During the IBM Think event in Mumbai, IBM Asia Pacific General Manager Hans Dekkers emphasized that technology is rarely the main hurdle, pointing instead to the challenge of getting people and business models to adopt AI through a structured operating model. Additionally, IBM India and South Asia Managing Director Sandip Patel addressed rising open source vulnerabilities, noting a major $5 billion commitment to security alongside advancements in quantum cryptography and the introduction of Digital Swaraj to ensure enterprise AI sovereignty.

During the IBM Think event in Mumbai, IBM Asia Pacific General Manager Hans Dekkers emphasized that technology is rarely the main hurdle, pointing instead to the challenge of getting people and business models to adopt AI through a structured operating model. Additionally, IBM India and South Asia Managing Director Sandip Patel addressed rising open source vulnerabilities, noting a major $5 billion commitment to security alongside advancements in quantum cryptography and the introduction of Digital Swaraj to ensure enterprise AI sovereignty.

During the IBM Think event in Mumbai, IBM Asia Pacific General Manager Hans Dekkers emphasized that technology is rarely the main hurdle, pointing instead to the challenge of getting people and business models to adopt AI through a structured operating model. Additionally, IBM India and South Asia Managing Director Sandip Patel addressed rising open source vulnerabilities, noting a major $5 billion commitment to security alongside advancements in quantum cryptography and the introduction of Digital Swaraj to ensure enterprise AI sovereignty.

Eighty per cent of Indian executives expect Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive revenues by 2030. Many of them are currently struggling with what type of new business models they can create and bring to life using AI, and whether they operate AI safely and reliably. There's a real divide between those that are rebuilding AI and agents that basically are going to change how companies and how business models operate. Technology often is not the hard part. It is how you get business models and people to adopt it. It requires a new operating model for AI. These observations were made by Hans Dekkers, General Manager of IBM Asia Pacific during the IBM Think event in Mumbai.

He said that IBM has been thinking about it and is working with its clients, and has created a definitive playbook and calls it the AI operating model. "It all starts with the data, which translates into intelligence. The intelligence translates into action, and the action will influence one's operations," said Dekkers.

Citing the example of how IBM touches the lives of all Indians, he said, "You wake up, you get your toast, you put butter on your toast with Amul, you fuel your car with Indian Oil, you go through the cities that were built by Tata Steel, on your way to the office, you get some cash from the State Bank of India, and then in the end when you get home, your food is going to be delivered by Swiggy. You make phone calls and use data from Airtel. All of this is built by technology supported by IBM," remarked Dekkers.

During the event in Mumbai, Sandip Patel, the managing director for IBM India and South Asia region, said that with the acceleration of AI, so are the vulnerabilities that exist and continue to proliferate, especially in open source technologies. "This does require our immediate attention. As we continue to build these technologies, the challenge that we all are seeing is how do we protect these environments. We at IBM along with Red Hat, are addressing this. It's a $5 billion commitment through Project Lightwell that we made to open source security that is supported by over 20,000 engineers worldwide because we can't stop innovating. We just have to ensure that it's secure. We are bringing a network together to fix and patch vulnerabilities in open source technologies at scale," said Patel.

He also spoke about quantum computing, which is expected to become much more real in the future. He said that quantum cryptography is already an important priority, especially in regulated industries where organisations need to protect sensitive data.

Patel also spoke about IBM's Digital Swaraj, which is a strategic concept by IBM India that redefines digital and AI sovereignty for Indian enterprises and government bodies.

"As AI and all these innovations move to the core of the enterprise, who remains in control? Every enterprise leader that I talk to, every government official I talk to, they are worried about a few questions—what happens when regulations change, or the geopolitical situation shifts and suddenly the infrastructure you build your business on isn't available on the terms that you need. And this is where the whole concept of sovereignty or what I like to call at least in India where Digital Swaraj comes into play. This is precisely why we have been focused on building layers of sovereignty, building layers of privacy across infrastructure environment," added Patel.

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