IBM expands AWS partnership to bring generative AI to call centers, supply chains

IBM Consulting, the professional services arm of IBM, today announced the plan to expand its partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and re-engineer their joint solutions for enterprise clients with generative AI, targeting three areas to start: contact centers, cloud value chain and supply chain.

“Enterprise clients are looking for expert help to build a strategy and develop generative AI use cases that can drive business value and transformation — while mitigating risks,” said Manish Goyal, senior partner and global AI & analytics leader at IBM Consulting, in a press release statement. “Paired with IBM’s AI heritage and deep expertise in business transformation on AWS, this suite of re-engineered solutions with embedded generative AI capabilities can help our mutual clients to scale generative AI applications rapidly and responsibly on their platform of choice.”

In addition to the GenAI offerings, the company also plans to train as many as 10,000 of its consultants on AWS generative AI services and make watsonx services available on the cloud platform. The latter will make it easier for enterprises to use IBM’s data, AI, and security solutions through AWS.

Key solutions reimagined with generative AI

For contact centers, the companies are upgrading IBM Consulting CCM (contact center modernization), the comprehensive managed service that combines contact center capabilities of Amazon Connect with multiple IBM-specific features like Watson Assistant and omnichannel integration.

IBM said the offering will now use generative AI for summarizing and categorizing voice and digital interactions, simplifying the transfer from a chatbot to a live agent. 

While gen AI-powered CCM will improve contact center operations, IBM Platform Services on AWS will use the technology to help teams better manage the entire cloud value chain, starting from IT Ops and automation to platform engineering. According to the company, generative AI-powered features like intelligent issue resolution and observability will enable users to enhance business serviceability and availability for applications hosted on AWS. 

Similarly, supply chain professionals will get a generative AI-powered virtual assistant on AWS that will accelerate workflows and help them optimize inventories, reduce costs, streamline logistics and assess risks. 

What’s more from IBM and AWS?

Beyond the re-engineered solutions, IBM Consulting plans to make AWS generative AI services, such as Amazon SageMaker, CodeWhisperer and Bedrock, available on its proprietary IBM Consulting Cloud Accelerator to help enterprises modernize on AWS. It also plans to work with the cloud major to train 10,000 of its consultants on the top use cases and best practices for these services by the end of 2024. 

Finally, the company will take its own data and AI to AWS. To do this, watsonx.data, a fit-for-purpose data store built on an open lakehouse architecture, will be made available on the AWS Marketplace as a fully managed SaaS offering. This will be followed with watsonx.ai and watsonx.governance, which will be available on the platform in 2024.