AiThority Interview with Jason Gartner, GM of Product Management – Application Modernization at IBM

Jason Gartner, GM of Product Management – Application Modernization at IBM chats about quantum computing for modernization, cloud technologies in enterprise operations, latest product innovations at IBM and more in the following Q&A:

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Hello, Jason, welcome to our AiThority Interview Series. Please share more about your tech journey and your role at IBM over the years.

I have been with IBM for nearly 30 years and held various roles focused on development and leadership in Applications, Databases and APIs as technologies continued to evolve. Today, I’m the General Manager for our Application & Integration portfolio, in which we help organizations on their hybrid cloud and AI journeys through modernizing their business applications and infrastructure.

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How is IBM integrating emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, and quantum computing into its application solutions for modernization?

Our acquisition of StreamSets and webMethods has been our latest advancement in expanding our application modernization portfolio.

The integration of webMethods helps users manage complex systems, data silos, and applications within business environments. The webMethods Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) extends to support IBM integration products and enables users to create modern, unified, and seamless applications and services, while meeting local data sovereignty requirements.

There’s data everywhere and usually in multiple cloud providers and in physical mainframes. This quickly brings up the need for having a hybrid iPaaS.). We’re really focusing on integrating data from all IT environments – usually hybrid – to make sure that applications can be modernized correctly from the start.

Can you talk about the evolving role of cloud technologies in enterprise operations in the next 5-10 years?

We are driving our clients to be hybrid by design because it helps realize the desired returns on their cloud investments with the enablement of generative AI. The intentionality of being in the hybrid world gives leaders and organizations the ability to maximize their digital transformation.

The belief is that over 1 billion applications will be created by 2028. The majority of these applications will be composed, accelerated by low- code developers using generative AI and through greater productivity of pro-code developers. Composable application frameworks will have a profound effect on middleware futures that can address the hybrid and multi-cloud requirements needed for today and the future.

APIs have become crucial in modern software development. How is IBM leveraging APIs and gateways to enhance interoperability and integration across different platforms?

If you look at it from an application perspective, AI is going to generate new applications at the core or be infused with legacy applications at a rate we’ve never seen before. Since APIs are essentially “skills,” AI significantly raises the importance of modernizing APIs in applications as a plethora of new skills get introduced within the infrastructure. We’re focused on this notion of API 2.0 – where the core principle of it is APIs are enabling AI, and AI is enabling APIs.

An end-to-end lifecycle API management tool is essential to navigate the increasingly complex API landscape. IBM helps organizations enhance integration and interoperability across various platforms with IBM API Connect—our complete API management solution that develops, manages, secures, and socializes APIs both on premises and across clouds. With this solution, enterprises can achieve maximum value from their APIs with more comprehensive and thorough management and utilization across the entire API lifecycle. IBM API Connect was recently recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: API Management Software, Q3 2024, scoring the highest in 17 out of 24 criteria, including the portal for API consumers, API user engagement, and beyond REST API management.

What are the top challenges enterprises face in application modernization, and what solutions does IBM offer to address these challenges?

Cost and complexity are often the core challenges when it comes to application modernization. We’re seeing many organizations with technical debt from monolithic, on-premises systems—which are not only challenging and expensive to scale, but also difficult to update. Additionally, many enterprises don’t have the right skills, resources, or processes in place to effectively modernize their applications.

IBM offers multiple tools to help enterprises modernize their application landscape. IBM Cloud Pak for Applications equips organizations with the flexibility they need to modernize their application landscape, helping them develop new cloud-native service and applications, re-platform or refactor platform existing applications. IBM Instana is our modern observability solution that automatically identifies, maps, and tracks all infrastructure and services components, giving organizations full visibility into each layer of their application stack. And lastly, we just introduced IBM Concert which is essentially the nerve center for organizations and helps IT teams understand how their applications impact the ecosystem under one roof.

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Can you highlight some of the recent product innovations at IBM that showcase your approach to developing cutting-edge technology solutions?

IBM is at the forefront of innovations to stay ahead of today’s ever-evolving industry demands. At our annual THINK conference in May, IBM announced that we open-sourced IBM Granite models, a family of high-performing language and code models. Granite models are optimal for tasks such as complex application modernization, code generation, patching bugs, code explanation and documentation, maintaining repositories, and more. A recent study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Foundation models found that IBM’s model achieved a score of 100% in numerous categories, demonstrating the true openness of the model. IBM’s Granite large language model (LLM) scored better overall than many popular models.

IBM, in partnership with Red Hat, also recently introduced InstructLab, a co-open-source initiative aimed at the continuous development of foundational LLMs. It offers a scalable and cost-effective solution for enhancing LLM capabilities, driving an array of community-built AI models.

Before we conclude, what advice would you give to aspiring technologists and developers who aim to significantly impact cloud and software development?

The most effective, resilient and efficient applications of the future will be built and designed on Day 0 with Day N in mind and are hybrid by design. Aspiring technologists and developers should ask tough questions up front, like:

• How will this be deployed? What clouds will it be deployed on initially and in the future? What countries and local data residency constraints do I have?
• How will this be managed? Upgraded? Supported?
• How will this be optimized? Resource management, financial operations, etc.

Hybrid by design is a methodology to enable organizations to design for the future as opposed to having it dictated for them through default decisions that may be well intentioned, but can ultimately be short-sighted and hamper rapid growth. Designing in this way has become much simpler and does not require an over-engineered design.

Thank you, Jason Gartner, for your insights; we hope to see you back on AiThority.com soon.

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