IBM continues to enable businesses in their AI journey in Southeast Asia

“IBM is extremely committed to building and using AI that clients and customers can trust,” says Catherine Lian, General Manager and Technology Leader at IBM ASEAN.

For Catherine Lian, General Manager and Technology Leader at IBM ASEAN, the AI journey for businesses in the region is not just a walk in a park. It can be a rather complex journey if organizations don’t have a solid foundation or strategy in place not just for investing in AI but also when deploying AI use cases.

While she acknowledges the enhancements AI brings to organizations, especially when it comes to improving productivity and efficiency, Lian also believes that AI needs to be deployed responsibly.

In a conversation with CRN Asia, Lian shared how IBM is making a difference to businesses in the region, when it comes to their AI journey.

How is IBM establishing itself as an enabler for AI technology in the Southeast Asian region?

IBM is a long-standing partner with private and public sectors across the ASEAN region to drive AI use cases. For me, it’s all about responsible AI adoption.

Now, IBM's watsonx has been our flagship portfolio in our AI products. It's designed to help clients accelerate the impact of GenAI and drive productivity in core enterprise workflows.

For example, Smart Modular Technologies. The global leader in specialty memory and storage solutions, has implemented IBM Maximo Virtual Inspection into the AI-powered high-speed precision industrial robots and its manufacturing facility located in Seberang Jaya, Malaysia. Now, these advanced solutions help smart identify and isolate manufacturing process defects, preventing non-compliant products and being shipped to the customers.

In Singapore, we play a pivotal role in implementing our data and AI solutions as well. The watsonx.AI solutions enable telecommunications companies like StarHub to securely centralize their network-related data. This centralized repository facilitates streamlined big data processing and analysis, laying a solid foundation for future endeavors such as data hub establishment and data monetization for B2B and B2C.

I also want to share on the key role IBM plays in developing our frameworks and best practices for ethical use of AI. IBM is currently a premium member in setting strategic directions and development roadmap of responsible AI for the AI Verify Foundation. Under Singapore's leadership, ASEAN in February 2024 also published a framework of AI governance and ethics where IBM was one of the companies consulted for this framework.

What industries in Southeast Asia do you see benefiting from AI?

All industries can benefit from AI. Just to share a few examples, in Thailand, we work with Bank of Ayutthaya or Kungsri as its commonly known, to make every financial matter simple for its customers. So, the bank recently invested in enhancing its IT infrastructure as well as taking its application modernization and IT modernization and automation to the next level with our GenAI to ensure seamless on-site, online and mobile banking experience for millions of customers.

Now, as part of its continuous transformation journey, Kungsri is exploring the use of code assistance, or what we call Watson Code Assistance, to help address the skill gaps and increase productivity. This will not only allow the bank to only accelerate its application modernization and turn IT into an investment portfolio but will also allow the bank to take advantage of the performance, security and resiliency capabilities of its IBM Z systems in the digital consumer world in Thailand.

Over financial services examples are in Indonesia. PT SUCOFINDO, which is the PT Superintending Company of Indonesia, is Indonesia's first inspection company with the government of the Republic of Indonesia and SGS Geneva, has collaborated with IBM to accelerate the AI-powered standardized sustainability reporting system across Indonesia.

The manufacturing sector also has high potential to reap the benefits of AI as supply chain resilience continues to be a major concern due to recent global disruptions. AI is poised to transform manufacturing in ASEAN with IBM at the forefront of its revolution. Our IBM watsonx platform is enabling manufacturers to harness the power of generative AI across various applications.

Given the successful customer AI deployments in the region, how is IBM working with its partners to ensure customers get the best service possible?

IBM is extremely committed to building and using AI that clients and customers can trust. We have a unique ability to solve our clients' most pressing business problems by bringing together the necessary business strategy, which is encapsulating our four platforms - hybrid cloud, AI, automation and our transaction processing with the necessary hardware as well as our consulting business to the customers and through our ecosystem partners.

Now, to further drive our ecosystem growth, IBM introduced our IBM Partner Plus in January 2023, a new partner experience designed to help deepen partners' technical expertise and accelerate time to market and win with the clients.

It has become a catalyst for collaboration and innovation. As we have seen an incredible momentum among our partners winning at watsonx. It empowers partners to train, tune and deploy our AI across businesses. Leveraging on our trusted data, partners have the unique opportunity in the AI market, and they hold the key to accelerating AI adoption, helping clients overcome barriers associated with inadequate skills and resources.

With watsonx and a focus on education in Partner Plus, we are enabling our partners of all sizes to help clients scale AI across their businesses. In the past year, we have worked with partners to infuse AI into their own solutions, building centers of excellence to support our value creation and to sell our watsonx-powered solutions directly to the client and our partners in the marketplace.