THE TECHNOLOGY INTERVIEW
and it ’ s a real step forward in our approach to the ecosystem . We are very reliant on a vibrant ecosystem . If you own three DIY shops and you want to implement AI , you need a partner around the corner whom you can contact and can support you . And so , we absolutely need a vibrant ecosystem of partners , from the large to the very small .
We partner extensively with people you might think are competition : AWS , Microsoft Azure , Adobe , SAP , all the way down to small mom-and-pop shop partners . It creates a model where we incentivise them to get certified in our programmes and that gives more of a pull factor . We also now have a number of our products and services available online and we are able to pass leads directly to those partners now .
We also recently announced for the UK market the availability of the majority of IBM software and products in the AWS marketplace , as an example . So it just gives customers more flexibility . We know that clients across the patch will want to work with multiple vendors . It ’ s perfectly natural and our aim is to support them as best as possible in that .
Q . WHAT DOES THE FUTURE LOOK LIKE WHEN IT COMES TO AI AT IBM ?
» One of the things we will continue to do is make sure our business is first and best and making sure we ’ re applying that technology and making ourselves more productive and giving our employees a better and better experience .
We are very active in building an ecosystem . If you think about the UK market specifically , the UK is third only to the US and China in terms of AI capability and AI startups .
Where we are not always so good is the adoption of that technology . And so , success for me in this market looks like making sure that we have sufficient capability and capacity in our channel to drive that adoption to make sure everyone ’ s skilled and able to take the technology on and move through to advancement .
As you think about the evolution of the workforce and how you help society make the best use of AI , I think we all in the tech industry – including IBM – have a very big part to play in making sure we skill up the population . All of our jobs will adapt . We need to be able to interact with AI systems
22 December 2023