients and help address the complex security and regulatory requirements of today’s financial industry,” said Juan Zufiria, Senior Vice President of IBM Global Technology Services. “An open hybrid cloud platform, built and managed with IBM Services’ industry experience, can help lay the foundation for financial services providers to respond to the challenges of the industry and position them to securely integrate with IBM financial services-ready public cloud capabilities in the future.”

In parallel TSB, the United Kingdom affiliate of Banco Sabadell, signed a contract where IBM will manage the bank’s technology in the UK.

IBM and Banco Sabadell signed this transaction in IBM’s fourth quarter of 2019.

Broadridge Accelerates Hybrid Cloud Strategy with IBM Services to Drive Next-Gen Capabilities for Clients

Digitally Transforming its Business, creating The Broadridge Private Cloud Powered by IBM

NEW YORK, Jan. 14, 2020 — Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. [NYSE:BR], a global Fintech leader and part of the S&P 500® Index, and IBM Services, today announced an agreement to bring new cloud-based solutions to Broadridge’s clients in the financial services industry. As part of this strategic collaboration, Broadridge will create The Broadridge Private CloudTM powered by IBM and will transition a significant portion of its global infrastructure to IBM. This key milestone in its cloud strategy will enable Broadridge to better provide powerful industry solutions to leading financial institutions around the world, with improved speed to market, flexibility, and resiliency.

Accelerating its shift to a hybrid cloud model will enable Broadridge to further deliver next-generation SaaS solutions to its clients through industry leading technology infrastructure. Today’s announcement marks Broadridge’s move of its mission-critical workloads to the cloud with IBM, to help further transform the financial services industry. Leveraging IBM’s open source capabilities allows infrastructure flexibility and will provide Broadridge new opportunities to invest in its application portfolio, adding new capabilities to its market-leading solutions. By implementing Red Hat OpenShift platform, the industry’s most comprehensive Kubernetes platform, Broadridge will also be able to manage workloads across its overall hybrid cloud infrastructure.

“The Broadridge Private Cloud powered by IBM, will increase our ability to more rapidly deliver next-gen and mission-critical solutions to our clients around the world,” said Mark Schlesinger, Broadridge’s Chief Information Officer. “Accelerating our cloud strategy will enable clients to leverage an industry-leading, highly flexible and resilient technology platform and allow Broadridge to accelerate our product roadmap, providing our clients with faster access to new industry solutions incorporating the ABCDs of InnovationTM (AI, Blockchain, Cloud, Digital),” Mr. Schlesinger added.

“We look forward to bringing the power of IBM’s hybrid cloud capabilities and financial services industry experience to Broadridge’s mission-critical infrastructure that powers the global financial markets,” said Rodrigo Kede Lima, General Manager, IBM Global Technology Services. “The Broadridge Private Cloud, along with the world’s first financial services-ready public cloud, recently launched by IBM, showcases how IBM is working with key clients all over the world to address critical requirements of financial services institutions with regulatory compliance, security and resiliency.”

The financial services industry continues to face challenges from new and existing competitors, generating the constant need for new, innovative products and services. Additionally, increased regulatory and compliance requirements are driving the need for improved security and resiliency. By engaging with IBM, Broadridge and its clients have a service provider with experience in providing hybrid cloud managed services with a keen awareness of the regulatory and compliance demands of the financial services industry globally.

IBM is bringing its deep financial services industry experience to help generate long term value to Broadridge and its clients. Over this multi-year agreement, IBM will help modernize Broadridge’s infrastructure to provide automated private cloud services for its critical workloads. In addition, IBM cloud will provide new application development capabilities for Broadridge’s businesses. As Broadridge continues to develop and deploy new applications in the cloud, IBM will also assist with design and migration services along with its ongoing support.

IBM and Broadridge Financial signed this transaction in IBM’s fourth quarter of 2019.

Farmer Connect Uses IBM Blockchain to Bridge the Gap Between Consumers and Smallholder Coffee Farmers

At CES, Farmer Connect announces “Thank My Farmer,” a mobile app to show consumers the origin of their coffee

LAS VEGAS, — At the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Farmer Connect and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a new consumer mobile application called “Thank My Farmer,” which will allow coffee drinkers to trace their coffee to understand its quality and origin, and even support the farmer who grew the beans. Developed with leading companies across the global supply chain including Beyers Koffie, The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC), ITOCHU Corporation, Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE), The J.M. Smucker Company, Rabobank, RGC Coffee, Volcafe, Sucafina and Yara International, Farmer Connect is a traceability platform powered by IBM Blockchain designed to help increase traceability, efficiency and fairness in the coffee supply chain.

Coffee drinkers today consume more than half a trillion cups per year, and as many as two-thirds of consumers aged 19-24 surveyed say they prefer to buy coffee that is sustainably grown and responsibly sourced. But despite progress by international certifying bodies, there still a lack of knowledge around the need for coffee farmers to earn a sufficient living for bringing their product to market.

Its large, global supply chain makes tracing coffee difficult. Once grown, beans make several stops, including at coops, exporters, shippers, importers, roasters, distributors, and retailers before finally reaching the consumer. Each participant in this complex system tracks only their small segment of the journey, and each uses its own system to log data. This means that information about the product is fragmented.

Consumers hoping to close the gap between their neighborhood barista and the farmer who grew their coffee now have a solution, thanks to the same blockchain technology behind IBM Food Trust. Farmer Connect is introducing the “Thank My Farmer” app, a consumer-facing application that pulls information directly from the blockchain in a standardized way that can be used across the industry. It connects the user to farmers, traders, roasters and brands. The information is presented on an interactive map, allowing each product to tell a story in a simple and scalable way. The “Thank My Farmer” app also presents sustainability projects in coffee communities and an opportunity for consumers to support them.

Blockchain technology brings all the parties in the coffee supply chain together, simplifying the exchange and tracking of information and payments, and enabling greater trust. It creates a permanent digitized chain of transactions that cannot be altered. Each network participant has an exact copy of the data, and additions to the blockchain are shared throughout the network based on each participant’s level of permission. Farmers, wholesalers, traders and retailers can interact more efficiently using comprehensive, near real-time access to this data, and consumers can have new insights about the origins of the products they consume.

“The aim is humanizing each coffee drinker’s relationship with their daily cup,” said David Behrends, Founder and President of Farmer Connect. “Consumers now can play an active role in sustainability governance by supporting coffee farmers in developing nations. Through the blockchain and this consumer app, we’re creating a virtuous cycle.”

The new mobile application will launch to the general market at the beginning of 2020. Users in the U.S. and Canada will be able to scan QR codes on 1850® brand premium single-origin coffee. European consumers will be able to access the “Thank My Farmer” app through a new single-origin brand, Beyers 1769, roasted at Beyers Koffie.

As the app expands in 2020, large and small companies will be invited to join, and coffee drinkers will be able to support the communities where their coffee is grown by funding local projects. Farmer Connect is currently incorporating self-sovereign identity, a new form of digital identity built on distributed ledger technology, in collaboration with the Sovrin Foundation. This closes the loop on a circular economy that will enhance smallholder livelihoods while delivering transparency and a better experience for the consumer.

This work with Farmer Connect is another example of IBM’s impact extending blockchain technology adoption across many industries and use cases, transforming entire business processes and providing consumers with more trusted insights. IBM has convened groundbreaking blockchain networks in areas including food safety, global shipping, trade finance, responsible mining and many more.

“This project is another example of how blockchain technology can enable a channel for real change,” said Raj Rao, General Manager, IBM Food Trust. “Blockchain is more than aspirational business tech, it is used today to transform how people can build trust in the goods they consume. For business, it can drive greater transparency and efficiency.”