During AWS re:Invent, IBM and AWS will unveil new milestones in their collaboration to help businesses adopt responsible AI.
By John Epperly, global MD: AWS partnership at IBM, and Mahmoud Elmashmi, managing partner: strategic partnerships at IBM Consulting
Together, we are combining our strengths to ensure that organisations can harness the power of generative AI (GenAI) with an emphasis on transparency, security and trust.
At the heart of IBM’s generative AI strategy is enabling customers to get the most from data across their enterprise through the combination of open-source technology and a connected ecosystem spanning multiple models, tools and applications across diverse platforms. Working with AWS, we’re optimising how our technology works in AWS environments – across Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock, as well as infrastructure and application layers.
We are also being very intentional about delivering what customers want most — our high-performing Granite models built for business, and governance capabilities to advance the right projects with confidence. Meanwhile, IBM Business Partners are supporting our joint customers from pilot to production, and in the process providing differentiated value to customers, while selling IBM software on AWS Marketplace.
Next week at AWS re:Invent, we’ll showcase some of the ways we are advancing enterprise-grade AI tailored to specific business needs. Highlights of our news include IBM Granite models available on Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker JumpStart. We’re also building on our existing partnership by launching powerful new integrations between IBM watsonx.governance and Amazon SageMaker, as well as other new security, data and automation capabilities – such as full stack observability for Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker with IBM Instana.
“IBM is one of our largest partners for both technology and consulting, and together we are at the forefront of enabling the democratization of AI,” says Chris Grusz, MD: technology partnerships at AWS. “IBM has gone far beyond making their technology available on our platforms, they are prioritising integration with AWS at each layer of the AI stack, making it easier for our mutual customers to choose the technology that best fits their needs and benefit from responsible AI in new ways.”
Driving Responsible AI with IBM Granite Models on Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker
As enterprises scale the use of AI across their business, it becomes increasingly imperative to select the right model. The IBM Granite series of open, enterprise-grade foundation models empower AWS customers to scale their AI journey with trusted, high-performance, and cost-efficient models tailored to their specific business need. IBM Granite code models are available today on Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker JumpStart. And just in time for AWS re:Invent, our latest Granite 3.0 models are now available on SageMaker as well.
To further our partnership and add more optionality for customers when it comes to compute resources, Granite models are now supported by AWS Neuron to run deep learning workloads on AWS Inferentia and AWS Trainium based instances. Looking ahead, we’re exploring watsonx support for Trainium2, the latest generation of AWS AI chips which are purpose-built for high performance training and inferencing – providing customers more choice of compute power to meet their evolving AI and machine learning needs.
Here’s a preview of some of the other exciting developments we’ll be showcasing at AWS re:Invent this year.
Embedding Governance, Security and Observability into the AI Lifecycle
Most every AI discussion today begins with the question of security and trust. Working with AWS, we’ve made governance an enabler of AI, providing the insight and explainability needed to help projects scale and move forward with confidence on both Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock.
We’re also ensuring our automation portfolio is optimized to help organizations prioritize, streamline and increase operational efficiency to ensure AI projects deliver value.
- Expanded Capabilities for IBM watsonx.governance and Amazon SageMaker: Already integrated with Amazon SageMaker, IBM watsonx.governance offers a comprehensive framework to govern the entire AI model lifecycle. In December, IBM and AWS plan to deliver a new streamlined user experience that directly integrates the watsonx.governance console with SageMaker, offering customizable risk assessment and model approval workflow. Customers will be able to share vital information about models from Amazon SageMaker Model Registry directly to create a unified workflow for governing AI operations.
- IBM Guardium AI Security SaaS offering available: Now available on AWS Marketplace, IBM Guardium AI Security helps discover AI deployments, address compliance, mitigate vulnerabilities, and protect sensitive data in AI pipelines through a common view of data assets. IBM Guardium AI Security discovers “shadow AI” and integrates with IBM watsonx.governance to help organizations govern, secure and monitor their AI in one unified experience.
- Preview of IBM Instana Generative AI Observability to Help Optimize AI-Based Applications: IBM Instana Generative AI Observability on AWS delivers advanced observability for Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker to ensure seamless operations and enhanced reliability of generative AI applications on AWS. IBM Instana automated resource optimization powered by IBM Turbonomic helps organizations proactively improve performance, ensuring applications are dynamically resourced while minimizing waste and reducing cloud spend. Additionally, IBM Instana has extended support for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services and Elastic Cloud Services, offering customers automated full stack observability and intelligent remediation.
- Preview of New IBM Concert and IBM Instana capabilities: Designed to improve application resiliency by highlighting opportunities to improve operational excellence and best practices, IBM Concert provides generative AI-driven insights across AWS platforms and applications to identify, predict and suggest fixes for problems within application environments across risk and resiliency. This new capability will be available in early 2025.
- Newly Launched IBM Autonomous Security for Cloud (ASC): Available globally in December, IBM ASC is an AI-powered solution from IBM Consulting that automates cloud security management and decision-making to help minimize risk for organizations accelerating their cloud journey on AWS environments. It leverages Amazon Bedrock generative AI technology and its capabilities.
IBM Consulting Expertise to Help Scale Generative AI
As an AWS Premier Tier partner and an AWS Generative AI Competency partner, IBM Consulting remains committed to deepening its expertise in AI technologies powered by AWS including Amazon Bedrock, Amazon SageMaker JumpStart, and Amazon Q and AWS AI chips. At AWS re:Invent, IBM Consulting will demonstrate how the power of generative AI strengthens existing joint solutions including IBM Consulting Contact Center Intelligence, IBM Consulting AIOps on AWS, IBM Consulting Digital KYC, and IBM Consulting Supply Chain Ensemble.
IBM Consulting will also showcase how they are helping develop custom solutions using Amazon Q to meet specific business needs including creating new applications, integrating Amazon Q into existing systems, or developing custom APIs.
AWS Marketplace Drives Growth and Customer Adoption
IBM offers a comprehensive suite of software products and consulting offerings on the AWS Marketplace. Customers can now choose to buy from trusted IBM Business Partners on AWS Marketplace in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States in addition to buying direct on the Marketplace.