The Power of Collaboration: How IBM Teams Up with Microsoft
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Hello, hello. Welcome to Smart Talks with IBM, a podcast from Pushkin Industries, iHeartRadio, and IBM. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. This season, we're continuing our conversations with new creators, visionaries who are creatively applying technology and business to drive change, but with a focus on the transformative power of artificial intelligence and what it means to leverage AI as a game-changing multiplier for your business.

On this special bonus episode of Smart Talks, Tim Harford, host of the Pushkin podcast Cautionary Tales, sat down for a conversation with two leaders forging new ways of working together, encouraging collaboration to better serve clients. Srini Vasanth Bentekarajan is the Director of Global Partner Business, supervising Azure Data and AI, as well as Azure OpenAI at Microsoft.

He's a leading thinker behind digital transformation, business growth, and strategic innovation. And Chris McGuire is General Manager of the Global Microsoft Partnership for IBM Consulting. He's responsible for driving IBM Consulting's strategic alignment and collaboration with Microsoft, bringing clients the technologies they need with a focus on hybrid cloud and AI.

They talked to Tim about the efforts of IBM and Microsoft in the generative AI space. We're just at the beginning of understanding what generative AI can create for customers, businesses, and the broader world. This collaboration forward model will expand the impact of AI, allowing innovation to thrive. Let's dive in.

Chris, Srini, welcome both of you. Thank you so much for joining me. Tell me a little bit about your roles. Srini, maybe you first. Just tell me a little bit about what you do at Microsoft. So I have about 27 years of experience in the tech and consulting services industry. And in these 27 years, I've had the privilege of leading the charge in driving digital transformation, business growth and strategic innovation for clients.

And in my current role at Microsoft, I manage the strategic partnership with IBM. I help craft strategic visions that align IBM's potential impact with Microsoft and data and value proposition.

So, Chris, we've heard Srinivasan runs the Microsoft half of the partnership with IBM. Presumably, you're on the other half of that partnership. Correct, correct. Yeah, about three years ago, we decided to really go big with Microsoft as far as strategic partnerships.

So Microsoft and IBM are these giant names in technology, very well known for decades. So why is it so important to have collaboration as well as competition in the enterprise generative AI space?

It goes back to client first. Their needs have to be above everybody else's. And if we're not meeting their needs, then we're not responsibly doing our job. And we have a platform on the IBM tech side. Microsoft has a platform. And we in the middle as IBM Consulting have the expertise

to properly design and take the best interest of the client to heart and implement and help them get to whatever outcomes they're trying to get to utilizing generative AI to make better use of data and the investment they've made and to properly scale. I mean, Microsoft has a unique approach to generative AI. They're doing desktop up. So they have a great

user base globally with all of their office products and other solutions that most people use in the world today. So making generative AI available to them is fantastic. And then us, we have a platform down approach at IBM. And if we do things right together, we'll meet in the middle and jointly help solve those clients' problems.

So just want to understand what this looks like. We're starting to discover that these AI systems, actually it's possible to build lots and lots of different ones. There are different varieties that have different strengths, different weaknesses. So from the point of view of a customer,

When they approach you and you say, "Well, we've got this ecosystem, you've got access to various models," what does that look like? Is it like an app store or is it something a bit different? Certain models are good for certain use cases. Now, I think you might have heard that earlier we used to hear about large language models, LLMs. Now, the smaller language model also are becoming popular because it can do certain things very effectively. It is trained on certain domains and also respond faster.

So a small language model is basically just we're going to train you on, I don't know, the manuals for all our technical products. So you really understand if people have a problem with our product. Yeah, it could be, for example, trained specifically for healthcare domain, right? Things like that. Or it could also be trained for certain user profiles, right? For the typical work that they do, for example, in a call center.

or in a hospital, how certain things can be done faster, right? The advantage of small language models is that it makes it possible to run on smaller machines, so you don't need large servers and things like that. So what I'm hearing is that people are coming to you or they're coming to IBM and basically going,

"Hey, we've heard about all this cool AI stuff and what do we do?" Because of course that's where your starting point is because the technology is so new. In fact, IBM did a hackathon, a global hackathon. And this was the first of its kind that they did where they actually brought in the client teams also. So they said that, "Okay, let us see how we can actually ideate with the clients."

to solve their problems, right? And they came up with quick, innovative use cases. And some of these actually translated into projects that they implemented. Can you think of an example, one of these projects that sticks in your mind? Yeah, so there's a client, Wintershell, where IBM actually co-created a knowledge extraction tool

to help the field engineers to retrieve relevant insights from their vast knowledge bases. So Wintershall is an energy company. And as part of their innovation effort at Wintershall, they also identified 80 new AI use cases. Chris, if a corporate leader were to come to you and say, look, I'm sure Gen AI is going to shake up my industry,

It's going to be a competitive threat. I'm sure there are loads of opportunities as well, but I don't know how to start thinking about it. What's the basic advice that you'd give them to orient themselves and the questions that they should be asking themselves?

Well, I mean, obviously it's our ability to get with a client and bring the relevant partners to the table to discuss the outcome that the client is trying to achieve and then design a solution. Because I mean, obviously if you're,

you know, you want to make sure your money is well spent and given that in the world of software, everything has moved to a consumption model and you're only paying for what you use, you want to make sure you're getting the most efficient use out of those platforms. And, you know, we at IBM Consulting have become extreme experts on advising clients how to do that.

You know, it's a great story now when we walk in together because over decades and decades, IBM and Microsoft have been there at the table as a trusted technology advisor and service provider. The theme of this season of Smart Talks is new creators.

And that's you guys, your new creators. So I wanted to ask you both, maybe start with Chris. What do you see as the most creative part of what you do?

Well, I think it goes back to the ecosystem. It's the age-old saying, two heads better than one, three heads better than two, on and on. And also, what we like to say is the way we're doing our ecosystem is one plus one equals three, especially when it comes to Microsoft. Generative AIs never were very good at maths, were they? So, okay, cool. Exactly. But they're creative, so that's great. It really is about...

solving clients real problems and using the very best of the technology that's available today to do that as fast as possible and get them to a place where they're actually monetizing as fast as they can. It is really important that we take our part in this whole AI revolution very seriously and be very, very responsible. And we take that job very seriously. And Microsoft is a very strong partner with us when we go into clients together.

Shuny, what's creative about what you do? Yeah, so when I started my career, I was a software developer. So problem solving was one of the core competencies that I had to work on. And that problem solving mindset, along with the industry knowledge that I gained over the years, helped me identify the market trends.

the consumer behavior, the disruptive technologies. This has helped me come up with some creative ideas and solutions as part of my job. Chris, Srini, thank you both very much. What an insightful conversation with Chris and Srini, shedding light on the efforts of IBM and Microsoft. Technologies like AI are complex and often difficult to scale without help. A partner ecosystem approach is crucial in the world of AI.

By bringing together diverse expertise, collaboration can cater to a variety of industries, providing specialized solutions for unique challenges. As strategic partners, IBM and Microsoft aim to guide enterprises through these challenges responsibly.

Looking ahead, the possibilities opened by an ecosystem approach to AI are endless. From the integration of the tech into everyday devices in our pockets, all the way to its increased adoption in highly regulated, intricate industries. A huge thank you is due to Chris and Srini for sharing their expertise and insights.

Smart Talks with IBM is produced by Matt Romano, Joey Fishground, and Jacob Goldstein. We're edited by Lydia Jean Cott. Our engineers are Sarah Bruguere and Ben Talladay. Theme song by Gramascope. Special thanks to Andy Kelly, Kathy Callahan, and the 8 Bar and IBM teams, as well as the Pushkin Marketing team.

Smart Talks with IBM is a production of Pushkin Industries and Ruby Studio at iHeartMedia. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. This is a paid advertisement from IBM. ♪