IBM TLS transforms the IT support experience with AI and Automation

International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation is an American multinational technology and consulting company that operates globally, focusing on hybrid cloud, AI, quantum computing, cybersecurity and infrastructure solutions, providing software, services, and hardware for enterprises. Known for technology innovation, IBM has a strong focus on research and development.

Briefly describe the nominated organization or individual: history and past performance (up to 1,250 characters):

In today's complex business landscape, IBM recognize that our clients require more than IT support. Enterprises need help in overcoming IT challenges beyond system failure, including Hybrid Cloud and AI Transformation, cybersecurity, vendor management, compliance, and technology obsolescence. As a strategic IT partner, IBM can help businesses navigate hybrid cloud or AI transformations more effectively, with minimized risk, and boosting transformation success rates.

IBM Technology Lifecycle Services (TLS) is a trusted support and services provider, a single point of contact across the entire data center environment. TLS is part of the "Infrastructure" division within IBM. TLS offerings encompass server, storage, networking, security, and software (SW) maintenance, covering both IBM and other IT vendors integral to your IBM ecosystem. TLS advises on solution evaluation and planning, guiding clients through implementation, deployment, and system optimization for availability and efficiency. TLS support portfolio includes insights on asset management, risk assessment, case metrics, and remediation.

TLS delivers services in over 140 countries for its 10K+ client base cutting across all industries, and manages more than 1 million client assets globally. At the heart of TLS's success is a formidable team of 13,000 highly skilled technical support specialists, who bring profound expertise to a vast array of hardware and software products. With three and a half decades of experience in providing comprehensive multivendor maintenance and support, TLS has refined its skills to consistently deliver top-tier, reliable services tailored to diverse client needs.

Over the past two years, TLS has successfully deployed multiple AI-driven solutions across various processes and tools, leveraging agentic framework to provide insights and highly personalized support delivery, yielding remarkable outcomes. Our unwavering commitment to optimizing IT support through ongoing automation and AI expansion has significantly reduced time to resolution, reinforcing TLS's reputation as a frontrunner in AI-powered support services.

Outline the nominated achievements since July 1, 2023 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 1,500 characters):

IBM TLS has been an early adopter of AI and automation, launching multiple initiatives since 2023 to improve efficiency, enhance customer experience, and reduce issues. IBM has integrated AI and machine learning through IBM watsonx along with automation tools to speed issue detection and resolution. Examples include:

• Remote Technical Support Agent Assist, an AI service assists support agents by pulling the most relevant information from a vast IBM knowledge base and provides recommendations and solutions to a newly opened support case. The intent of this effort is to help support agents solve clients' problems faster. Additionally, newly hired personnel can increase his/her productivity and reduce the time required to learn and resolve cases.
• On Demand Case Summarization, uses AI to quickly summarize case history, saving significant review time for support agents, managers, executives, and field engineers. Before this capability was available, one had to read through the case details to learn about a case, which can be very lengthy and may include many updates that can be repetitive.
• Virtual Assistant, an AI-powered chatbot on IBM websites, supports users through self-service, answers technical questions, and can escalate to a live agent or open a ticket automatically.
• Predictive analytics and automation also help identify issues before they occur, reducing downtime and enhancing system reliability. Product "Call Home" enabled on IBM systems, error details are sent automatically to IBM, and service requests are opened without client action-90% handled through automation.

Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the organization's past performance (up to 1,500 characters):

• IBM's analysis of IBM Systems cases from 1 Feb 2024 to December 2025 demonstrates that cases benefiting from fully correct resolution recommendations by the Agent Assist AI technology experienced a 35% improvement in time to solution, compared to those cases without this assistance or with inaccurate recommendations from the same tool.

  IBM Z, Power, and Storage portfolios are being serviced with RTS Agent Assist and since inception, 85% of IBM Infrastructure support cases included AI-based recommendations and 55K cases were addressed with AI.

• Our Generative AI-powered Case Summarization is providing real-time and on-demand support case summaries. Since its inception (1/2024 - December 2025), over 800K cases have been summarized. 64% of all case summaries were used by support agents, potentially saving an average of 2 mins per case. Case Summarization tool use can potentially yield approx. 17,000 hours in operational savings yearly with just 275K cases a year, through increased productivity, stemming from the time saved by support agents.

• IBM Virtual Assistant is assisting clients with technical queries across IBM Z, Power, and Storage portfolios. as well as for MVS Linux, Microsoft, CISCO Networking. Since its inception (Jan 2024 thru Dec 2025), 96% of clients' questions related to public content searches have been addressed with self-service (chatbot) without the client requesting to talk or chat with a human agent in order to resolve that question.

• Predictive analytics and automation handled 3.5M IBM Call Home serviceable events in 2024. 90% of IBM Call Home serviceable events were resolved with automation in 2024. For the remaining 10% of events, where additional support was required, system data was transmitted. The data was encrypted based on the rules specific to clients' systems and was provided to IBM support specialists and designated operations teams.

Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 1,500 characters):

Listen the replay of client webinar where TLS Support executives describe TLS AI strategy and guide you through our AI and automation implementation through an insightful demonstration. https://ibm.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1724857&tp_key=ff589be425