IBM has expanded its partnership with AWS to support more mutual clients as they operationalize generative AI (GenAI).
For starters, this will focus on the delivery of three specific solutions: Contact Center Modernization with Amazon Connect, Platform Services on AWS, and Supply Chain Ensemble on AWS.
IBM Consulting and AWS worked together to release the first solution in July. It auto-summarizes and -categorizes voice and digital customer conversations using GenAI.
Such use cases can streamline post-contact processing work for contact center agents and afford service operations greater visibility into their demand drivers.
Yet, IBM notes how the solution also supports escalations from live and virtual agents to supervisors, giving the latter a clear-cut summary of the conversation so far. That allows them to pick up the interaction from where it left off.
Meanwhile, AWS has released further Gen AI solutions for Amazon Connect, going beyond agent-assist use cases to include manager-assist and customer self-service applications.
IBM consultants can work with AWS customers to implement these tools too.
The extended partnership, however, goes much further beyond the confines of the contact center, with the aforementioned Platform Services and Supply Chain GenAI focuses also coming into play.
Discussing the value of all this GenAI innovation, Manish Goyal, Senior Partner, Global AI & Analytics Leader at IBM Consulting, stated:
“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.”
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.
To better power the applications – alongside other AI models – IBM will also lift watsonx.data, a fit-for-purpose data store built on an open lakehouse architecture, onto AWS.
Moreover, it plans to make watsonx.ai and watsonx.governance available on AWS in 2024.
Rounding off, Chris Niederman, Managing Director of Global Systems Integrators at AWS, added:
We are excited to be working with IBM to include embedded generative AI capabilities that assist our mutual customers scale their applications – and help IBM consultants deepen their expertise on best practices for customer engagement with AWS generative AI services.
The Future of the IBM & AWS Partnership
IBM Consulting aims to coach, skill, and support 10,000 consultants on AWS generative AI services before 2024 comes to a close.
These consultants will also gain access to a program that provides training on the most popular use cases of AWS’ GenAI services.
Moreover, the enterprise tech juggernauts plan to deliver more joint solutions and service upgrades designed to help mutual clients deploy those crucial use cases.
With all this cooperation, IBM becomes the latest big-name provider to deepen its relationship with AWS, greater exploiting the opportunities within the CX space and beyond.
Other excellent examples include AWS’s joint ventures with Twilio and RingCentral, established in the name of predictive AI and UCaaS-CCaaS consolidation, respectively.
