IBM and Adobe have announced a “unique alliance” of their tech solutions, as the two firms look to assist their clients with generative AI (GenAI) adoption.
Building on a 20+ year partnership, the new collaboration will leverage hybrid cloud solutions, data, applications, and multi-model GenAI to provide users with “personalization at scale.”
The joint venture will aim to enhance GenAI offerings across marketing, content creation, and brand governance through cross-adoption of innovations, including IBM’s watsonx.ai and Consulting platforms, and Adobe’s Experience Platform and AI Assistant.
The partnership will also move beyond integrating each other’s solutions, with the companies having confirmed that they will be working on joint offerings, as they aim to foster innovation and establish a foundation for long-term success.
Speaking during his IBM Think 2024 Keynote address, the company’s CEO, Arvind Krishna, described the collaboration as “key” to IBM’s GenAI strategy:
Adobe and IBM share a combined mission of digitizing the information supply chain within the enterprise, and generative AI plays an important role in helping to deliver this at scale.
“We’re moving from a generative AI era of experimentation to one in which the enterprise looks toward implementing AI’s benefits at scale. IBM’s partnership with Adobe is key to unlocking this next stage.”
While the companies are yet to reveal further details about any products they will be releasing together, they did outline the following four cross-company integrations that joint customers will be able to access.
IBM’s watsonx.ai Available on Adobe Experience Platform
The two companies are hoping to accelerate users’ AI and hybrid cloud journey and enhance personalization by integrating IBM’s AI and data platform, watsonx.ai, into the Adobe Experience Platform – the company’s centralized data foundation and CX management solution.
In discussing the feature, Shantanu Narayen, Chair & CEO of Adobe, described the Adobe Experience Platform as “critical” to supporting the “heterogeneous environment” in which their customers reside.
watsonx.ai and Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant for On-Premises and Private Cloud
Adobe and IBM are also exploring the integration of watsonx.ai with Adobe Acrobat AI to assist enterprises using on-premises and private cloud environments.
The Acrobat AI Assistant leverages GenAI and a deep understanding of the PDF format to “transform” how people interact with digital documents.
AI-Powered Workflows
To drive innovation for Adobe clients, IBM Consulting provides comprehensive integration capabilities across all three Adobe clouds – maximizing the value of Adobe investments.
The partnership also aims to modernize content supply chains using GenAI and Adobe Express to deploy innovative workflows, allowing for a more diverse and collaborative team to handle creative tasks.
The companies report that clients can expect a 30% increase in project capacity and a 70% reduction in time-to-market, delivering highly personalized, brand-consistent digital assets at scale.
Improving Efficiency
IBM is experimenting with Adobe Firefly to optimize workflows across its marketing and consulting teams, focusing on developing reliable AI-powered creative and design outputs.
In addition, IBM’s Consulting solution will collaborate with clients to enhance their content supply chains using Adobe Workfront and Firefly, with an aim to enhance marketing, creative, and design processes.
Internally, IBM is also using Adobe Firefly to streamline workflows, leveraging generative art, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Firefly’s AI capabilities. The companies claim that this has resulted in a tenfold increase in productivity.
For Shantanu Narayen these features are indicative of what he believes to be the main goal of the partnership, delivering customer value:
Across our businesses, there’s so much more we can do together, but I think the ultimate test will be delivering value to our customers.
“The more we’re engaged with everybody in this room to ensure we are helping them achieve the right business outcomes, that’s how Adobe and IBM will deliver value.”
IBM’s Plethora of Partnerships
It’s been a busy period for IBM and its partners, with the company having also recently announced the expansion of its strategic partnership with Salesforce, in a move aimed at aiming at enhancing customer choice and flexibility in their AI and data offerings.
The collaboration combines IBM’s watsonx.ai platform with Salesforce’s Einstein 1 software, enabling customers to make data-driven decisions and access actions directly from their workflows.
Additional benefits include bidirectional data integration, flexible large language models (LLMs), prebuilt CRM actions and prompts, and a commitment to responsible AI development.
And the partnership party continues, with IBM also revealing plans to strengthen its existing collaboration with SAP.
Announced earlier this month, the duo aims to deliver superior client productivity and innovation by leveraging GenAI and industry-specific cloud solutions, in what the firms term their “New Value Generation partnership.”
Building on their 50-year collaboration, the companies are integrating IBM’s GenAI infrastructure with SAP’s Rise program, a managed cloud service for modernizing legacy SAP ERP systems.
The partnership also aims to incorporate AI into SAP’s business workflows within industry-specific cloud solutions and applications for various business lines.