On this episode of the Six Five On the Road, hosts Dave Nicholson and Lisa Martin are joined by IBM’s Brendan Kinkade, Vice President, Strategic Technology Partnerships, for a conversation on enhancing AI performance through IBM’s broader partner strategy.
Their discussion covers:
- IBM’s expansive partner strategy and its successful outcomes
- Insights into joint clients and the challenges they face
- The history and evolution of IBM’s strategic partnerships
- The unique benefits and collaborative synergies between IBM and its partners
- A recap of recent announcements highlighting advancements in AI performance
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TRANSCRIPT
Lisa Martin: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Six Five On the Road from Las Vegas at Dell Tech World 2024, the AI Edition. I’m Lisa Martin, with Dave Nicholson. Dave, we’ve been having some great conversations. We’ve talked a lot about AI.
Dave Nicholson: Yes, we have.
Lisa Martin: We’ve also talked a lot about Dell and its ecosystem, and the depth and the breadth of what they’ve done there over the last 40 years.
Dave Nicholson: Yeah, yeah. Our next guest, frankly, is a great example of, “Wait, what? Wait. Wait, partners? What?”
Lisa Martin: “Shared priorities?”
Dave Nicholson: “When did this happen?”
Lisa Martin: We’ve got Brendan Kinkade with us next. He is the Vice President of Strategic Technology Partnerships at IBM. Great to have you, Brendan. Thank you for joining us.
Brendan Kinkade: Absolutely.
Dave Nicholson: Wait, I’m sorry. IBM?
Brendan Kinkade: IBM.
Lisa Martin: IBM, but there’s shared priorities, so we want to understand this. Enlighten us, Brendan.
Brendan Kinkade: Well, historically you may have viewed IBM and Dell as competitors, but I would say with the evolution of hybrid cloud and AI, we’ve really identified that we have shared priorities there. I would say we’re really working together to harness the power of AI to provide competitive differentiation for our mutual clients.
Lisa Martin: Talk a little bit about some of the collaboration that IBM and Dell have in strategic accounts. We heard a lot from Michael Dell in his keynote about, as I mentioned, AI, the AI edition of Dell Technologies World 2024, AI PCs, what they’re doing in servers and storage and compute with AI, but specifically dive into some of the collaboration and strategic accounts that are really just that for both IBM and Dell.
Brendan Kinkade: Well, first let me set the scene, because I think that the world has shifted. The world has shifted from companies who think about their business and then how AI can help the business to a world where it’s AI first, and that AI becomes the foundation for what they’re going to do with the business. That then, really I would say for the next decade or two, the companies that are going to be leaders are the ones who are AI-first today. That single decision will impact how they operate, how they engage with their clients, how they engage with their own employees, how they work with suppliers.
It enables companies to become value creators with AI, rather than just solely value users. Dell and IBM have seen that shift. I would say both of us have seen that shift, and we really partnered on some very key strategic things to help clients on that journey. I’ll give an example of that. One is IBM. We have built an AI supercomputer to do model training, and that supercomputer went online on April 1st. On May 6th, it delivered the Granite models that were recently announced and shared with the Open Source community.
From start to finish, we’re thinking first server delivery was in December through going online on April 1st, and then producing trained models that are delivered out to the Open Source community. Dell was a key partner in that. We’re platformed on Dell. We’re also using Nvidia cards in that solution, and it’s a testament to the partnership but also to the ability to create together, to execute together, and then ultimately to deliver in a very finite timeline. I mean, in the world of AI, with supply chains what they are, that was a pretty impressive accomplishment to me.
Dave Nicholson: You’ve turned the world on its head with a statement that you just made, and I want to poke at that just for a moment. Traditionally, IT leaders have been counseled to think of the business problem they want to solve, and then seek technology that they can use to leverage in service of the mission’s organization. With AI, which has often been compared to things like electricity, it’s something that can permeate everything, your assertion is, “Build it and figure out what to do with it,” because that sounds like that’s going to be tough for some people to rationalize in terms of an investment if they don’t know what they’re going to do with it. The flip side is you have electricity now. What do you do with it? Do you stick a wire into the horse and hope it makes the horse better? No. It changes everything.
Brendan Kinkade: Right? You don’t stick it into a gas lantern. You stick it into something that it can power, something that it can create value from.
Dave Nicholson: Are you asking these customers to take a certain leap of faith, in the sense that they’re going to be investing in something that isn’t necessarily directly tied to a specific business problem because the promise of AI is so great, or have I mischaracterized that?
Brendan Kinkade: Well, I think that there are a multitude of use cases, right? We’re moving from … and I heard this from an analyst … from automating the routine to mastering the complex with AI. I thought that was a great quote, and really I think that’s the state we’re at now. There are a number of use cases that produce immediate return on investment. IBM ourselves, we use AI to help our HR processes, our support processes. We have an AI assistant. We go into an AskHR, we call it. Many of the tasks for me as a manager are now automated.
You can literally say, “I want to give somebody a promotion,” and go in and enter the information, and it will go through all the processes for you, rather than having a long, drawn-out manual process to do that. It really has increased our productivity and effectiveness. Like I said, a multitude of use cases where there’s immediate impact and value, whether it’s automating backend operations, whether it’s customer success or customer support, whether it’s code development or code generation, and really optimizing that process.
Lisa Martin: You talked about some great broad use cases. What are some of the specific pain points and challenges that IBM and Dell are helping customers across industries, across geographies, to tackle here?
Brendan Kinkade: Both IBM and Dell support some of the largest clients in the world. What we’re seeing is that those clients want to leverage AI, but they want to do it in a hybrid fashion. They are concerned about regulatory compliance, they’re concerned about security, and they’re concerned about latency. They want to deploy generative AI on premises close to where their enterprise data, their crown jewels, reside. Dell and IBM I think have a shared vision in that, in that watsonX runs on premises. We can deploy it safely, securely. We can look across the AI environment and ensure that it is trusted, transparent and auditable. Dell is a trusted infrastructure partner who’s really optimizing solutions for AI to be deployed on premises.
Dave Nicholson: We like to ask people what the biggest challenges are that we see today. Power consumption is the number one overarching concern that people have, because we don’t have the ability to generate the power that’s necessary to fulfill all the demands of AI moving forward. Aside from that, what do you see as challenges? You mentioned one thing. I’m not sure if you were alluding to the idea that there’s a certain amount of education that has to take place in the market, because it’s one thing to say I have a business problem, I want to seek a solution to that business problem. If people have no idea that you can solve these problems with AI, they really need to be educated that these are options today. Do you see that as a challenge moving forward?
Brendan Kinkade: Not really. I think that logic tells us that AI will infuse most applications. I think in the next couple of years, probably 40% of all applications created are going to be smart applications. They’ll have some level of AI infused into it. I’ve been on a couple of tools lately where, surprise, surprise, it asked me if I wanted some AI assistance to help me write what I was writing. It’s already beginning, and I think that companies are rapidly getting on board with that. I work with a lot of partners. Most every partner is looking at their internal use cases. “How can we use this to optimize productivity? How can we use this to streamline efficiency? How can we use it to create more cost-effective ways of doing business, and redirect some of those savings into other, more strategic areas of the business?”
Lisa Martin: I wanted to double-click on that. You talked about the partners that you’re managing, and we’re talking about Dell here, but there’s a much bigger partner strategy at play here at IBM. Help us understand that a bit, from your partner ecosystem, types of partners, partner programs, and some of the outcomes that have already come to fruition.
Brendan Kinkade: Well, IBM launched a new partner program last year called Partner Plus, which has had tremendous uptake with our ecosystem. I think really the strategy of the company is to grow through our ecosystem. That’s one of the key routes to market for IBM, and it’s also a key route to market for our clients. They look to experts in whatever domain it may be, whether it’s manufacturing or industrial or energy. They look for experts in that space that can help them with their own particular problems.
Within IBM, I look after our strategic technology partnerships. That’s a set of partners where we leverage really market and technology synergies to broaden our own portfolio, expand our footprint, our technology footprint, but also to build better, more complete solutions for end customers. We do it by selling with, through and to technology partners. It’s really a 360-degree relationship.
Lisa Martin: You guys had some news come out yesterday. I want to make sure we cover that a little bit and share what that was, why it’s impactful, and some of the feedback that you’ve heard so far.
Brendan Kinkade: It’s a testament to what we’ve been doing in the partnership with Dell. Yesterday, Dell announced APEX AIOps. That is AI-driven, full-stack observability and incident management, sold as software as a service. I’m very proud of what the teams have done together, and it infuses AI by leveraging IBM Instana as the observability component of that solution. It was just announced yesterday. We’re tremendously excited about it, and we’re thrilled to work together with Dell to bring that to clients.
Lisa Martin: A last question for you in our final minute here. You talked about the massive acceleration to what you were able to deliver, ironically on April Fool’s Day, and what you were able to do in just a month and a half from then. Talk about that acceleration, and the expectation that maybe the partnership has or customers have that IBM and Dell are together going to be able to deliver this acceleration that they need to be able to dramatically transform their businesses.
Brendan Kinkade: Well, in addition to the work that my team is doing together with Dell … and other parts of IBM too, because we’re really working with Dell across IBM consulting, IBM research, IBM infrastructure, IBM software and technology lifecycle services, but we’re also working with them through Red Hat. When we talk about AI, there was a recent announcement at Red Hat Summit where Dell joined Red Hat on stage to talk about RHEL AI and OpenShift AI. I’d say we’re covering the gamut, from developers all the way through the enterprise. I think the partnership is just beginning, really, and we’re tremendously excited about where we’re going to go. I would say having shared priorities around hybrid cloud and AI are central to the partnership. I’m really excited about where it’s going to go.
Lisa Martin: Yeah, the shared priorities to me seem to be really foundational and core to what you guys are doing together. Brendan, thank you so much for joining Dave and me on the program, really walking through all that you’re doing, Dell and IBM, the shared priorities, the collaboration on strategic accounts, and the impact that you’re making in a really short period of time. We’re going to be keeping our eyes on this space.
Brendan Kinkade: Well, thank you for having me.
Dave Nicholson: Thank you.
Lisa Martin: It was our pleasure.
Brendan Kinkade: Appreciate it.
Lisa Martin: For our guests and for Dave Nicholson, I’m Lisa Martin. You’re watching Six Five On the Road from Vegas, baby. This is Dell Technologies World 2024, the AI Edition. Dave and I will be right back with our next guest.
Author Information
Lisa Martin is a technology correspondent and former NASA scientist who has made a significant impact in the tech industry. After earning a masters in cell and molecular biology, she worked on high-profile NASA projects that flew in space before further exploring her artistic side as a tech storyteller. As a respected marketer and broadcaster, she's interviewed industry giants and thought leaders like Michael Dell, Pat Gelsinger, Suze Orman and Deepak Chopra, as she has a talent for making complex technical concepts accessible to both insiders and laypeople. With her unique blend of science, marketing, and broadcasting experience, Lisa provides insightful analysis on the latest tech trends and innovations. Today, she's a prominent figure in the tech media landscape, appearing on platforms like "The Watch List" and iHeartRadio, sharing her expertise and passion for science and technology with a wide audience.
David Nicholson is Chief Research Officer at The Futurum Group, a host and contributor for Six Five Media, and an Instructor and Success Coach at Wharton’s CTO and Digital Transformation academies, out of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business’s Arresty Institute for Executive Education.
David interprets the world of Information Technology from the perspective of a Chief Technology Officer mindset, answering the question, “How is the latest technology best leveraged in service of an organization’s mission?” This is the subject of much of his advisory work with clients, as well as his academic focus.
Prior to joining The Futurum Group, David held technical leadership positions at EMC, Oracle, and Dell. He is also the founder of DNA Consulting, providing actionable insights to a wide variety of clients seeking to better understand the intersection of technology and business.
