Next chapter of digital reinvention will be enterprise-driven: Ginni Rometty

The Think Leadership forum, an IBM Innovation Exchange, hosted in Mumbai, witnessed discussions on the breadth and depth of technology and business that showcased how companies are successfully infusing technologies, putting smart to work with IBM. The agenda focused on ‘Reinventing Business with Next-generation Technologies’ as companies of every size, in every industry, are in the midst of a decades-long journey towards digital reinvention.

Sessions across cloud, AI, data, analytics and infrastructure demonstrated the pathway to redefined workflows for data driven competitive advantage.

Ginni Rometty, Chairman, President & CEO, IBM spoke about how clients are now at the beginning of Chapter Two of their transformations, which will be characterised by enterprise-driven innovation. This includes scaling digital and AI and embedding those technologies into all aspects of an enterprise. It includes driving core systems and applications to hybrid clouds. And it includes new efforts to improve trust and transparency and to prepare society by building the skills that will ensure that the many, not just the few, can participate in tech’s next era.

Rometty said, “’The first chapter has been defined largely by experimenting with narrow and disparate AI applications and moving simple workloads — typically consumer and customer-facing applications — to the cloud. Now, we are beginning to see the contours of Chapter Two among pioneering businesses: moving from experimentation to true business transformation at scale with AI and hybrid cloud. This next chapter of digital reinvention will be enterprise-driven. Underpinning it all is the growing importance of trust, both in technologies and in their impact on the world.”

Speakers at The Think Leadership included several industry thought leaders including Madhivanan Balakrishnan, Chief Technology & Digital Officer, ICICI Bank; Vishant Vora, Chief Technology Officer, Vodafone Idea; Vineet Gautam, CEO, Bestseller India and Ravishankar Mantha, Founder/ CEO, AgRisk Data Analytics who have collaborated with IBM to drive digital transformation across their organisations.

Amongst key technologies demoed at the Expo Zone was the IBM Project Debator, the first AI system that can debate humans on complex topics. The goal of Project Debator is to help people build persuasive arguments and make well-informed decisions.