IBM Q2 results, SAP board departures, Microsoft, Celonis & more – PEX Vendor News

PEX Network’s weekly bulletin rounds up the latest industry vendor news including product releases/updates, mergers and acquisitions, partnerships and leadership changes.

This week includes:

• IBM reveals strong Q2 financial results
• Celonis and HARMAN enhance process intelligence with AI-powered insights
• Microsoft and Lumen Technologies enhance digital transformation, data center network capacity
• Scott Russell and Julia White to leave SAP executive board
• Reveille Software and ABBYY partner to enhance intelligent document processing (IDP)
• SLB targets subsurface digital transformation at Aker BP
• Instabase appoints federal sector expert to advisory board

IBM reveals strong Q2 financial results

Technology giant and process mining provider IBM published its earnings results for the second quarter of 2024, reflecting accelerated revenue growth. “We had a strong second quarter, exceeding our expectations, driven by growth in both revenue and free cash flow,” said Arvind Krishna, chairman and CEO of IBM. “We continue to see that clients turn to IBM for our technology and our expertise in enterprise AI, and our book of business for generative AI has grown to more than two billion dollars since the launch of watsonx one year ago.”

Business fundamentals, operating leverage, product mix and productivity initiatives all contributed to significant margin expansion and increased profit and free cash flow, added James Kavanaugh, IBM SVP and CFO. “Our strong cash generation enables us to continue investing in innovation and expertise across the portfolio, while returning value to shareholders through dividends.”

IBM’s Q2 highlights include:

• Revenue of US $15.8 billion, up 2 percent.
• Software revenue up 7 percent.
• Consulting revenue down 1 percent.
• Infrastructure revenue up 1 percent.

Celonis and HARMAN enhance process intelligence with AI-powered insights

Process mining and process intelligence vendor Celonis announced a new partnership with Samsung Electronics-owned technology provider HARMAN to make enterprise processes smarter, more efficient and more effective. The collaboration combines HARMAN’s expertise in business transformation, AI and technology implementation with Celonis’ process intelligence platform to help businesses optimize operations for maximum efficiency, sustainability and cost savings, according to a press release. HARMAN will also leverage Celonis’ technology to accelerate its SAP S/4 HANA migration and to better understand its own processes and identify improvement opportunities, it added.

“Our partnership with Celonis will not only increase productivity, but also allow for streamlined operational alignment and excellence for our customers,” said Vikas Gupta, EVP and general manager for digital transformation solutions at HARMAN. “Celonis’ process intelligence platform and its seamless integration of AI models opens up new opportunities to eliminate process inefficiencies, helping enterprises to uncover valuable business insights so they can establish more efficient, intelligent workflows.”

Celonis also announced an expanded collaboration with insurance group Barmenia to optimize its processes.

DOWNLOAD: The power of process intelligence: 2024 industry report

Microsoft and Lumen Technologies enhance digital transformation, data center network capacity

Microsoft announced a new partnership with Lumen Technologies to drive its digital transformation. In addition, Microsoft has chosen Lumen to expand its network capacity and capability to meet the growing demand on its data centers due to AI, according to a press release.

Lumen has launched an enterprise-wide transformation to simplify and optimize its operations. By embracing Microsoft’s cloud and AI technology, Lumen aims to reduce its overall technology costs, remove legacy systems and silos, improve its offerings and create new solutions for its global customer base, the firm stated. Meanwhile, as Microsoft continues to evolve and scale its data center ecosystem, it is turning to Lumen as a strategic supplier for its network infrastructure needs and investing to support its next generation of applications for Microsoft platform customers worldwide. This will strengthen the connectivity capabilities between Microsoft’s data centers by providing the network capacity, performance, stability and speed that customers need as data demands increase, Microsoft added.

“AI is reshaping our daily lives and fundamentally changing how businesses operate,” said Erin Chapple, corporate CP of Azure core product and design at Microsoft. “We are focused both on the impact and opportunity for customers relative to AI today, and a generation ahead when it comes to our network infrastructure.”

READ: 10 digital transformation pitfalls and how to avoid them

Scott Russell and Julia White to leave SAP executive board

Multinational software company SAP announced two significant departures from its executive board with Scott Russell and Julia White to leave, effective August 31. Chief revenue officer Russell has played a central role in helping SAP customers on their journey to the cloud, while chief marketing and solutions officer White successfully modernized marketing and communications while also building SAP’s product marketing function to support a cloud-first model, the company said in a press release.

“In the context of SAP’s ongoing successful cloud transformation, the SAP supervisory board believes now is the moment to embark on the next era of growth,” said Pekka Ala-Pietilä, chairman of the supervisory board of SAP SE. “We thank Scott Russell and Julia White for their significant accomplishments and wish them all the best in their future endeavors.”

Russell and White contributed significantly to SAP’s successful business transition in the cloud and its leadership in business AI, added CEO Christian Klein. “I’m pleased to take this opportunity to thank them for their unwavering dedication to our clients and partners, and to join the supervisory board in wishing them all the best for the future.”

Reveille Software and ABBYY partner to enhance IDP

Reveille Software, a leader in management and monitoring solutions for intelligent process automation applications, is partnering with ABBYY to integrate its IDP technology. Through Reveille’s monitoring capabilities, ABBYY IDP users can achieve faster onboarding, touchless processing, lower costs and greater visibility into their processes, according to a press release. Reveille will also join the ABBYY Marketplace with a connector that delivers advanced monitoring and analytics.

“Reveille extends and enhances the value of ABBYY FlexiCapture through advanced monitoring and analytics capabilities,” commented Bruce Orcutt, chief marketing officer (CMO) at ABBYY. “Gaining end-to-end visibility of the business-critical services powered by ABBYY is essential to ensuring the transparency, observability and security enterprises need to meet service level expectations.”

ABBYY also expanded its presence in India, opening a new research and development (R&D) center in Bengaluru and a Center of Excellence in New Delhi. These will be pivotal in enhancing ABBYY's capabilities to deliver localized solutions and drive success for partners and customers worldwide, the vendor stated.

READ: Conversational AI in intelligent document processing

SLB targets subsurface digital transformation at Aker BP

American technology provider SLB is collaborating with Aker BP to develop an AI-driven digital platform to accelerate innovation and deliver substantial efficiency improvements across the Norwegian oil and gas company’s operations. The new platform will transition Aker BP’s current application portfolio to the cloud and create one integrated platform for subsurface workflows, according to a press release. This will reveal new insights from previously untapped data, driving substantial efficiency and performance improvements, it added.

“Moving to the Delfi platform is a big step forward on our data-driven journey,” stated Paula Doyle, chief digital officer at Aker BP. “The use of Azure Data Manager for Energy, a strong and open collaboration with our digital ecosystem and a high ambition to leverage generative AI are key benefits in this partnership with SLB.”

Instabase appoints federal sector expert to advisory board

IDP vendor appointed federal sector expert Howard Levenson to its advisory board to help the firm drive technological innovation. Levenson brings more than three decades of experience in IT and addressing complex IT challenges for the intelligence community and other federal customers, having recently served as general manager and regional VP of Databricks Federal.

“I am honored to join the advisory board of a company that is at the forefront of AI innovation,” Levenson commented. “Instabase’s technology has the potential to revolutionize how federal agencies manage and utilize their data, and I look forward to contributing to their mission of transforming unstructured data into actionable insights.”

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