Tech Mahindra and IBM to Help Their Clients Modernize Operations Leveraging Cloud

Tech Mahindra and IBM Establish Technology Innovation Centers to Help Digital Transformation for Global Customers

Tuesday, April 21: Tech Mahindra Ltd. a leading provider of digital transformation, consulting and business reengineering services and solutions, is collaborating with IBM to help businesses transform their operations and accelerate their hybrid cloud strategies. Tech Mahindra will help clients migrate core business applications to the IBM public cloud using IBM Cloud Paks.

As part of this relationship, IBM and Tech Mahindra will establish innovation centers designed to help address complex business problems across industries, including telecommunication, manufacturing, financial services, insurance, retail and healthcare. The first center is planned to open in Bengaluru, India, later this year and specialize in transformation solutions built with IBM Cloud Paks, enterprise-ready containerized software solutions running on Red Hat OpenShift. Tech Mahindra currently plans to open additional centers throughout North America and the United Kingdom in 2020.

Pawan Sharma, President & Global Head of Strategic Initiatives at Tech Mahindra, said “The collaboration with IBM will help us accelerate the development of cloud-based applications for our customers and build multicloud data management solutions on the industry-leading hybrid platform. The commitment to building Innovation Centers aligns with our TechMNxt charter, an initiative that leverages emerging technology to solve real-world business problems for customers.”

Tech Mahindra is the latest company to join the IBM public cloud ecosystem, a new initiative to support global system integrators and independent software vendors to help clients modernize and transform mission-critical workloads on the IBM public cloud. The IBM public cloud is the industry’s most open and secure public cloud for business. With its security leadership, enterprise-grade capabilities and support for open source technologies, the IBM public cloud is designed to differentiate and extend on hybrid cloud capabilities for enterprise workloads.

“This collaboration with Tech Mahindra is designed to help speed how businesses migrate critical enterprise workloads to the IBM public cloud and transform their operations using cloud-native technologies,” said Bob Lord, SVP, Cognitive Applications, Blockchain and Ecosystems, IBM. “IBM Cloud Paks are designed to help businesses speed their journeys to the cloud by giving them the flexibility and choice they need to modernize their applications. Because they are pre-integrated to deliver specific customer use cases, they can help quickly address pressing challenges for businesses across multiple industries.”

Tech Mahindra aims to help clients build scalable, cloud-native applications that can help address the most critical data and workload. Tech Mahindra’s technologists can also assist Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to develop network automation solutions, IT infrastructure and application modernization, further helping clients shift complex and mission-critical enterprise workloads to the IBM public cloud. The collaboration is in line with Tech Mahindra’s TechMNxt charter, which focuses on providing solutions that enable digital transformation and meet the customer’s evolving and dynamic needs. The innovation centers will be driven by Tech Mahindra’s spirit to deliver tangible business value and experiences to solve real business problems.

Prysmian Group Selects IBM To Help Accelerate Digital Transformation With Adoption of IBM Cloud

The new efficient IT infrastructure to support the group’s global growth strategy

MILAN, April 9, 2020 — Prysmian Group (PRY: IM), a global leader in the energy and telecom cable systems industry and the largest manufacturer of cables in the world, has selected IBM Services to help expand and manage its global technological infrastructure. The three-year agreement engagement is designed to addresses Prysmian’s need to better integrate their presence in 50 countries around the world. Managed by IBM Services, Prysmian will integrate its IT infrastructure with IBM Cloud and adopt a hybrid cloud strategy.

With the acquisition of American cable manufacturing company, General Cable, in 2018, Prysmian Group has made it a priority to fully integrate the information systems of the two companies, to support flexible, efficient and secure digitization of processes and products that drive the international growth of the business. As part of this effort, Prysmian Group will migrate its SAP workloads to IBM Cloud to leverage higher value technology, including AI, IoT and human augmentation. The agreement with IBM also includes services for the management of the global Prysmian IT environment. With the new infrastructure in place Prysmian Group anticipates high levels of service in terms of availability and reliability, as well as enterprise-grade security.

IBM will provide and manage a modern IT infrastructure with a global delivery model and service levels. Under the agreement, IBM Services will also manage the integration of the existing legacy IT infrastructures and move Prysmian Group’s SAP S/4HANA, the company’s ERP platform, onto SAP certified physical and virtual appliances on IBM Cloud to further support its digital business transformation.

“The important acquisition of General Cable required focus on the integration of processes and the digitalization of products. This represents our differentiation from our competitors”, says Stefano Brandinali, CIO and Chief Digital Officer Prysmian Group. “To tackle this challenging task we have chosen IBM as our global technology provider to help drive ongoing transformation within the organization. IBM brings its industry experience to support the development of a modern IT infrastructure based on IBM Cloud.

“IBM is pleased to help facilitate the next step forward in support of Prysmian’s business, which has always been committed to providing its customers with products and services with a high level of innovation”, states Stefano Rebattoni, Vice President Enterprise Sales of IBM Italy. “The adoption of IBM Cloud will help support a solid digital transformation path towards continuous improvement of service quality and operational efficiency”.

For this implementation, Prysmian will leverage the IBM Services data center and the IBM Cloud data center in Milan. The three-year contract will be managed by IBM Services, with also the responsibility for the disaster recovery services for the Group’s IT infrastructure.

IBM and Prysmian Group signed this transaction in IBM’s 2Q of 2019.

IBM Offers “Watson Assistant for Citizens” to Provide Responses to COVID-19 Questions

Engagements with government agencies, healthcare organizations and academic institutions around the world including in Arkansas, California, Georgia, New York, Texas, Czech Republic, Greece, Poland, Spain and UK

ARMONK, N.Y., April 2, 2020 — With COVID-19 affecting 206 countries, areas and territories, IBM is helping government agencies, healthcare organizations and academic institutions throughout the world use AI to put critical data and information into the hands of their citizens.

With a flood of information requests from citizens, wait times in many areas to receive answers can exceed two hours. Available for no charge for at least 90 days and available to our client’s citizens online or by phone, IBM Watson Assistant for Citizens on the IBM public cloud brings together Watson Assistant, Natural Language Processing capabilities from IBM Research, and state-of-art enterprise AI search capabilities with Watson Discovery, to understand and respond to common questions about COVID-19.

“While helping government agencies and healthcare institutions use AI to get critical information out to their citizens remains a high priority right now, the current environment has made it clear that every business in every industry should find ways to digitally engage with their clients and employees,” said Rob Thomas, general manager, IBM Data & AI. “With today’s news, IBM is taking years of experience in helping thousands of global businesses and institutions use Natural Language Processing and other advanced AI technologies to better meet the demands of their constituents, and now applying it to the COVID-19 crisis. AI has the power to be your assistant during this uncertain time.”

Watson Assistant for Citizens leverages currently available data from external sources, including guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) and local sources such as links to school closings, news and documents on a state website. IBM already is delivering this service across the United States, as well as engaging with organizations globally in Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, UK and more.

Here are examples where IBM is engaging with government and healthcare agencies on Watson Assistant for Citizens:

  • ARKANSAS: University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences – In 9 days, deployed a virtual agent so citizens can get their questions answered quickly about testing, symptoms or resources. Information is automatically sent to a mobile COVID-19 triage clinic electronically to help speed response. Average registration time has been reduced by fifty percent for those using the agent.
  • CALIFORNIA: City of Lancaster in Los Angeles County – COVID-19 information for citizens on common questions such as symptoms and recommended procedures to follow in case of infection.
  • GEORGIA: Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta – The “COVID-19 Pediatric Assessment Tool” walks parents through a series of questions and results in suggested next steps that a parent should take. Recommendations on next steps are made according to the healthcare system’s established protocols.
  • NEW YORK: County of Otsego – COVID-19-related information will be available within the next few days for citizens to help them quickly get their health and non-health related questions answered regarding the pandemic. Otsego County’s COVID-19 virtual agent will be able to answer citizen’s questions like: “How do I apply for unemployment?”
  • TEXAS: City of Austin – COVID-19-related information will soon be available for citizens with interactive conversation on where to get testing and other information.
  • CZECH REPUBLIC: Czech Ministry of Health – COVID-19 virtual agent called “Anežka” advises citizens about prevention, treatment and other related topics on the coronavirus.
  • GREECE: Hellenic Ministry of Digital Governance – COVID-19-related information for citizens and interactive conversation on preventive and precautionary measures issued by the Greek Government.
  • POLAND: Polish Ministry of Health – COVID-19 information for Polish citizens on common questions such as symptoms and recommended procedures to follow in case of infection.
  • SPAIN: Andalusian Government – A virtual agent to help respond to citizen’s queries about COVID-19 is available through the app “Salud Responde” and the Public Agency for Health Emergencies (EPES) website, built also in collaboration with the Andalusian Health Service (SAS).
  • UK: National Health Service Wales: Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board – CERi, an English and Welsh speaking virtual assistant, will soon go live to support healthcare workers and the general public in Wales who need information or have questions on the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 along with general information about the virus.

Austin residents are counting on us to provide timely updates on COVID-19 response,” said Tauseef Khan, Chief Technology Officer, City of Austin, Texas. “The City is pleased to use artificial intelligence technology to respond to that need, with a tool that quickly and easily helps residents find the information they need 24/7.”

“The AI solution from IBM will be a great resource for the county’s residents and will help alleviate call center volume to allow county employees to dedicate efforts elsewhere,” said Brian Pokorny, Director of Information Technologies, County of Otsego, New York.

Using information provided by clients, Watson Assistant for Citizens automates responses to frequently asked questions about COVID-19 that come in via phone call or text, such as “What are symptoms?”, “How do I clean my home properly?” and “How do I protect myself?”

State and local government agencies, hospitals or other healthcare organizations can choose to customize the solution to address questions specific to their area or region, including “What are cases in my neighborhood?”, “How long are schools shut down?” and “Where can I get tested?”

IBM is offering Watson Assistant for Citizens for no charge for at least 90 days and will assist with initial set up, which can typically be done in a few days. The initial solution is available in English and Spanish and can be tailored to 13 languages.

The offer includes access to 15 pre-trained COVID-19 “intents” or queries.  “Intents” are purposes or goals that are expressed in a customer’s input, such as answering a question. By recognizing the intent expressed in a customer’s input, the Watson Assistant service can choose the correct dialog flow for responding to it.

Clients can also work with IBM to customize the offering on top of the base model and intents to include information related specifically to a city or region for specific information that is pertinent to those citizens or constituents, as well as integrate with client’s back-end ERP systems.

IBM is also working with global businesses in other industries to apply AI to help them respond to COVID-19 and reimagine the way work will get done in this new operating environment.