IBM consultants will deploy OpenAI services

IBM will embed OpenAI frontier models and products such as Codex and ChatGPT embedded into IBM’s AI consulting services platform, IBM Consulting Advantage, as well as expanding the companies’ existing collaboration in the cybersecurity realm, they announced Thursday.

Joint initiatives will include the creation of industry-specific products for financial services, government, telecommunications, and retail, as well as serving key enterprise domains such as finance, procurement, customer operations, and HR.

IBM will join the OpenAI Partner Network and engage forward-deployed engineers and consultants trained through the network to help clients accelerate their AI implementations. It will also create a dedicated OpenAI practice, certifying thousands of consultants and engineers via the Partner Network, it said.

There will be three focus areas in the new partnership: helping organizations transform their businesses to integrate AI into their daily work, assisting clients in modernizing legacy applications through a combination of OpenAI products and IBM’s expertise, and an expansion of an existing cybersecurity collaboration combining OpenAI frontier AI capabilities with IBM Autonomous Security.

Everyone, it seems, is engaging forward-deployed engineers to help enterprises build systems around their AI models: OpenAI announced its initiative, OpenAI Deployment Company, on May 11, a week after Anthropic launched its efforts. Microsoft and AWS too have jumped into the ring.

But, said Info-Tech Research Group distinguished analyst Mark Tauschek, “This is becoming table stakes. The consulting firms that have the horsepower and technical talent to partner with a frontier AI lab to do this are all picking their horses. Anthropic has some, Microsoft has some, and of course OpenAI has some. There will be more announcements like this to follow, and while it’s good PR for both IBM and OpenAI, it’s certainly not differentiating.”

Enterprises will choose the consulting firms that work with their AI vendor of choice, he noted, although he does think that Microsoft had the initial advantage because they were able to quickly provide thousands of skilled FDEs.

“But,” he said, “this is a horse race, and it’s going to be a tight one.”