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Intuit embraces LLM choice for multiple use cases

Intuit embraces LLM choice for multiple use cases

Larry Dignan
Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Intuit is operating on one data and AI platform that enables it to select up to 10 large language models for various consumer and business use cases via its Generative AI Operating System (GenOS).

The ability to select multiple large language models (LLMs) gives Intuit the ability to leverage genAI for use cases with a few clicks and build in redundancy. Intuit is looking to leverage a unified data and AI platform to solve customer problems and bring in human experts when needed.

Speaking at Intuit's Investor Day, CTO Alex Balazs, said GenOS is transformative to the company's platform plans. Intuit made a big bet five years ago on one data platform and AI as a way to expand its total addressable market. Now Intuit TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks and Mailchimp run on a unified platform as well as GenOS, which powers Intuit Assist.

"Developers leveraging our platform and GenOS now have access to more than 10 LLMs," said Balazs. "They're able to easily select the right large language model that solves the specific customer use case. GenOS also allows us to seamlessly switch between LLMs to provide resiliency so the customer has a smooth experience."

Intuit also recently announced AI Workbench, a dedicated development environment for AI native experiences, said Balazs. Earlier this month, Intuit outlined enhancements to GenOS including AI Workbench as well as updates to GenStudio, GenRuntime and GenUX.

According to Intuit, GenOS AI Workbench includes an LLM Leaderboard for use cases, prompt management, an automated evaluation service for LLMs and traceability for prompt workflows. Other updates include:

  • An LLM sandbox in GenStudio that includes Anthropic Claude via Amazon Bedrock, Gemini from Google Cloud, Llama from Meta AI and Mistral AI to complement custom LLMs and OpenAI GPT models via Microsoft Azure.
  • GenRuntime, a layer that includes GenOrchestrator to plan, execute and retrieve knowledge and tools for agentic workflows.
  • GenSRF (security, risk and fraud) that has guardrails for genAI deployments.
  • GenUX, which includes more than 140 new UX components, widgets and patterns for developments.

The company's strategy highlights how enterprises leading in genAI are building platforms that are able to hot swap models as they advance. Intuit has built its infrastructure on Amazon Web Services and said last year at re:Invent that GenOS uses Amazon Bedrock as well as multiple services including Sagemaker.

Intuit's selection of models in GenOS is a subset of what's available on Amazon Bedrock. For instance, Meta has more than 10 Llama models available on Amazon Bedrock with providers such as A121, Anthropic, Cohere and Mistral offering more than a handful of foundational models.

This model choice is also increasingly being offered by software as a service providers, which are packaging a selection of models that can be used to build AI agents. Demonstrations of Salesforce's Agentforce platform highlighted the ability to select models to build agents.

Model selection is a key cog in what Balazs calls Intuit's durable advantage--its data and AI platform and ability to enable machine learning, natural language processing and LLM development to embed fintech throughout its environment.

Balazs said Intuit's model agnostic approach allows the company to future proof its platform as it chases its five big bets: Revolutionize speed to benefit, connect people to experts, unlock smart money decisions, be the center of small business growth and disrupt the mid-market.

"We're going to continue to innovate and look ahead and determine the best way to serve our customers, especially as the AI landscape continues to rapidly evolve. Almost every day, there's some type of announcement of some new AI capability."

Indeed, Intuit demonstrated the use of digital avatars as a way to provide guidance and insights to customers. Balazs said that avatars will help people retain information and learn. The goal would be to couple LLMs, genAI and avatars to deliver human-like experiences that seamlessly hand off to human experts.

Data to Decisions Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity AI GenerativeAI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Analytics Automation Disruptive Technology Chief Information Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer

13 artificial intelligence takeaways from Constellation Research’s AI Forum

13 artificial intelligence takeaways from Constellation Research’s AI Forum

Larry Dignan
Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Agentic AI is going to hit sprawl quickly, boardrooms are being reconstituted over fears of being left behind, genAI is still mostly an experiment with fuzzy returns and old-school issues like change management still determine whether companies successfully move from pilot to production.

Those are a few of the takeaways from Constellation Research's AI Forum. Here's a look at everything we learned at the AI Forum in New York.

The board of directors is driving the AI conversation. AI is clearly a boardroom issue, said Betsy Atkins, CEO of Bajacorp. "What boards have figured out is that if they don't lean in and adopt AI and technology they're going to be left behind," said Atkins.

Boards are also being reconstituted for AI. "I see boards shifting in terms of cohorts," said Atkins, who said enterprises are creating boardrooms that can look at technology as well as new business models to differentiate.

However, the board also wants ROI. Atkins said that enterprises are looking at use cases with quick ROI because boards now realize how expensive AI can be.

Change management is more important than technical capability in production generative AI deployments, Michael Park, SVP, Global Head of AI GTM at ServiceNow. Park added: "I think getting the data structure ready and the instance ready is the easy part. That's just the tech, and there's hard work that needs to be done around it. The challenge that we're seeing right now is the organizational change management and getting people to see what's possible. Change management has been the biggest struggle. The tech is real."

Agentic AI. "There's no doubt that agentic AI is the future," said Park. He said there will be two domains of AI agents. One will augment a human being to supercharge capabilities. And another domain will be an aggregated set of agents that work on behalf of a unit. "I think every job is going to be affected in some ways and transform productivity for employees and customer experiences," said Park.

Attendees at the AI Forum generally agreed that the agentic AI wave is real, but doubted the technology has quite caught up with production use cases yet. That skepticism sure hasn’t stopped vendors from talking about agentic AI though.

In recent weeks, Salesforce, Workday, Microsoft, HubSpot, ServiceNow, Google Cloud and Oracle all talked about AI agents and likely overloaded CxOs who have spent the last 18 months trying to move genAI from pilot to production. Other genAI front runners—Rocket, Intuit, JPMorgan Chase--have mostly taken the DIY approach and are now evolving strategies.

Agent orchestration will be needed quickly because overload will be here soon. Boomi CEO Steve Lucas said that the number of AI agents will outnumber the number of people in your business in less than three years. "The digital imperative is how do I work with agents? The number of agents will outnumber the number of humans in less than three years," said Lucas. Fun fact: Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller thinks Lucas prediction is way conservative.

This post first appeared in the Constellation Insight newsletter, which features bespoke content weekly and is brought to you by Hitachi Vantara.

Healthcare is expected to be the most transformed industry by AI. Multiple attendees and panelists at AI Forum noted that healthcare will see the most transformational impact from AI. Anand Iyer Chief AI Officer at Welldoc, said data and AI can transform outcomes and be more preventative. Iyer said: "You can actually figure out what cocktail of exercise, food, stress, reduction, and all of these vectors that drive somebody's own health. You can figure out the exact cocktail that works for Person X, in a way that fits into their life flow and their clinician's workflow."

There may be a catch with AI health transformation. AI will bring costs down initially but may end up being more expensive due to the level of personalization.

Trust in AI will take time. Scott Gnau, Vice President of Data Platforms Intersystems, said every technology wave requires time to earn trust. Gnau noted building trust in a technology can take years, but AI has a chance to earning user trust quickly. "One or two bad answers can set generative AI back, but the addition of provenance and governance helps," said Gnau. "One of the game changers is that AI can actually be used to explain the provenance of the answer. I think we have a unique opportunity to accelerate trust."

Generative AI is still in the science experiment phase. Gnau added that there's a degree of FOMO with deploying AI. "Is generative AI or a large language model the right tool for every problem out there? Absolutely not. There are things that you've built that run your business today that are good so don't suck all of the budget away and let them crumble," said Gnau. "Make those systems better with AI and use the right tool for the right processes."

The AI playbook isn't fully baked. In a pop-up survey at the AI Forum, 35 CxOs indicated that they are trying a little bit of everything when it comes to AI (good thing they could give multiple answers). Respondents indicated that they were using multiple approaches to build AI capabilities. The majority (79%) said they were developing home-grown AI services on hyperscale cloud services and 48% were also using open-source frameworks and large language models. Many of these efforts included AI embedded in packaged applications that they already used such as Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle, SAP etc.

14 takeaways from genAI initiatives midway through 2024

Data quality remains the biggest hurdle in generative AI deployments. "Data quality is the biggest roadblock to realizing generative AI's full value. You need a data driven strategy combined with a model driven strategy and then you can iterate quickly," said Michelle Bonat, Chief AI Officer of AI Squared. But without a focus on data quality, your models won't be good enough to use.

The role of the Chief AI Officer. Chief AI Officers will need to know a lot of business functions and technology much like CIOs and CTOs, but to lead AI strategy you'll need to know the technologies. "I think it's necessary to have someone with a good knowledge of AI," said Phong Nguyen, Chief AI Officer of FPT Software, which is based in Vietnam. "You need to have the deep technical skills and understand what AI can bring."

Minerva Tantoco, CEO of City Strategies LLC, agreed. "When something is relatively new with a lot of potential it really does require a strong alignment with the goals of the organization," she said. "Once you set a strategy it becomes the fabric of the enterprise. But in the beginning, you want the chief AI officer to have a really strong background in AI. This is a transformational role."

AI leaders need to be trilingual. Tantoco said AI leaders need to be trilingual in technology, business and governance and compliance. "At this stage, you need to collaborate across multiple disciplines while leaning into the strong technical background," she said.

David Trice, CEO of inZspire AI, said AI leaders have multiple roles to juggle. First, enterprises need to drive AI or they'll fall behind. Trice echoed Tantaco's sentiment that AI leaders need to bring multiple threads together. "Product, data and AI innovation need to be at the table with legal, compliance and security," said Trice.

Human led AI or vice versa? Chris Nicholas, President and CEO Sam's Club, said artificial intelligence is enabling the company to "take 100 million tasks out of our clubs" even though it has more associates. Yet he has a clear view on who leads the AI charge: Humans. AI is about freeing humans from the mundane to solve customer problems.

AI and human rights. But just in case AI does kill jobs it's worth pondering a human rights update for age we're entering. Will there be a reskilling safety net and the ability for humans to pursue their passions for a living? A workshop on AI and human rights surfaced a lot of thoughts about the right to work as well as the right to opt out of AI and what's likely to become augmented humanity. One prevailing thought was that we are working towards using AI to augment human intelligence. In the future, that pecking order will be reversed and human intelligence will augment AI.

More from AI Forum:

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Event Report: Capgemini Business to Planet Connect at Climate Week New York

Event Report: Capgemini Business to Planet Connect at Climate Week New York

Media Name: @rwang0 Ray Wang Cupertino @capgemini #climateweek 1.png
R "Ray" Wang
Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

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Five Trends From Capgemini's Business To Planet Event

On September 25th, 2024, Capgemini hosted delegates as part of Climate Week 2024 in New York.  Attendees learned how organizations and their leaders have transformed operations, built sustainable supply chains, and applied AI to improve their green strategies.

  1. Sustainability by design addresses root causes. Attendees and speakers reiterated how important product and service design plays a role in enabling sustainability.  From low carbon package design to efficient energy consumption, many organizations have achieved quantifiable achievements.
     
  2. Circular economy business models show promise.  In many sessions, concrete examples include product use extension, resource recovery, sharing platforms, resource efficient production, and recycling of waste to material.  These circular business models consider circular inputs, value chains, and market places.
     
  3. Pragmatic decarbonization lower costs. Investment has increased in increasing energy efficiency, developing lower carbon products, electrifying processes, replacing thermally-driven prices, and collaborating around the supply chains.  Users see a benefit with a comprehensive approach in reducing carbon emissions with consderation of cost, timing, impact, and feasibility.
     
  4. Data-driven AI supercharges sustainability.  Today's projects often involve a heavy digital and data component in not only quantifying inputs, but also reducing outputs.  The heavy use of sensors and computing at the edge enables both digital and AI capabilities.  Consequently, this has led to a rise in new  startups putting this data to good use in operational efficiency, regulatory compliance, and revenue growth.
    .
  5. Advances in climate tech create new opportunities to democratize action.  New climate tech startups focus on bringing hard earned advances to the masses.  Some examples include:
  • Altana - helping companies see intelligent maps of the global supply chain
  • BeZero - carbon credit rating systems
  • BioPlaster Research - seaweed based biodgradable packaging
  • Form Energy - long duration energy storage
  • Harvest Thermal - home heagina nd colling
  • InFarm - urban and vertical farming
  • OCN.Ai - a movement towards a healthier, more resilient ocean,
  • ZeroAvia - hydrogen fueled aviation

The Bottom Line: The Pendulum for Climate Solutions Has Shifted

Most attendees at Climate Week and at the Capgemini event shared similar insights on the climate for sustainability policies.  In the US, boards have pushed back on DEI and ESG. The combination of a public wary of greenwashing and a tighter economic environment has led to the deprioritization of green policies. Policies that show a green bottom line such as circular economy, waste reduction, and compliance have had the most success.

Your POV

How far along are you with your sustainabilty projects?  Are you ready to put these into full production?  What risks have you overcome?

Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org. Please let us know if you need help with your strategy efforts. Here’s how we can assist:

  • Developing your metaverse and digital business strategy
  • Connecting with other pioneers
  • Sharing best practices
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  • Implementation partner selection
  • Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
  • Demystifying software licensing

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Disclosures

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy,stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website. * Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions.  However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Constellation Research recommends that readers consult a stock professional for their investment guidance. Investors should understand the potential conflicts of interest analysts might face. Constellation does not underwrite or own the securities of the companies the analysts cover. Analysts themselves sometimes own stocks in the companies they cover—either directly or indirectly, such as through employee stock-purchase pools in which they and their colleagues participate. As a general matter, investors should not rely solely on an analyst’s recommendation when deciding whether to buy, hold, or sell a stock. Instead, they should also do their own research—such as reading the prospectus for new companies or for public companies, the quarterly and annual reports filed with the SEC—to confirm whether a particular investment is appropriate for them in light of their individual financial circumstances.

Copyright © 2001 – 2024 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.

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With Oracle Cloud win, AMD MI300X gains traction as Nvidia counterweight

With Oracle Cloud win, AMD MI300X gains traction as Nvidia counterweight

Larry Dignan
Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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AMD is starting to land hyperscale deals for its AMD Instinct MI300X AI accelerators with ROCm open software and the wins portend more competition for Nvidia.

The chipmaker said that Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) chose AMD Instinct MI300X and ROCm for its latest OCI Computer Supercluster instance. The OCI Supercluster with AMD MI300X supports up to 16,384 GPUs in a single cluster.  OCI outlined AMD MI300X performance in a June blog. 

Oracle's cloud, AI plans are a master class in co-opetition

AMD's OCI win came a day after Vultr, a privately held cloud computing platform, said it will use MI300X and ROCm. Vultr focuses on AI workloads. At a recent Goldman Sachs investor conference, AMD CEO Lisa Su said the company is rolling out MI300X at scale. Su said:

"We launched MI300X in December. It has had just tremendous customer traction and customers have been really excited about it. We have several large hyperscalers, including Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, which have adopted MI300 as well as all of our OEM and ODM partners."

Su said AMD's biggest efforts have been on the software side with ROCm and working with large language models (LLMs). AMD has also built out its AI business with the acquisition of Silo AI and ZT Systems. AMD will follow up the MI300X with the MI325 in the fourth quarter and then the MI350 series and MI400. AMD will hold an event Oct. 10 to highlight its upcoming AI roadmap.

For now, AMD's AI processors are just getting traction, but enterprises will be happy to have a counterweight to Nvidia and some additional competition.

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IBM upgrades IBM Quantum Data Center with Heron

IBM upgrades IBM Quantum Data Center with Heron

Larry Dignan
Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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IBM has installed its second-gen IBM Quantum Heron processors in its Poughkeepsie data center as it builds out its quantum infrastructure.

Big Blue launched its latest Heron quantum processor and IBM Quantum System Two late last year. Now those systems have been deployed in IBM's Quantum Data Center, the company has more than a dozen quantum computers in its fleet, which is available via IBM Cloud.

Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said the move to install the latest Heron quantum processor gives IBM's quantum efforts a big boost. Mueller said:

"IBM is showing the commercial viability with Heron, with its second system available for quantum use cases. This is great news for the quantum community as it can run new use cases on the largest set of available qubits. All eyes are now on how IBM will be connecting these Heron systems together.

Heron is the Lego block that IBM wants to use to put a massive quantum system together built on racks. A lot can go wrong, as we know with traditional racks - but IBM has HPC experience. It's good to see Heron - the quantum Lego block - is working."

IBM said its Heron-based quantum system offers a 16-fold improvement in performance and a 25-fold increase in speed over previous IBM systems. The company said its two Heron-based systems in addition to its other quantum systems mean its IBM Quantum Data Center can run quantum circuits better than classical systems simulating them.

Quantum computing has been developing quietly as the tech industry has been focused on generative AI. Ultimately, generative AI and AI could converge for computing breakthroughs.

Recent quantum computing developments include:

Big Blue said its quantum data center can push new algorithms forward to reach quantum advantage. IBM also touted its Qiskit software to program quantum computers.

IBM said it will continue to expand its IBM Quantum Data Center as it executes on its roadmap. The Poughkeepsie location is the global hub for IBM's Quantum Network, but it is expanding with a second quantum facility in Ehningen, Germany.

Here's a look at IBM's quantum roadmap (click to expand).

 

Data to Decisions Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth IBM Quantum Computing Chief Information Officer

Trust & Safety Challenges in the Age of AI

Trust & Safety Challenges in the Age of AI

Steve Wilson
Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Steve Wilson is former VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, leading the business theme Digital Safety and Privacy. His coverage includes digital identity, data protection, data privacy, cryptography, and trust. His advisory services to CIOs, CISOs, CPOs and IT architects include identity product strategy, security practice benchmarking, Privacy by Design (PbD), privacy engineering and Privacy [or Data Protection] Impact Assessments (PIA, DPIA). Coverage Areas: -  Identity management, frameworks & governance-  Digital identity technologies-  Privacy by Design -  Big Data; “Big Privacy”-  Identity & privacy innovation Previous experience: Wilson has worked in ICT innovation, research, development and analysis for over 25 years. With double…...

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I recently hosted a conversation about trust and safety with two leaders in the field: Kanti Kopalle, VP of Intuitive Operations and Automation at the information and cloud services giant Cognizant, and Louis-Victor de Franssu, co-founder of the content moderation platform Tremau. We were joined by Constellation Research founder & chair, Ray Wang.

The bumpy road from analog to digital

As the world becomes more digital and borders seem to be disappearing, one of the paradoxes is that sovereignty remains such a sticky issue. I see this as one of the many dimensions of humankind’s grand analogue to digital conversion. This “project” has been running for a couple of decades and has a long way to go. 

Online today, nations want to retain and enforce their own safety rules, as part of their national identity. In some regions, increasingly assertive regulators are holding multi-national digital platforms to account for meeting local media and content rules.

There are huge challenges for digital and cloud businesses operating globally. Automation of Trust & Safety controls is inevitable, for reasons of scale, cost and responsiveness.

So content moderation as a service is emerging.  Tremau was launched in 2021 to provide auto-moderation managed services to the global digital platforms. Co-founder Louis-Victor de Franssu was educated in the humanities and cut his teeth in financial risk management before joining the French government at a key period of digital regulation development. As Deputy to the French Ambassador for Digital Affairs, Louis-Victor worked on landmark initiatives including the Christchurch Call to Action to fight terrorist content online and the EU Digital Services Act (DSA).

He saw the pressure mounting on platforms and their ad hoc content governance. Content management with its challenges of scale, cultural and legal nuance, needed to shift to “the center of their operations” Victor-Louis told us. And so he helped launch Tremau.

The results of democratizing creativity

Prior to personal computing, laser printing and digital photography, media content was a very special type of product. You needed special equipment and complex skills in order to generate audio and video.

Kanti told us that seventy percent of content online now is user-generated. That’s a mind-blowing paradigm shift.

It’s been well documented how the democratization of content creation has overturned the businesses of print media, television, video rental, book sales and advertising.  But it seems to me that the implications for content regulation have taken longer to emerge.

The print and TV media industries in their heyday were largely monocultures. They became pretty cosy; compliance with public standards was mostly self-enforced.

But as media companies lost their monopoly over creation and distribution, it forced content moderation to come out into the open.

The benefits of objectivity

In our conversation, Kanti Kopalle reflected on the balance between human and automated content moderation. While automation is essential for scale, “we also need humans for the nuance” he said. “How do we seamlessly do the handover between an auto-moderation (using AI or some of the traditional techniques) to how a human overlays on top of that?”

Cognizant focuses on a balance between scale and nuance, aiming for consistency within the many and varied policy environments of its clients.

It strikes me that a less obvious benefit of automating content moderation is the potential for AI to fine-tune the rules deployed in different regions for what is acceptable and what’s not. With dozens of statutes to deal with, most of which are in flux, platforms trying to deliver millions of pieces of new content every day cannot hope to stay up to date without automation.

There is always going to be a judgement call about whether certain content is culturally acceptable and/or legal under prevailing norms in each place. If AI can make that call in a reasonably reliable manner, the efficiency dividends will be enormous. The algorithms don’t need to be perfect; after all, any human’s opinion about the acceptability of content is always debatable.

I can see advantages in making content moderation decisions purely mechanical, because the resulting disputes will be more technical than subjective, and may be easier to resolve systemically.

If the acceptability of content can be assessed algorithmically, then the algorithms can themselves be reviewed and improved in a methodical way.  

Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity I am Team Leader at the Nominee Organization (no vendor self nominations) Distillation Aftershots Innovation & Product-led Growth Data to Decisions Next-Generation Customer Experience Future of Work Tech Optimization Marketing Transformation cognizant ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI Robotics AI Analytics Automation Quantum Computing Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain Leadership VR Marketing B2B B2C CX Customer Experience EX Employee Experience Growth eCommerce Social Customer Service Content Management Collaboration business SaaS PaaS IaaS CRM ERP finance Healthcare Chief Customer Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Privacy Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer Chief Marketing Officer

Accenture strong Q4, sees IT budget savings funding genAI projects

Accenture strong Q4, sees IT budget savings funding genAI projects

Larry Dignan
Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said enterprises aren't increasing IT budgets for generative AI, but are looking to save money on technology and reallocate spending toward genAI and data projects.

Speaking on Accenture's fourth quarter earnings call, Sweet said IT budgets for 2025 are likely to be more of the same as enterprises are forming spending plans. She said:

"What we are seeing is the continued trend of trying to save money on IT to free up the spending on areas of GenAI. We haven't seen a change in overall spending. We'll see what the budgets come in January and February, but we're not expecting a big change. But what we also are seeing is that as they're saving money, they want to invest it in things like GenAI and data."

Sweet said the IT spending environment remains cautious and discretionary spending isn't likely to move higher.

Accenture ended the fourth quarter with $3 billion in genAI bookings for the fiscal year and expects another healthy increase in 2025. "We know there's clear demand. We're starting to see more of our clients move from proof-of-concept to larger implementations," said Sweet. "We're also continuing to see data pull-through."

In a nutshell, Sweet said that genAI and AI will be a lot like digital efforts in enterprises. At some point, AI will touch every unit, use case and operation in an enterprise. Sweet said Accenture generative AI deals were averaging around $1 million, but have moved to larger deals of $10 million or more.

She said:

"Like digital, AI is both the technology and a new way of working, and the full value will only come from strategies built on both productivity and growth. And it will be used in every part of the enterprise. We believe the introduction of GenAI signifies a transformative era that is set to drive growth for us and our clients over the next decade much like digital technology has in the last decade and continues to do so."

Accenture is also adopting genAI for productivity gains and to hone its services.

Q4, fiscal 2024 results

Accenture reported better-than-expected fourth quarter earnings of $2.66 a share on revenue of $16.4 billion, up 3% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were $2.79 a share.

Generative AI new bookings for the fourth quarter were $1 billion.

For fiscal 2024, Accenture reported earnings of $11.44 a share on revenue of $64.9 billion, up 1% from a year ago.

As for the outlook, Accenture projected fiscal 2025 revenue growth of 3% to 6% in local currency and earnings of $12.55 a share to $12.91 a share.

Accenture has 774,000 employees.

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CFOs in Q3 hold optimism, but cautious about spending plans

CFOs in Q3 hold optimism, but cautious about spending plans

Larry Dignan
Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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A pair of CFO surveys highlight how finance chiefs remain optimistic about the economy, but are cautious about investment plans due to uncertainty.

Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta released its third quarter The CFO Survey, which has 450 respondents.

According to The CFO Survey, companies are still expecting a soft landing in the economy and plan to invest in infrastructure. However, 30% of firms are postponing, scaling down or canceling investment plans due to uncertainty about the US elections.

CFOs were more concerned about demand, sales and revenue in the third quarter than the second quarter. Concerns about inflation, labor and monetary policy receded in the third quarter compared to the second quarter.

The CFO Survey landed a week after Deloitte released its third quarter CFO Signals survey, which had 200 respondents from companies with at least $1 billion in revenue.

Deloitte said, "finance chiefs expressed concern about how talent shortages, wage inflation, and recent regulatory changes and proposals could impact their ability to manage and retain a skilled workforce."

The CFO Signals survey found that CFOs were also more cautious about spending. Deloitte found that CFOs were expecting 2024 earnings growth of 2.1%, less than the two-year survey average of 4.7%. CFOs also expected a slowdown in capital spending with growth of 3.4% in the third quarter, down from 6.2% a year ago.

Just 14% of CFOs rate the current North American economy as good, and only 19% see it improving in a year, according to Deloitte's CFO Signals survey.

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Micron Technology: Q4, 2025 outlook driven by AI data center boom

Micron Technology: Q4, 2025 outlook driven by AI data center boom

Larry Dignan
Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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For Micron Technology more memory due to data center demand and AI workloads is going to mean more money.

The company reported better-than-expected fourth quarter results due to a boom in data center demand. Like other vendors in the infrastructure space, Micron Technology is riding the AI wave. Micron Technology reported record data center revenue and saw strong demand for its data center DRAM and high bandwidth memory as well as data center SSD sales.

Micron Technology delivered fourth-quarter net income of $887 million, or 79 cents a share, on revenue of $7.75 billion, up 93% from $4 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were $1.18 a share. Wall Street was expecting non-GAAP fourth quarter earnings of $1.11 a share on revenue of $7.65 billion.

As for the outlook, Micron Technology said first quarter revenue will be about $8.7 billion, well ahead of Wall Street estimates of $8.21 billion. Non-GAAP earnings for the first quarter are expected to be $1.74 a share compared to estimates of $1.54 a share.

In prepared remarks, CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said:

“Robust data center demand is exceeding our leading-edge node supply and driving overall healthy supply-demand dynamics. As we move through calendar 2025, we expect a broadening of demand drivers, complementing strong demand in the data center. We are making investments to support artificial intelligence (AI)-driven demand, and our manufacturing network is well positioned to execute on these opportunities. We look forward to delivering a substantial revenue record with significantly improved profitability in fiscal 2025, beginning with our guidance for record quarterly revenue in fiscal Q1."

Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said:

"Micron is on a roll, almost doubling its revenue – and showing a stark contrast to YoY performance – where the company had an operating loss of close to  $1.5 billion – and now an operating profit of more than $1.5 billion - all a sign of high demand of course fueled by AI to its high performance memory chips. Kudos to Sanjay Mehrotra to have the intestinal fortitude to keep the cost base and investment base intact. Micron is riding the chip rollercoaster, which for Micron is on the way up."

Other key points from Micron Technology:

  • Data center demand is being driven by AI servers, but there's a refresh cycle for traditional servers that's just starting.
  • The high-bandwidth memory (HBM) total available market is expected to top $25 billion in 2025, up from about $4 billion in 2023.
  • "Our HBM is sold out for calendar 2024 and 2025, with pricing already determined for this time frame," said Mehrotra. "In calendar 2025 and 2026, we will have a more diversified HBM revenue profile as we have won business across a broad range of HBM customers."
  • Micron said data center SSDs topped $1 billion in sales in the fourth quarter.
  • PC makers have built up inventory due to rising memory prices and AI PCs, but Micron expects a better inventory picture by spring of 2025.
  • Micron expects to benefit as PC makers move to a minimum of 16GB of DRAM for value PCs and 32GB to 64GB for higher priced PCs. The same memory buildout is expected for the smartphone market too.
  • For fiscal 2024, Micron reported net income of $778 million, or 70 cents a share, on revenue of $25.11 billion, up from $15.54 billion a year ago.

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Meta AI upgraded with Llama 3.2 models as Meta melds AI, AR, spatial computing

Meta AI upgraded with Llama 3.2 models as Meta melds AI, AR, spatial computing

Larry Dignan
Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Meta has updated Meta AI with its Llama 3.2 models, launched new Ray Ban smart glasses, Meta Quest 3S and Orion, the company's first augmented reality glasses.

With the moves, announced at Meta Connect, the company is looking to meld AI, augmented reality and spatial computing. Meta also outlined Meta AI features that can be useful to businesses.

Meta said that more than 400 million people use Meta AI across its portfolio--Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp--on a monthly basis with 185 million using it each week. Llama 3.2 will give Meta AI multimodal features.

Here's a look at what's new for Meta AI:

  • Meta AI can be prompted by voice and it'll respond with answers out loud with different voice options.
  • Meta AI will answer questions about photos and edit them. Meta AI can also share AI-generated images and suggest captions.
  • A Meta AI translation tool will be tested with automatic dubbing and lip synching for creators.
  • Businesses can use Meta AI to set up AIs that talk to customers, offer support and drive sales. Meta also added that advertisers have used Meta genAI tools to create more than 15 million ads in the last month.

Meta's plan for Meta AI is to use its platform and hardware ecosystem to drive usage. For instance, Ray Ban Meta glasses will be able to record and send voice messages on WhatsApp and Messenger, get video help and suggest items and places when you're out.

The company also said that Meta AI will play a role in Meta Quest 3S, its mixed-reality headset. Meta Quest 3S has the same performance as Meta Quest 3, but at a lower price point of $299.99. Meta also said it has revamped its Meta Horizon OS to support 2D apps, adding travel mode and improving Meta AI on the device with a Hey Meta wake word. Meta Quest 3 prices for the 512GB version will drop from $649.99 to $499.99.

Meta's Orion glasses aim to build off of what the company has learned from the Ray Ban partnership, but the device will only be available to Meta employees and "select external audiences." Orion has a large field of view in the smallest AR form factor so far.

Meta AI will also run on Orion to add visualizations to the physical world. The company noted:

"While Orion won’t make its way into the hands of consumers, make no mistake: this is not a research prototype. It’s one of the most polished product prototypes we’ve ever developed and is truly representative of something that could ship to consumers. Rather than rushing to put it on shelves, we decided to focus on internal development first, which means we can keep building quickly and continue to push the boundaries of the technology, helping us arrive at an even better consumer product faster."

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