IBM at Think Digital: A Trusted Partner, Tested in Crisis, for the New Era Ahead

For more than one hundred years, IBM has been helping governments, businesses and other organizations leverage technology to drive and implement change and to promote and accelerate scientific discovery. Along the way, we and the world have weathered many storms. And each time IBM has emerged a stronger, more capable company. Now, as the world confronts a once-in-a-generation challenge, the COVID-19 pandemic, IBM is drawing upon that legacy of resilience. We’re embracing our role as a trusted leader in designing and deploying the technologies that can help the world community not only navigate this crisis but begin operating more efficiently, more sustainably and more equitably for the people and the planet. 

Think Digital comes at a pivotal moment. If there is anything the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us, it’s the critical importance of technology solutions that enable speed, flexibility, insight and innovation.

Amid this global stress test, IBM has shown its ability to muster technology and marshal collaborative communities of experts—to help society and industry recover and rebuild, and to aid discovery of new solutions that might help the world better withstand any future challenges of this magnitude.

→ View the complete lineup of Think keynotes and sessions

Our efforts have included establishing a high-performance computing consortium to help find a COVID-19 cure. We’ve also opened our vast patents portfolio for free use by researchers developing technologies to help prevent, diagnose, treat or contain COVID-19. We developed and donated use of the IBM Watson Assistant for Citizens,  to help governments at all levels keep people informed about the coronavirus. And we’ve reached out to our external network of more than 200,000 developers around the world with the Call for Code COVID-19 challenge, to solicit the best ideas for coping with the coronavirus. 

→ Visit the IBM News Room's complete coverage of IBM's response to the coronavirus pandemic

All of these efforts, and many others, rely heavily on the key technologies—hybrid cloud and AI—that are at the core of IBM’s technology offerings and business expertise. These core technologies, and others like 5G and edge computing, will be a focus of the innovations, products and services IBM will announce at Think Digital. They will also feature prominently in IBM CEO Arvind Krishna’s keynote presentation, on May 5 at 11:15 am ET and 7:15 pm ET.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna will deliver a keynote presentation on May 5

These technologies, of course, are among the capabilities that defined IBM’s competitive advantage before COVID-19. They are the technologies that will enable our clients to survive—and in some cases even thrive—during COVID-19. And they are the capabilities that will determine success after COVID-19.

Advanced technologies from IBM were already poised to define the decade of the 2020s, but they have proved their value during the pandemic. If anything, the crisis has speeded adoption of these technologies, prompting enterprises around the world to hasten their digital transformations.

Now, as governments and industries seek to reboot, and as academic institutions, health agencies and research scientists reassess their assumptions, the world is asking big questions that technology can help answer:

    • How can supply chains become even more resilient?
    • How can I secure my IT infrastructure to enable remote working?
    • Which IT tasks can I automate so that  my workforce can focus on higher-value ones?
    • Which workloads should I be moving to the public cloud to keep critical functions up and running?  
    • What trusted AI and data analytics tools can speed medical research and therapeutic discovery?
    • How do industries including air travel, public transportation and hospitality transform themselves for the new era?

As IBM embarks on this journey to the future together with our clients and other key stakeholders, our Think Digital conference will present and elaborate on the innovations that can help serve as the building blocks of transformation and recovery, resilience and discovery.