IBM reported better-than-expected first quarter results and maintained its outlook in what CEO Arvind Krishna called a "fluid" macroeconomic environment.
While many folks think of mainframes as creaky old systems designed to process transactions without downtime, the z systems are big business for IBM and a strong upgrade cycle. In addition, IBM has reinvented the mainframe a few times for cloud workloads and now AI.
IBM said it has acquired data and AI consultant Hakkoda in a deal that will give it data migration platform services. Hakkoda is a big partner for Snowflake.
The plan for IBM is to leverage DataStax's technologies and combine them with its Granite large language models. IBM will also be a bigger player in vector databases and leveraging unstructured data for enterprises.
IBM delivered better-than-expected fourth quarter results and said its generative AI business including consulting and software is now a $5 billion business, up from $3 billion in the third quarter.
IBM launched a series of Qiskit software services to go along with its IBM Quantum Heron-based systems. The effort comes as IBM aims to meld quantum computing and classical computing today while aiming for quantum advantage later.
IBM's third quarter was mixed as sales fell short of estimates, earnings were better-than-expected and the company said that its generative AI bookings were $3 billion.
IBM launched Granite 3.0 8B and 2B models under the Apache 2.0 license, new models designed for CPU-based deployments and edge computing and the next-generation of Watsonx code assistant.
IBM has installed its second-gen IBM Quantum Heron processors in its Poughkeepsie data center as it builds out its quantum infrastructure.
IBM is looking to give its IBM Z systems an AI and large language model (LLM) twist as it outlined its upcoming IBM Telum II Processor and IBM Spyre Accelerator for upcoming mainframes.
As for the outlook, IBM projected annual revenue growth in the mid-single digit range with free cash flow topping $12 billion.
IBM has open sourced its portfolio of Granite large language models under Apache 2.0 licenses on Hugging Face and GitHub, outlined a bevy of AI ecosystem partnerships and launched a series of assistants and watsonx powered tools.
