Kerala: IBM launches automation innovation centre to meet business demands

To be in line with the business demands in India, the International Business Machines (IBM) on Monday launched Automation Innovation Centre at Brigade World Trade Centre Info Park in Kerala's Kakkanad.

According to an official statement, the new centre is expected to be fully operational in the third quarter of 2022, which will allow IBM and IBM Ecosystem partners to build automation solutions throughout their lifecycle-- product design, engineering, and support-- and will help clients in the areas of business automation, Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) and integration.

"At the new centre, IBM will work in tandem with the clients and partners to co-create in order to foster innovation by bringing an outside-in view for designing new products at speed while enhancing customer experience," it said.

"According to the recently conducted Global AI Adoption Index 2022 by Morning Consult on the behalf of IBM, more than half of IT professionals in India report their company is currently using or considering automation software or tools to drive greater efficiencies in IT operations (52 per cent) and business processes/tasks (53 per cent) and to give valuable time back to employees (55 per cent)," it added.

"...IBM is furthering its collaboration with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro. As part of this engagement, the engineering teams of TCS and Wipro will co-locate with IBM India Software Lab in Kochi to co-create and co-innovate solutions in AI-powered automation," it said.

"India is an innovation and talent hub for IBM, and our collaborations with Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Kottayam, TCS, and Wipro will help us accelerate the adoption of automation for businesses across industries," General Manager of IBM Automation Dinesh Nirmal said.

"IBM is already helping thousands of clients and partners use automation solutions to make IT and business processes more efficient and employees more effective, and the work from our Kochi lab will help us continue to build powerful AI-powered automation solutions for businesses in India and globally. The collaborations will also provide youths beyond metros access to jobs, exposure to the latest in automation technology, and skilling opportunities to be job-ready," he added.

As per the release, the teams will co-engineer extensions and kits for developers and partners to create using IBM Automation solutions via low-code/no-code methods while working together with Wipro, while working with TCS will help the teams engineer extensions for the IBM AI-powered automation portfolio to address and map to industry-specific and domain use cases.

"The unique co-location collaborations will bring deeper levels of cohesion between the IBM Automation Innovation Centre, TCS, and Wipro engineering teams and help bring enhancements and integration to the market faster and deliver customized solutions to clients in various sectors to meet their unique demands," the statement read.