SINGAPORE — Tech giant IBM said Asia-Pacific is positioned to lead the next phase of enterprise artificial intelligence as organizations shift from isolated AI projects to operating AI across their businesses, underpinned by digital sovereignty, hybrid cloud and quantum computing.
Enterprises are entering a new phase in which AI becomes part of core business operations rather than a productivity tool. The company outlined an AI operating model built around intelligence, action, operations and trust, while unveiling new AI, data and quantum technologies and regional collaborations, IBM executives said at the IBM THINK on Tour Singapore on July 21 at the Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Center.
“Asia-Pacific is uniquely positioned to be a leader in the race to AI-first enterprises,” said Hans Dekkers, general manager, IBM Asia-Pacific.
“The region is already navigating the realities of fragmented regulations, data sovereignty requirements, and complex hybrid environments at scale. By treating this complexity as a strategic advantage, and building AI that is sovereign by design, organizations here are setting the global benchmark for how trusted AI is governed and scaled.”
Dekkers compared the rise of agentic AI to previous technological shifts involving personal computers, the internet and smartphones, saying enterprises will need to redesign how they operate.
“The next chapter is already unfolding, which is the era of agents,” he said. “We will have a multitude of agents working alongside us in our normal lives, but also on the enterprise side.”
He said organizations that fail to modernize their operating models risk falling behind as AI increasingly influences business decisions and workflows.
“And together with a lot of our clients, we’ve been working on a playbook — the definitive playbook on how to do this for the enterprise,” Dekkers said, describing IBM’s framework of intelligence, action, operations and trust as the foundation of AI-first organizations.
Ana Paula Assis, IBM senior vice president and chair for Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia-Pacific, said AI has reached a turning point.
“We are at an inflection point. One where AI is moving from adoption to impact. One where AI is moving from basically generating information to actually taking action,” she said.
Assis said organizations must move beyond using AI for isolated tasks.
“The era of individual productivity and narrow use cases is over,” she said. “AI must be embedded in the way they operate their business.”
She cited IBM research showing AI could drive more than 40 percent productivity by 2030 while investment continues to accelerate. However, Assis said many organizations still lack a strategy for translating AI investment into business growth.
“The question is no longer ‘Can we build with AI?’ but ‘Can we operate it at scale, safely, reliably?’” Assis said.
She described hybrid cloud as the foundation of enterprise AI.
“Hybrid cloud is the infrastructure that brings AI to your data wherever it lives, without forcing you to compromise on security, sovereignty, or control,” she said.
Sriram Raghavan, IBM Software general manager, said enterprises will also need new software development and operations tools as AI-generated code and autonomous agents become commonplace.
Introducing IBM’s internal AI assistant, Bob, Raghavan said, “Bob is not just a code generator. Bob is a full team member.” He said the assistant supports developers throughout the software development life cycle, from planning and coding to testing and documentation. IBM said internal deployments reduced onboarding time by 70 percent, increased test coverage by 40 percent and tripled development velocity.
Looking ahead, Raghavan said enterprises should prepare for a dramatic increase in AI-driven activity.
“You’re not going to be managing apps and users — you’re actually going to be managing millions of autonomous actions,” he said, arguing that organizations will require AI-powered operational platforms capable of identifying risks and managing increasingly complex hybrid environments.
IBM also highlighted digital sovereignty as a growing priority, introducing IBM Sovereign Core, an open-source platform that incorporates regulatory and compliance controls for deployment across different infrastructure environments.
During a discussion with Foxconn head of AI and Quantum Jesse Chao, the executive said demand is increasing for sovereign AI infrastructure and AI data centers that allow organizations to maintain control over data and AI models.
Chao said AI servers overtook smartphones as Foxconn’s largest source of revenue last year.
“We now manufacture around 45 percent of the AI servers in the world,” he said, adding that governments are increasingly discussing AI data centers and digital sovereignty.
Asked by The Manila Times during a media Q&A session about the convergence of AI and quantum computing, Dekkers said the two technologies will evolve together.
“There will be a world in the near future where you’ll have classical compute and quantum compute together,” he said. “AI, in a way, will be the integration layer.”
Dekkers said quantum computing is moving from research toward commercial deployment.
“It’s moving from a scientific problem into an engineering problem,” he said, adding that enterprise-grade quantum computing could become commercially viable within two to four years.
He concluded that organizations preparing for 2030 should focus on three priorities.
“By 2030, the agendas will be implicitly occupied with these three things: Speed, Intelligence, Reinvention,” Dekkers said. “It’s the companies that take these three things into operation that will be successful.”
