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February 23, 2023 — As part of the Post-Quantum Telco Network Taskforce, GSMA has published, with contributions from members IBM, Vodafone, and others, the Post Quantum Telco Network Impact Assessment: an in-depth analysis of the quantum security threats facing the telecommunications industry and a detailed, step by step list of potential solutions to prepare for these threats.

The report, which debuted ahead of GSMA’s annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, maps out a clear path for telco organizations to work across their ecosystems to protect data from cybercriminals acting today to tap into the potential power of future quantum computers. It includes:

A telco-specific assessment of the business risk of quantum cyber threats, including four of the highest impact attack types: store now, decrypt later; code signing and digital signatures; rewriting history; and key management attacks.
Discussion of standardization for hardware and software changes, such as SIM cards, public key infrastructure, digital certificates and CPE devices.
Specific approaches to quantum-safe algorithms and risk assessment frameworks, including code-based, lattice-based, hash-based, multivariate-based, and hybrid approaches.
Timelines of several government plans that have been launched to implement quantum-safe encryption (Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, the UK and the U.S.).
Examples of quantum-safe applications to several telco domains, including devices, 5G networks, SIMs, Operating systems, ERP, infrastructure and the cloud.
According to the report, it is widely considered that by 2032 there will be completion of a large fault-tolerant quantum computer capable of running crypto-analytic algorithms that could threaten current cryptographic approaches.

The advent of such technology requires immediate preparation, as some forms of attack may be retrospective (e.g. “store now, decrypt later”). Motivated bad actors may be harvesting and storing data now in order to decrypt it once certain quantum computing capabilities become available. As stated in the report, such actors may do this to “undermine the security of data with long-lived confidentiality needs, such as corporate IP, state secrets or individual bio-data.”

To learn more about these issues and what can be done today to protect against future quantum attacks, download the Post Quantum Telco Network Impact Assessment.

IBM has spent years building a global team of cryptography experts to develop quantum-safe schemes and preparation plans. Just in the last year, IBM not only contributed to the development of three of the four algorithms chosen in 2022 by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for post-quantum cryptography standardization; the team also deployed the industry’s first quantum-safe system, IBM z16; launched a suite of IBM Quantum Safe services; and was an initial member of the GSMA Post-Quantum Telco Network Taskforce.

ARMONK, N.Y., Feb. 14, 2023 — Job seekers, students, and career changers around the world want to pursue roles related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) across different industries, but say they are not familiar with career options. At the same time, online training and digital credentials are emerging as a recognized pathway to opportunity as respondents plan to seek new jobs in the year ahead.

These were some of the global findings from a new study that IBM unveiled today. The study*, administered by Morning Consult and commissioned by IBM, is based on more than 14,000 interviews of students, people seeking new jobs, and people seeking to change careers, located across 13 countries. Respondents also cited concerns that career options may not be available to them. These findings contrast with market data that employers are investing in the reskilling of their current workforce to keep pace with rapid advances in technology and stay relevant in the modern, digital economy.

“Technology training can have a transformational effect on a person’s life,” said Justina Nixon-Saintil, IBM Chief Impact Officer. “There are many misconceptions about what’s needed to pursue a rewarding and lucrative career in today’s rapidly advancing workplace. This is why we must raise awareness of the breadth of science and technology roles that exist across industries. Together with our IBM SkillsBuild partners, we’re highlighting the many pathways that exist for underrepresented communities to pursue futures in tech.”

To help tackle these misconceptions and bring STEM education closer to historically underrepresented communities in the field, IBM is announcing today 45 new educational partners around the world. These IBM SkillsBuild collaborations across social service, economic development, and vocational organizations, as well as government agencies, and universities, will make free online learning widely available, with clear pathways to employment. Many of these organizations focus on specific communities that are underrepresented in technology and will help skill women, including mothers returning to the workforce, ethnic minorities, low-income individuals, and refugees. [Full list of collaborations below]

Study Shows Misconceptions and Opportunities in Tech and Beyond

The IBM / Morning Consult study revealed perceptions from interviewed students, career changers, and job seekers who are interested in a role in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM):

Misconceptions around STEM training: it’s too expensive, learners don’t know where to start, and don’t know enough about digital credentials.

• 61% of respondents think they are not qualified to work in a STEM job because they don’t have the right academic degrees
• 40% of students say the greatest barrier to professional or technical skill development is that they don’t know where to start
• 60% of respondents worry that digital credentials may be costly to obtain
• Being able to continue to work while earning a credential is particularly important to career changers

Learners and workers around the world are planning to make a change, with about 60% of respondents looking for a new job in the next 12 months.

• 61% of students and career changers are actively looking for a new job now or plan to within the next year
• More than 80% of all respondents have plans to build their skills in the next two years
• At least 90% are confident they can develop skills or learn something new from an online program

Awareness of options around different STEM roles across industries is low, and many are concerned these careers won’t pay enough. 

• 50% of respondents are interested in pursuing a STEM-related job
• 64% of career changers are not familiar with STEM jobs
• Many respondents are unsure of which careers are considered to be a STEM job
• 62% of respondents share concerns that they won’t be able to find a STEM job that pays enough to support themselves or their family

Respondents are optimistic that roles in STEM fields across sectors will increase in the future, and that digital credentials are a good way to supplement traditional education and increase career opportunities.

• 66% of all respondents think that STEM jobs across industries will increase over the next decade
• 86% of those respondents who have earned a digital credential agree that it helped them achieve career goals
• 75% of all respondents agree that digital credentials are a good way to supplement traditional education
• Increased career opportunities and qualifications were the top reasons why respondents across the globe said they wanted to earn digital credentials

45 New Collaborations Around the World  
Through a holistic approach to investing in the future of work, IBM is supporting learners and helping tackle their misconceptions about technology and STEM careers. IBM SkillsBuild is bringing free technology training available to learners all over the world, with a focus on underrepresented communities in tech. Online training, like the courses offered by IBM SkillsBuild, is most effective when it is delivered collaboratively with local partners. Community experts enrich course content through project-based learning and connect learners with real career opportunities. To this end, today IBM SkillsBuild is proud to announce 45 new and expanded collaborations around the world:

• Brazil: Inteli; Mastertech
• China: University of Petroleum
• Costa Rica: Asociación Costarricense de Iniciativas de Desarrollo (CINDE)
• Czech Republic: Czechitas
• France:  CY Cergy Paris Université; Social Builder
• India: GSHEC-Goa State Higher Education Council; Gurukul Kangri University-Haridwar; Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women; ISA – International Solar Alliance; KRIES – Karnataka Residential Educational Institutions Society; KSDC- Karnataka Skill Development Corporation; National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIELIT); OSDA – Odisha Skill Development Authority; RV College of Engineering; Sister Nivedita University-Kolkata; Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation
• Indonesia: PT Kinema Systrans
• Japan: Freelance Association Japan FAJ
• Malaysia: EduNxt Global Sdn Bhd University
• New Zealand: Yoobee Colleges Limited
• Qatar: Community College of Qatar
• South Africa: Innovolution Educational Programmes; Nelson Mandela University; Sefako Makgatho University of Health Sciences;  WeThinkCode_, YiEDI
• Sweden: New to Sweden, Young Scientists
• Taiwan: Gap of Learning & Field (GOLF)
• United Arab Emirates: Abu Dhabi University; University of Wollongong in Dubai; Zayed University
• United States: CompTIA; Digital Promise; Franklin Apprenticeships; HDG University;  ITExperience; Junior Achievement of Arizona; Mom Relaunch; RISE — The Mom Project; The Wond’ry at Vanderbilt University; Transition Overwatch; University of the Cumberlands

Through collaborations like these, IBM continues to progress towards its commitment to skill 30 million people globally by 2030.

*Methodology: This study was conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of IBM from November 2 – December 20, 2022. The study was conducted among a sample of 4,926 Students, 4,629 Job Seekers, and 4,628 Career Changers in 13 countries (Brazil, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, UAE, UK, and the US).

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y., Feb. 1, 2023 — IBM  and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center today announce a collaboration to use IBM’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology to discover new insights in NASA’s massive trove of Earth and geospatial science data. The joint work will apply AI foundation model technology to NASA’s Earth-observing satellite data for the first time.

Foundation models are types of AI models that are trained on a broad set of unlabeled data, can be used for different tasks, and can apply information about one situation to another. These models have rapidly advanced the field of natural language processing (NLP) technology over the last five years, and IBM is pioneering applications of foundation models beyond language.

Earth observations that allow scientists to study and monitor our planet are being gathered at unprecedented rates and volume. New and innovative approaches are required to extract knowledge from these vast data resources. The goal of this work is to provide an easier way for researchers to analyze and draw insights from these large datasets. IBM’s foundation model technology has the potential to speed up the discovery and analysis of these data in order to quickly advance the scientific understanding of Earth and response to climate-related issues.

IBM and NASA plan to develop several new technologies to extract insights from Earth observations. One project will train an IBM geospatial intelligence foundation model on NASA’s Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) dataset, a record of land cover and land use changes captured by Earth-orbiting satellites. By analyzing petabytes of satellite data to identify changes in the geographic footprint of phenomena such as natural disasters, cyclical crop yields, and wildlife habitats, this foundation model technology will help researchers provide critical analysis of our planet’s environmental systems.

Another output from this collaboration is expected to be an easily searchable corpus of Earth science literature. IBM has developed an NLP model trained on nearly 300,000 Earth science journal articles to organize the literature and make it easier to discover new knowledge. Containing one of the largest AI workloads trained on Red Hat’s OpenShift software to date, the fully trained model uses PrimeQA, IBM’s open-source multilingual question-answering system. Beyond providing a resource to researchers, the new language model for Earth science could be infused into NASA’s scientific data management and stewardship processes.

“The beauty of foundation models is they can potentially be used for many downstream applications,” said Rahul Ramachandran, senior research scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “Building these foundation models cannot be tackled by small teams,” he added. “You need teams across different organizations to bring their different perspectives, resources, and skill sets.”

“Foundation models have proven successful in natural language processing, and it’s time to expand that to new domains and modalities important for business and society,” said Raghu Ganti, principal researcher at IBM. “Applying foundation models to geospatial, event-sequence, time-series, and other non-language factors within Earth science data could make enormously valuable insights and information suddenly available to a much wider group of researchers, businesses, and citizens. Ultimately, it could facilitate a larger number of people working on some of our most pressing climate issues.”

Other potential IBM-NASA joint projects in this agreement include constructing a foundation model for weather and climate prediction using MERRA-2, a dataset of atmospheric observations. This collaboration is part of NASA’s Open-Source Science Initiative, a commitment to building an inclusive, transparent, and collaborative open science community over the next decade.

Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, January 18, 2023 – Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in collaboration with IBM (NYSE: IBM) formally launched an AI Center of Excellence on Tuesday, January 17, as part of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week’s World Future Energy Summit. The Center aims to advance collaboration to improve the adoption of AI technology and help drive sustainability. The Center will develop carbon neutral solutions to existing energy supplies, combat climate change, and further natural language processing (NLP) for Arabic dialects.

Experts from IBM and MBZUAI plan to focus on decarbonization, with advanced research into climate change mitigation and adaptation. Joint research teams will work on the development of foundational AI models, which could help inform the deployment of clean and renewable energy in the electrification of multiple sectors across the economy. This approach will set the stage for use of carbon neutral solutions while also enabling adaptation and resiliency.

The AI Center of Excellence will also work to improve NLP for Arabic dialects, making AI more accessible and flexible for Arabic speakers. Improving NLP capabilities in Arabic dialects will help to address civic, social, and business challenges, while providing real-life applications such as personalised customer care, AI-powered assistants, improved search, and fraud detection, to name a few.

“The only way to Net Zero is through disruptive technologies and innovations that fundamentally re-program our energy production and consumption — harnessing big data to help drive more effective decision making and problem solving. In line with the vision of our leadership to benefit from the most advanced technological innovations, we are delighted to launch the Center of Excellence. This partnership between MBZUAI and IBM underscores the commitment of both organizations to develop AI solutions that work for the benefit of humanity,” said H.E. Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, President-Designate for COP28, and Chairman of MBZUAI.

“IBM’s collaboration with MBZUAI will leverage AI to address some of the most pressing issues of our time including sustainability and net zero strategies,” said Arvind Krishna, IBM Chairman and CEO. “The new Center of Excellence will also develop local digital skills and attract leading researchers that will help deliver the UAE’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2031.”

The deployment and use of clean energy solutions is one of the main pillars of the UAE’s model of addressing the challenge of climate change and reducing GHG emissions, in line with UAE Net Zero 2050 strategic initiative. The AI Center of Excellence plans to leverage the talents of IBM researchers with expertise in data science, machine learning and NLP, in collaboration with MBZUAI faculty and students. The teams will work together towards the advancement of both fundamental and applied research objectives.

Through IBM SkillsBuild platform, IBM will provide MBZUAI students and faculty with access to IBM tools, software, courseware and cloud accounts for teaching, learning, and non-commercial research. In addition, MBZUAI will have access to curated AI curricula, lectures, labs, industry use cases, design-thinking sessions, and an AI Practitioner certification.

Vatican City, January 9, 2023 – Tomorrow at an event organized and hosted by the Pontifical Academy for Life, IBM (NYSE: IBM) will reaffirm its commitment to the Rome Call for AI Ethics, a pledge signed in 2020 by the Pontifical Academy for Life, FAO, IBM, Microsoft and the Italian Ministry of Innovation to champion ethical approaches to the design, development and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI).

The event is focused on welcoming to the Call new members representing the Muslim and Jewish faiths, thereby bringing together the three Abrahamic religions to shine a brighter global spotlight on and advance ethical approaches to AI technologies.

A live-stream of the event, kicking off at 9:00AM GMT on January 10, can be accessed here.

“That the Abrahamic monotheistic religions have all come together to reflect and act on the implications of the rapidly advancing frontiers of science and technology, as exemplified by artificial intelligence, is of historical importance,” said Darío Gil, Senior Vice President and Director of Research, IBM. “IBM is an institution that has been responsibly advancing such frontiers for over a century, and we believe it will be the quest of all of society, and of all our institutions, including religious ones, to reason through the moral and ethical implications of great scientific and technological advances. We are proud to reaffirm our commitment to the Rome Call for AI Ethics, and we look forward to realizing its vision in partnership with all its signatories and allies.”

Created, organized and hosted by the Vatican’s RenAIssance Foundation, the United Arab Emirates’ Abu Dhabi Forum for Peace and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel’s Commission for Interfaith Relations, the event will also feature representatives from FAO, Microsoft, the Foreign Affairs of Spain, the Politecnico of Turin (Italy)-CENTAI Institute, Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, and LUISS Guido Carli University of Rome (Italy). Following the activities, the delegation will meet with the Pontiff Pope Francis who plans to renew his interest in the ethical development of AI.

Tomorrow’s gathering will follow the recent launch of a new university network, facilitated in part by IBM, designed to assist higher education institutions in operationalizing principles of the Call in their curricula. The initiative was formally mobilized in October 2022 via the Global University Summit on the Rome Call for AI Ethics, an event that successfully brought together 42 institutions spanning 5 continents and was hosted by the IBM-Notre Dame Tech Ethics Lab and co-organized by Notre Dame, the Pontifical Academy for Life and IBM.

For more than a century, IBM has worked to earn the trust of business and society by ushering powerful new technologies into the world responsibly and with clear purpose. IBM’s multidisciplinary, multidimensional approach to AI ethics is guided by core principles grounded in commitments to Trust and Transparency and applied throughout its entire business operation – from its products and services to its research, policy and partnership efforts.

ARMONK, N.Y., Jan. 4, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced IBM Partner Plus, a new program that reimagines how IBM engages with its business partners through unprecedented access to IBM resources, incentives and tailored support to deepen their technical expertise and help speed time to market. The program is designed to fuel growth for new and existing partners, including resellers, hyperscalers, technology providers, independent software vendors and systems integrators, by putting them in control of their earning potential. IBM Partner Plus is central to the company’s Hybrid Cloud and AI strategy and aims to empower partners to help clients automate, secure and modernize their businesses.

IBM Partner Plus offers partners a transparent, simple and modern experience. By growing technical expertise and demonstrating sales success, participants can progress to three tiers – Silver, Gold and Platinum – which unlock specialized financial, go-to-market support and education benefits. In the new program, badging will become the standardized measure of skills and validated solutions will demonstrate expertise. The enhanced IBM Partner Portal consolidates and tracks all expertise, revenue and deals globally, offering each partner a clear line-of-site into their progression through the program.

“IBM Partner Plus introduces a new way for IBM to deliver value to new and existing partners by helping them gain skills, grow faster and earn more,” said Kate Woolley, General Manager, IBM Ecosystem. “We’ve heard from partners that they want a simplified experience that helps them win with clients. I’m confident these changes and our continued investment in our ecosystem will make IBM the partner of choice across the industry, and together we can drive growth for partners, clients, and IBM.”

IBM Partner Plus results from the company’s journey to put partners at the center of IBM’s go-to-market strategy and act as a growth engine to help capture the $1 trillion hybrid cloud and AI market opportunities. IBM has invested in elevating the role of partners and accelerating partner-led sales by enabling the ecosystem to become a preferred route to market, offering clients an optimal mix of technology, services and consulting expertise. To drive continued growth, IBM will increase its capacity to support partners by doubling the number of partner-facing brand and technical specialists to help them prospect and win additional client business.

“The new IBM Partner Plus program provides an enhanced experience that sets our company up for success by offering employees access to skills and opportunities, so we can help more clients utilize IBM’s technology portfolio to modernize their operations,” said Bo Gebbie, President, Evolving Solutions. “IBM is more serious than ever about putting partners first. They’ve listened to our feedback, and it is reflected in the new partner experience that makes it easy for us to collaborate, rewards our investments and fuel growth.”

IBM Partner Plus brings all partner types and programs together – whether they sell, build on or with, and/or provide services for IBM technology – into one integrated ecosystem. For example, to help broaden the market opportunity and create new revenue streams for its ecosystem, IBM recently enabled partners in North America to resell IBM products through other cloud marketplaces. This allows for independent software vendors to embed IBM Software from partner marketplaces into their own solutions. All partner sales through the marketplace accumulate towards their progression in IBM Partner Plus.

Competitive incentives
Partners can advance through tiers to unlock benefits and demand generation programs which could offer them up to a threefold increase in total investment from IBM. The IBM Partner Portal gives partners real-time visibility into the incentives they are eligible for, predictability into potential earnings and includes an automated deal share engine that helps them surface quality leads. This has improved deal registration and introduced partners to more than 7,000 potential deals valued at over half a billion dollars globally.* IBM investments in co-marketing campaigns and co-sell support with partners can also help bring solutions to market and generate demand.

Insider access
IBM Partner Plus builds on the successful release of its October badging and selling enablement materials to partners, which has driven more than 15,000 partner enrollments in sales and technical badges. Offering partners the training, enablement, and experiential selling resources available to IBMers at no cost can help better equip them to win with clients. Additionally, access to IBM’s seller tools can help them generate competitive and transparent pricing. Partners can also attend IBM’s quarterly Sales Kickoffs together with IBM sellers and participate in live training sessions and other global technical advocacy events to help upskill, increase eminence, and engage with technical experts. For new partners, IBM is launching the IBM New Partner Accelerator, which provides onboarding, training and other benefits during their first six months in the program to help accelerate their path to profitability.

Enhanced support and benefits
Partners can grow skills, develop solutions and build sales expertise with technologies like AI, security and cloud on an open hybrid cloud platform by leveraging technical experts from IBM. IBM will also assist partners in the development of minimal viable products, proofs of concept, and custom demos to help them win client business and accelerate growth. In addition, as partner businesses grow with IBM, they can unlock additional benefits designed to help them expand capabilities and find new clients.

PartnerWorld will transition to a new IBM Partner Plus experience on January 4, 2023, with the new incentive program taking effect on April 1, 2023. Registered PartnerWorld members will maintain their current tier through July 1, 2023 and can progress to the new tiering system during this time as they meet criteria.

For more details on IBM Partner Plus, please visit: https://www.ibm.com/partnerplus/

Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and represent goals and objectives only.

*Proprietary metrics obtained from IBM sales data, January 2022–August 2022

ARMONK, N.Y., Dec. 15, 2022 — Today, IBM announced it is working with the Cloud Security Alliance — a global not-for-profit dedicated to defining standards, certifications, and best practices to help ensure secured cloud computing — that aims to further advance security and risk management of cloud within financial services.

Building on IBM’s mission to reduce risk for the industry with resiliency, security, compliance and perfromance at the forefront, the IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services is designed to help clients automate their security and compliance posture. The framework is central to IBM Cloud for Financial Services, a first-of-its-kind cloud with built-in security and compliance controls to help clients as they work to mitigate risk, tackle ongoing regulations and accelerate cloud adoption. It has been mapped to the Cloud Security Alliance’s Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM) – a cybersecurity control framework for cloud computing, which can help clients to drive innovation faster while addressing third and fourth party risk in cloud. With the alignment, organizations that have adopted CSA’s controls can now use services or transact with SaaS providers on IBM Cloud for Financial Services with confidence.

“As global regulations continue to evolve, it’s critical for all organizations to adhere to changing requirements while operating in a secured cloud environment – but this is even more critical for highly regulated industries such as financial services,” said Jim Reavis, CEO of Cloud Security Alliance. “With its long history and deep expertise working with some of the world’s most well-known financial services organizations on their modernization journeys, IBM understands the importance of establishing a highly secured hybrid, multicloud architecture that can allow organizations to host workloads wherever they need to be. Together, we aim to help financial services organizations drive growth and reduce systemic risk with a more secured cloud landscape and by empowering them to address evolving regulations globally – from DORA to data sovereignty.

Collective intelligence aims to reduce financial services risk  
Designed specifically for financial regulated industries, IBM Cloud for Financial Services was introduced in 2019 in collaboration with partner banks including Bank of America and BNP Paribas. It aims to help financial services organizations address the industry’s unique cybersecurity, regulatory and operational requirements, while providing the benefits and flexibility of the cloud in a secured environment.

Leveraging the collective intelligence of the IBM Financial Services Cloud Council – a network of more than 120 financial services CIOs, CTOs, and Risk and Compliance officers such as Banco Bradesco, Nationwide, Banco Sabadell, Virgin Money and MUFG – the platform includes industry-informed and built-in controls that can help financial institutions meet their security and compliance requirements of this highly regulated industry. These industry-informed controls are not IBM’s – they are the industry’s collective controls. While IBM Cloud has implemented these controls as part of IBM Cloud for Financial Services, it has also made them available for clients to use on multiple clouds (public or private) – through managing workloads with IBM Cloud Satellite and monitoring their compliance through the IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center.

“As organizations strive to keep up with the latest regulatory requirements and evolving data sovereignty laws, security and compliance are at the core of our approach. We are on a mission to be the world’s most resilient, secure, compliant and preformant cloud, which is why many of the world’s major financial services organizations have worked with us over multiple decades,” said Howard Boville, Head of IBM Cloud Platform. “IBM Cloud for Financial Services is specifically designed for highly regulated workloads, allowing financial services and other regulated industries to host applications and workloads in the cloud with confidence while addressing third and fourth party risk throughout their supply chains. As we continue our mission to help reduce risk in financial services, through our work with the Cloud Security Alliance, today we can demonstrate alignment to their Cloud Controls Matrix, a globally recognized standard for the industry.” 

Leading with security and compliance as the stringent regulatory landscape evolves
With regulations continuing to evolve, financial services organizations must prioritize security and compliance to keep up with the demands of new requirements. However, maintaining security and compliance requirements should not come at the price of innovation. The IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center aims to help financial services reduce the amount of time and money spent on maintaining compliance by enabling them to monitor and demonstrate their compliance efforts in the cloud and allowing them to free up resources to drive innovation. The offering includes capabilities to monitor security posture with built-in controls and profiles to help clients adhere to industry requirements such as CSA’s CCM and enables clients to proactively monitor their compliance posture.

IBM Cloud for Financial Services also includes IBM’s innovative confidential computing capabilities and encryption technology to help ensure clients data remains their data only – even IBM cannot access it. IBM will continue to collaborate with organizations, such as the CSA, to help clients drive innovation while monitoring their regulatory and security posture.

Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.

TOKYO, Dec. 12, 2022 — IBM and Rapidus today announced a joint development partnership to advance logic scaling technology as part of Japan’s initiatives to become a global leader in semiconductor research, development, and manufacturing.

Rapidus Corporation researches, develops, designs, manufactures, and sells advanced logic semiconductors, and was established with the endorsement of major Japanese companies. As part of this agreement, Rapidus and IBM will further develop IBM’s breakthrough 2 nanometer (nm) node technology for implementation by Rapidus at its fab in Japan.

This work will leverage IBM’s decades of expertise in semiconductor research and design. In 2021, IBM announced that it had developed the world’s first 2 nm node chip, which is projected to achieve 45% better performance or 75% more energy efficiency than leading 7 nm chips. IBM has a long history of successful joint development partnerships with Japanese semiconductor manufacturers in advanced logic and memory technology, as well as Japanese equipment and material suppliers.

“It is my great pleasure to announce today that Rapidus has officially partnered with IBM for the joint development of 2 nm node technology,” said Atsuyoshi Koike, President and CEO of Rapidus. “This is a long-desired international collaboration, truly essential for Japan to once again play a vital role in the semiconductor supply chain. I am fully confident that this collaboration will pave the way for our goal of contribution to the well-being of humanity through advanced logic semiconductors produced with technologies jointly developed with IBM.”

“IBM is honored to be partnering with Rapidus on developing the next generation of semiconductor technologies and helping to position Japan as a leader in one of the world’s most strategic technology areas,” said Darío Gil, SVP and Director of Research at IBM. “This collaboration is critical to ensure a geographically balanced global supply chain of advanced semiconductors, built through a vibrant ecosystem of like-minded companies and nations.”

As part of this agreement, Rapidus scientists and engineers will work alongside IBM Japan and IBM researchers at the Albany NanoTech Complex owned and operated by NY CREATES in Albany, New York – one of the world’s most advanced semiconductor research facilities. Rapidus is the latest entity to join the Albany NanoTech Complex ecosystem, which includes IBM, Applied Materials, Samsung Electronics, Tokyo Electron, SCREEN, JSR, the State University of New York (SUNY), and others.

Rapidus is planning to deploy differentiated strategies in manufacturing, including automation and efficiency, to ensure speed to market and competitiveness. This 2 nm technology is intended to be market-leading and will be compatible with industry standard offerings. Rapidus expects to start mass-production of its 2 nm technology in the latter half of the 2020s.

ARMONK, N.Y., Oct. 4, 2022 — IBM announced today it will add Red Hat storage product roadmaps and Red Hat associate teams to the IBM Storage business unit, bringing consistent application and data storage across on-premises infrastructure and cloud.

With the move, IBM will integrate the storage technologies from Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) as the foundation for IBM Spectrum Fusion. This combines IBM and Red Hat’s container storage technologies for data services and helps accelerate IBM’s capabilities in the burgeoning Kubernetes platform market.

In addition, IBM intends to offer new Ceph solutions delivering a unified and software defined storage platform that bridges the architectural divide between the data center and cloud providers. This further advances IBM’s leadership in the software defined storage and Kubernetes platform markets.

According to Gartner, by 2025, 60% of infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders will implement at least one of the hybrid cloud storage architectures, which is a significant increase from 20% in 2022.1 IBM’s software defined storage strategy is to take a “born in the cloud, for the cloud” approach—unlocking bi-directional application and data mobility based on a shared, secure, and cloud-scale software defined storage foundation.

“Red Hat and IBM have been working closely for many years, and today’s announcement enhances our partnership and streamlines our portfolios,” said Denis Kennelly, general manager of IBM Storage, IBM Systems. “By bringing together the teams and integrating our products under one roof, we are accelerating the IBM’s hybrid cloud storage strategy while maintaining commitments to Red Hat customers and the open-source community.”

“Red Hat and IBM have a shared belief in the mission of hybrid cloud-native storage and its potential to help customers transform their applications and data,” said Joe Fernandes, vice president of hybrid platforms, Red Hat. “With IBM Storage taking stewardship of Red Hat Ceph Storage and OpenShift Data Foundation, IBM will help accelerate open-source storage innovation and expand the market opportunity beyond what each of us could deliver on our own. We believe this is a clear win for customers who can gain a more comprehensive platform with new hybrid cloud-native storage capabilities.”

As customers formulate their hybrid cloud strategies, critical to success is the emphasis and importance of infrastructure consistency, application agility, IT management and flexible consumption consistency as deciding factors to bridge across on-premises and cloud deployments.

With these changes to the IBM portfolio, clients will have access to a consistent set of storage services while preserving data resilience, security, and governance across bare metal, virtualized and containerized environments. Some of the many benefits of the software defined portfolio available from IBM will include:

A unified storage experience for all containerized apps running on Red Hat OpenShift: Customers can use IBM Spectrum Fusion (now with Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation) to achieve the highest levels of performance, scale, automation, data protection, and data security for production applications running on OpenShift that require block, file, and/or object access to data. This enables development teams to focus on the apps, not the ops, with infrastructure-as-code designed for simplified, automated managing and provisioning.
A consistent hybrid cloud experience at enterprise levels of scale and resiliency with IBM Ceph: Customers can deliver their private and hybrid cloud architectures on IBM’s unified and software defined storage solution, providing capacity and management features. Capabilities include data protection, disaster recovery, high availability, security, auto-scaling, and self-healing portability, that are not tied to hardware, and travel with the data as it moves between on-premises and cloud environments.
A single data lakehouse to aggregate and derive intelligence from unstructured data on IBM Spectrum Scale: Customers can address the challenges that often come with quickly scaling a centralized data approach with a single platform to support data-intensive workloads such as AI/ML, high performance computing, and others. Benefits can include less time and effort to administer, reduced data movement and redundancy, direct access to data for analytics tools, advanced schema management and data governance, all supported by distributed file and object storage engineered to be cost effective.
Build in the cloud, deploy on-premises with automation: Customers can move developed applications from the cloud to on-premises services, automate the creation of staging environments to test deployment procedures, validate configuration changes, database schema and data updates, and ready package updates to overcome obstacles in production or correct errors before they become a problem that affects business operations.
“IBM and Red Hat speaking with one voice on storage is delivering the synergies derived from IBM’s Red Hat acquisition,” said Ashish Nadkarni, group vice president and general manager, Infrastructure Systems at IDC. “The combining of the two storage teams is a win for IT organizations as it brings together the best that both offer: An industry-leading storage systems portfolio meets an industry-leading software-defined data services offering. This initiative enables IBM and Red Hat to streamline their family of offerings, passing the benefits to their customers. It also helps accelerate innovation in storage to solve the data challenges for hybrid cloud, all while maintaining their commitment to open source.”

Preserving commitment to Red Hat clients and the community

Under the agreement between IBM and Red Hat, IBM will assume Premier Sponsorship of the Ceph Foundation, whose members collaborate to drive innovation, development, marketing, and community events for the Ceph open-source project. IBM Ceph and Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation will remain 100% open source and will continue to follow an upstream-first model, reinforcing IBM’s commitment to these vital communities. Participation by the Ceph leadership team and other aspects of the open-source project is a key IBM priority to maintain and nurture ongoing Red Hat innovation.

Red Hat and IBM intend to complete the transition by January 1, 2023, which will involve the transfer of storage roadmaps and Red Hat associates to the IBM Storage business unit. Following this date, Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus will continue to include OpenShift Data Foundation, sold by Red Hat and its partners. Additionally, Red Hat OpenStack customers will still be able to buy Red Hat Ceph Storage from Red Hat and its partners. Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat OpenStack customers with existing subscriptions will be able to maintain and grow their storage footprints as needed, with no change in their Red Hat relationship.

Forthcoming IBM Ceph and IBM Spectrum Fusion storage solutions based on Ceph are expected to ship beginning in the first half of 2023.

Read more about today’s news in this blog from Denis Kennelly, general manager of IBM Storage, IBM Systems: “IBM + Red Hat: Doubling Down on Hybrid Cloud Storage”

Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and represent goals and objectives only. Red Hat, Ceph, Gluster and OpenShift are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries.

ARMONK, N.Y., Sept. 28, 2022 — New global market research from IBM revealed that more than 77% of respondents have adopted a hybrid cloud approach which can help drive digital transformation, yet the majority of responding organizations are struggling with the complexity to make all their cloud environments work together. As organizations face skills gaps, security challenges and compliance obstacles, less than one quarter of respondents across the globe manage their hybrid cloud environments holistically – which can create blind spots and put data at risk.

The IBM Transformation Index: State of Cloud commissioned by IBM and conducted by independent research firm, The Harris Poll, was created to help organizations map their cloud transformation and empower them to self-classify their progress. Built on a foundation that leverages insights from experienced cloud professionals, enterprises can use the Index to gain measurable metrics that can help quantify their progress and uncover areas of opportunity and growth. The Index consisted of more than 3,000 business and technology decision-makers from 12 countries and across 15 industries including financial services, manufacturing, government, telecommunications and healthcare, to understand where organizations are advancing, or merely emerging, on their transformation journeys.

The Index points to a strong correlation between hybrid cloud adoption and progress in digital transformation. In fact, 71% of those surveyed think it’s difficult to realize the full potential of a digital transformation without having a solid hybrid cloud strategy in place. At the same time, only 27% of those surveyed possess the necessary characteristics to be considered as “advanced” in their transformation. So, why the disconnect? A sampling of findings include:

Compliance: Businesses believe ensuring compliance in the cloud is currently too difficult – especially as we see enforcement of regulatory and compliance requirements heat up across the globe.
Security: While businesses have embraced a variety of security techniques to secure workloads in the cloud, concerns about security still remain.
Skills: As organizations face the realities of a talent shortage, they are failing to implement a holistic hybrid cloud strategy – which can create gaps in security and compliance and cause risk across cloud environments.

“As we see regulatory requirements grow across the globe, compliance is top of mind for business leaders. This concern is even greater for those in highly regulated industries. Yet at the same time, they are facing a growing threat landscape – one that demands holistic management of their multicloud environments to avoid the risks of a Frankencloud – an environment that’s so disconnected, it’s difficult to navigate and can be nearly impossible to secure, particularly against third and fourth party risks,” said Howard Boville, Head of IBM Cloud Platform. “An integration strategy to bring together these different piece parts is what we believe separates the leaders from the rest of the pack – the alternative is to pay the price of the Frankencloud.”

“The key value of cloud for businesses is rapid access to innovative technologies, data sources, and applications required to navigate current disruptions and transform businesses. No individual cloud can address all of an enterprise’s requirements, so they must be able to use and effectively control hybrid cloud assets across many locations. IBM with its focus on providing a holistic hybrid cloud strategy is well positioned to help organizations address the security, data management and compliance complexities that can prevent them from taking full advantage of cloud innovation,” says Rick Villars, Group Vice President of Worldwide Research at IDC.

The 2022 IBM Transformation Index: State of Cloud revealed:

Lack of the right skills is inhibiting progress
When it comes to managing their cloud applications, 69% of respondents say their team lacks the skills needed to be proficient. This is a major roadblock to innovation, with more than a quarter of respondents saying skills and talent shortages are impeding their business’s cloud objectives. The effects don’t stop here – these limitations are also preventing organizations from leveraging the power of partnerships. More than one-third of respondents say a lack of technical skills is holding them back from integrating ecosystem partners into cloud environments. This challenge is even greater in the US, where nearly 40% admit to this lack of skills – pointing to the need for talent.

Exposure to cyberthreats continues to lurk despite embracing security techniques
While more than 90% of responding financial services, telecommunications and government organizations have adopted security tools such as confidential computing capabilities, multifactor authentication and more, gaps remain that are preventing organizations from driving innovation. In fact, 32% of overall respondents cite security as the top barrier for integrated workloads across environments and more than one quarter of respondents agree security concerns present a roadblock to achieving their cloud business goals.

Security concerns can even hold organizations back from unlocking the full potential of partnerships. As potential security gaps can cause third and fourth party risks to loom, respondents say data governance (49%) and cybersecurity (47%) are the top challenges to fully integrating their business ecosystem into the cloud. In Brazil, cyberthreats are an even greater concern to ecosystem innovation — 51% say cybersecurity risks pose a major challenge for businesses that want to integrate business ecosystem partners into cloud environments.

Regulatory and compliance requirements remain center stage causing businesses to pause
With regulations on the rise, so too are compliance challenges. 53% of respondents believe that ensuring compliance in the cloud is currently too difficult and nearly one-third cite regulatory compliance issues as a key barrier for integrating workloads across private and public IT environments. In financial services, for example, more than a quarter of respondents agree that meeting industry requirements is holding them back from fully achieving their cloud objectives. These challenges span the globe and are especially prevalent in countries such as Singapore, China, India and Japan.

Based on the Index, IBM will launch an interactive tool to serve as a continual source of feedback for organizations to measure their transformation progress. With the ability to help companies assess how they fare against others, the tool will allow them to identify areas where transformation is stalled and where it may be excelling – unlocking the ability to diagnose and act with efficiency even against the real-world of complexity of cloud transformation.

IBM will make the IBM Transformation Index: State of Cloud tool publicly available in the coming months, aiming to provide business leaders with valuable benchmarking insights that can inform their hybrid cloud strategies. The IBM Institute for Business Value also published a new report, “A Comparative Look at Enterprise Cloud Strategy” with an action guide for how leaders can use the Index to help advance their organizations’ digital transformation.

Methodology:
This survey was conducted online in 12 countries (US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, India, Japan, China, Brazil, Spain, Singapore, Australia) by The Harris Poll on behalf of IBM from June 8th, 2022 to July 17th, 2022. The survey was conducted among 3,014 IT and business professionals in companies with annual revenue over $500M who have deep knowledge of their organization’s Cloud strategy. The IBM Transformation Index: State of Cloud was developed by combining the data from 25+ question batteries of various formats across 9 Cloud-related dimensions that were informed by input from industry experts.