International Business Machines Corp Stock Price, News & Analysis

IBM announced the integration of Apptio's portfolio of enterprise agile planning, IT financial management, and cloud FinOps solutions with Microsoft Azure. The company is also expanding its software availability on the Azure Marketplace to 14 additional countries. IBM Targetprocess, now available on Azure Marketplace, helps manage budgets and align workforces across technology priorities while integrating with Azure DevOps. Microsoft will adopt Apptio's capabilities in parts of their organization. IBM plans to make Apptio Costing and Planning available in Q4 2024 and Cloudability available in the coming year.

Artificial intelligence has captured the imagination of corporate leaders eager to implement new tech solutions. However, AI's potential extends to broader and more complex problems, particularly in education. This vision is gradually becoming a reality, as AI is already enhancing student learning, creating new career pathways, and aligning today's education with tomorrow's jobs.

IBM is at the forefront of this transformation, leveraging AI to revolutionize educational systems. The technology is being used to personalize learning experiences, making education more accessible and effective. This initiative aims to prepare students for future job markets, ensuring they acquire the skills needed for emerging industries.

IBM announced that its Envizi ESG Suite has received FedRAMP authorization, making it available to federal agencies through the FedRAMP Marketplace. The solution creates a single, trusted system for ESG data management, helping organizations automate data capture, analysis, and reporting.

With the federal government managing over 300,000 buildings, 4 million employees, and $700 billion in annual purchases, this authorization comes at a important time as agencies face increasing pressure for transparent ESG reporting. The Envizi suite aims to address challenges like poor data quality and fragmentation by automating collection processes and streamlining reporting workflows.

IBM reported Q3 2024 revenue of $15.0 billion, up 1% (2% at constant currency), driven by Software revenue growth of 10%. The company's generative AI business reached $3 billion, increasing by $1 billion quarter-over-quarter. Gross profit margin improved to 56.3% GAAP (up 190 basis points) and 57.5% Operating Non-GAAP (up 210 basis points). Software segment now represents nearly 45% of total revenue. The company maintains its full-year free cash flow guidance of over $12 billion, with Q4 revenue growth expected to be consistent with Q3.

IBM has introduced the IBM Guardium Data Security Center, a unified SaaS-first solution designed to enhance data security across hybrid cloud, AI, and quantum environments. This new software offers a comprehensive view of data assets, enabling security teams to integrate workflows and manage data monitoring, governance, detection, response, and cryptography through a single dashboard. Key features include IBM Guardium AI Security to protect AI deployments and IBM Guardium Quantum Safe to safeguard encrypted data from quantum cyberattacks. These tools leverage IBM Research's post-quantum cryptography algorithms, recently standardized by NIST, and are integrated with IBM watsonx and other AI SaaS providers. IBM also announced the addition of decentralized identity features to its Verify portfolio, allowing users to manage digital credentials securely.

IBM has unveiled Granite 3.0, its most advanced family of AI models, at the annual TechXchange event. These models, released under the Apache 2.0 license, demonstrate strong performance across academic and enterprise benchmarks, often outperforming or matching similar-sized models from leading providers. The Granite 3.0 family includes:

1. General Purpose/Language models
2. Guardrails & Safety models
3. Mixture-of-Experts models
4. Time Series models

Key features of Granite 3.0 include improved performance, transparency, safety, and trust in AI products. IBM also introduced Granite Guardian 3.0 models for implementing safety guardrails. The company plans to integrate Granite 3.0 into various applications and platforms, including watsonx Code Assistant and IBM Consulting Advantage, to enhance AI-powered solutions for businesses.

Red Hat has announced a collaboration with Lenovo to deliver Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI (RHEL AI) on Lenovo ThinkSystem SR675 V3 servers. RHEL AI will be the default AI platform for these servers, pre-loaded to facilitate easier development, testing, and running of AI and generative AI models. This collaboration aims to provide optimized performance for AI computing using built-in GPU processing power.

RHEL AI is a foundation model platform that combines IBM Research's Granite family of open source-licensed large language models with InstructLab model alignment tools. It's packaged as an optimized, bootable Red Hat Enterprise Linux image for portability across hybrid cloud environments and is included in Red Hat OpenShift AI for running models at scale.

Lenovo Consulting Service offers comprehensive support for Red Hat solutions, providing expertise in deployment, integration, and management. Customers can test the solution in Lenovo's AI Center of Excellence.

IBM's Institute for Business Value conducted a study on generative AI in the insurance industry, surveying 1,000 insurance c-suite executives and 4,700 insurance customers. Key findings include:

1. Insurance CEOs are split on whether generative AI is more of a risk (49%) or opportunity (51%).
2. 77% of industry leaders believe generative AI is necessary to stay competitive.
3. Investments in generative AI are expected to increase by over 300% from 2023 to 2025.
4. Only 29% of insurance customers are comfortable with gen AI virtual agents providing service.
5. Organizations with less-centralized operating models for gen AI development can improve business outcomes by up to 14%.

The study recommends building tailored products, addressing trust issues, and deploying AI across the enterprise with strong governance.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) has announced that it will hold its quarterly conference call to discuss third-quarter 2024 financial results on Wednesday, October 23, 2024 at 5:00 p.m. ET. Investors and interested parties can access the live webcast of the earnings call at www.ibm.com/investor. The company advises visiting the investor website for the earnings press release prior to the webcast. Following the event, a replay, associated charts, and prepared remarks will be made available for those unable to attend the live call.