SAN DIEGO — It may not sound sexy or even mildly intriguing, but Technology Business Management (TBM) is never far from the minds (and pocketbooks) of chief information officers in the age of artificial intelligence (AI).
TBM, a discipline that aligns technology investments with business strategy, was the theme at a major conference here this week hosted by IBM Corp.’s Apptio. Its goal: To bring the practice of TBM to a wider variety of folks, especially with AI as topic A in tech.
“AI has the potential, like cloud computing, to completely change the tech IT footprint,” TBM Council Board Member Ashley Pettit, who is also chief information officer at State Farm Insurance, said in a keynote speech late Monday. She pegs the potential value of generative AI at $4.4 trillion.
Fueled by AI, global tech spending is expected to soar 5.8% in 2025 — a growth rate twice that of the U.S. gross domestic product. Organizations are spending twice as much on IT services as on software, Pettit said.
The path won’t be easy: The rush to AI adoption has been fraught with impatience from the C-level, expecting immediate results; the necessity to upskill and reskill workers; and the need to preserve safe, accurate data. “The early perception is that GenAI is easy to do,” Matt Guarini, TBM Council executive director, said in an interview. Yet a small percentage of CIOs have a firm handle on AI IT budgets, he added.
TBM’s ability to look at projects and determine better outcomes plays a key factor in the equation. The combination of AI and TBM could pay off handsomely as organizations grapple balancing infrastructure investments with operational efficiency. What is driving CIOs is that 68% believe TBM is “important or essential,” Pettit said. To that point, IBM sees spending over the next three years primarily on data quality (74%) and cloud cost (70%).
To get there, Cognizant and IBM on Wednesday unveiled FinOps Center of Excellence, a new management practice to help organizations improve the financial performance of its cloud computing infrastructure.
On Monday, IBM announced it is bringing Apptio’s portfolio of enterprise agile planning, IT financial management, and cloud FinOps solutions to Microsoft Azure. [IBM and Vista Equity Partners acquired Apptio for $4.6 billion last year to help organizations track and optimize IT spending.]
IBM and Microsoft have expanded their partnership to put Apptio’s Targetprocess on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, with plans to add Apptio Costing and Planning in the fourth quarter, and Cloudability next year. Additionally, Microsoft will include Apptio capabilities to parts of its organization.
“Thousands of clients are already using the Apptio portfolio to optimize their IT investments, but many of our joint customers need the flexibility to use it on the Microsoft DevOps platform,” Nick Otto, IBM’s head of global strategic partnerships, said in a statement at the time of the acquisition.
Ultimately, Apptio will be IBM’s “SaaS blueprint,” Apptio/IBM Automation General Manager Ajay Patel said on Tuesday.
“The real question is how do you measure ROI (return on investment) of creativity for workers freed up from repetitive tasks performed by AI?” Patel said in an interview. “We can agree that AI forecasting of the supply chain will be beneficial, but only if the quality of the data is good.”
