The artificial intelligence landscape is rapidly evolving, with a heightened emphasis on the adoption of generative AI within enterprises. Business leaders worldwide are actively seeking to harness the potential of generative AI for its innovative data-driven insights, potential to improve business efficiency and ability to offer enhanced connectivity.
AI impacts businesses in nearly every industry — and the pace of adoption continues to accelerate.
“Businesses need data observability, the ability to trust the data they are feeding into these algorithms, demonstrate where that data came from, meet regulatory requirements and ensure the data is secure,” said Stephen Leonard, SVP of Global Strategic Alliances at Kyndryl. “A lot of customers don’t have all those capabilities. It is sort of like building a house: It is better to build from the foundation up, rather than try to put the foundation in later.”
Using a responsible AI approach, Kyndryl is focused on building strong and enduring technology alliances that benefit customers and partners.
Here, Leonard and Doug Armbrust, Vice President of Alliances at Kyndryl, discuss the importance of partnerships with hyperscalers and how such alliances can help businesses implement and scale AI responsibly.
How can Kyndryl’s partnerships with hyperscalers help businesses use AI?
Armbrust: In the AI industry, a select few companies hold significant sway, and Kyndryl has aligned itself with some top-tier players, such as Microsoft, Google Cloud and AWS. With Microsoft, we stand out as one of the trusted partners that is facilitating the implementation of Copilot, a manifestation of advanced technology that’s available today. Some of our other recent collaborations include a significant mainframe collaboration with AWS, migrating data to a cloud environment — particularly for generative AI applications; Kyndryl and AWS also created a center of excellence. And we recently expanded our partnership with Google Cloud, which focuses on coupling Google Cloud’s in-house AI capabilities such as Gemini with Kyndryl’s expertise and managed services to develop and deploy generative AI solutions for customers.
Leonard: We operate at a crucial intersection, managing datasets and the surrounding IT infrastructure, and ensuring key capabilities such as data observability, trustworthiness, regulatory compliance, rapid recovery from cyber events and robust data security. These are the foundational building blocks for a successful and achievable AI journey strategy. Many customers lack these capabilities, and embarking on the AI journey without them can lead to troubling challenges that impact the business.
Kyndryl's AI momentum
There is strong interest in developing and scaling generative AI responsibly. How can Kyndryl’s robust ecosystem help?
Armbrust: Partnering involves several dimensions. Each partner has its own established approach to this pursuit. As providers of mission-critical systems, we are well versed in our customers' technology deployment requirements and data considerations. Our cautious initial steps were taken to help meet these needs, allowing us to align our understanding with the starting points of our technology partners. This process, undertaken before any public announcements, aimed to establish comfort in how we integrate and bring their technologies to customers, adhering to our own rigorous standards.
Leonard: Leveraging our processes, methodologies and expertise, we effectively harness the capabilities embedded in their products so that the implementation of responsible AI aligns with specified requirements. This extends beyond the deployment phase, encompassing operational aspects, management practices and systems setup. Consider the intricate layers of technology and diverse suppliers in this landscape; our role involves orchestrating these, ensuring they harmonize and work cohesively to achieve a unified and effective system.
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Businesses need data observability, the ability to trust the data they are feeding into these algorithms, demonstrate where that data came from, meet regulatory requirements and ensure the data is secure.
How does generative AI work within the broader tech ecosystem?
Leonard: Many tech companies are integrating AI capabilities in two key areas: deploying graphics processing units (GPUs) and hardware for on-premises capabilities, and ensuring clients have both on-prem and off-prem options. We actively support these integrations with our partners — and many of our partners are incorporating AI into their products. Our mission is to assist our customers in transitioning to these advanced platforms. This integration involves both platform upgrades for the customer’s benefit and by using Kyndryl Bridge, a powerful way to tap into operational and service capabilities embedded in partner platforms.
