Q&A with Dave McCann, managing partner for IBM Consulting in EMEA
Technology consultants must always be prepared to practice what they preach to ensure their advice is up-to-date, credible and proven. IBM’s consultancy division is no exception.
It recently launched IBM Consulting Advantage, an AI services platform designed to help consultants with everything from cloud transformation strategy to accelerating app development.
It uses generative AI-powered agents and assistants alongside IBM and its partners’ human expertise. Customers can talk to “digital personas” to understand their needs, restructure data sets quickly to maximize benefits and equip junior workers with the expertise of seasoned engineers.
It also gives IBM consultants access to the entire enterprise to deliver complex solutions for clients faster and at scale.
In this Q&A, Dave McCann, managing partner for IBM Consulting in EMEA, discusses how IBM is disrupting itself with this new business model for consulting, why this is a pivotal moment for the consulting industry and the importance of an open AI ecosystem.
AI Business: What does IBM Consulting do?
Dave McCann: Much of the growth of the IBM consulting business started when IBM bought PwC’s consulting business. We realized that as we were transforming a global technology company that has rebuilt itself 15 or 20 times over its 100-year history, as companies adapt and grow or implement technology, they need a partner to do it.
The corporate vision and everything we do is to help our clients transform with hybrid cloud and generative AI, those two goals will not change. Consulting is at the intersection of getting it done.
A big part of the conversation in the market right now is, ‘won't AI take away jobs?’ What we’re betting on, as we have in the past few major technology shifts, is that it won’t. You need humans, a partner to help you on that journey. That’s where IBM Consulting at IBM fits in, as a partner for today's technology shift.
Why is technology consulting at such a pivotal moment right now?
If you look at previous generational shifts in the consulting business, the first was globalization 20 or so years ago. That was about going from selling humans downtown in a 30-story office in the most expensive real estate, to, hang on a second, we don't need all these people in these desks in this downtown real estate. We can look around the world to get access to better skills, talent and capability plus a time-zone benefit.
The second big shift, which we're all living in, is the cloud shift. We realized projects don't need to use the waterfall model; they can be agile. Technology can change, we can build a proof of concepts and spin things up faster. The cloud shift brought the infrastructure to do that.
In this new AI shift, we can use AI to physically do work. It’s still powered by those other two shifts, which is a globally optimized community, supported by this agile, flexible set of infrastructure called cloud. But the last two shifts just involved humans doing things a different way. This one involves humans adding something major, which is a digital human working beside them.
How do the AI-powered capabilities in IBM Consulting Advantage contribute to this shift?
We see the future of doing transformational services with our clients – to help them adapt, transform and change their business in a generative AI world – as being one in which humans work alongside digital labor.
Every client is at a different place right now; some are just about to get started, others are quite sophisticated, have spent a lot of time and money, and have a team in place.
IBM Consulting Advantage’s generative AI platform combines IBM’s models, open-source models and our partner's models with our clients’ models to make sure that they have the best set of digital assets to build the most productive and effective digital labor.
Why is it important to offer an open AI ecosystem?
Everything is moving so quickly. In the world we're in, three hours later a model can be twice as advanced. Two days later, the next version comes out. The majority of the markets realize that the future of AI for the foreseeable future is that if you don't collaborate openly, you'll be behind.
Making the ecosystem bigger so you can benefit from everyone's work is the only way you can keep up with the speed. In some cases, security requirements or certain compliance restrictions drive a less open need, but that's rare.
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