2021 T&I Summit Speaker Spotlight: Alain Benichou

Alain Benichou: Let me tell you something, this is second to none as an experience. I’ve experienced a lot over the last few years, as you can imagine, with the pandemic and all. It’s been very intense to transport a French guy into Chinese culture, but, at the same time, China is very dear to our family. We love China as an individual family. I have a son who lived here and speaks Chinese. We’ve always liked the culture; we’re very close, in fact, to the values. So, I have been able, in the past two years, to experience the dedication to family, the focus on education, the care for the elderly, the love for science and technology. Those are the things that we actually share and that I’ve been able to experience.

Alain Benichou: So this has been challenging, especially with the confrontation between the US and China that we’ve all experienced in the past year. I do believe that, we, the multinational companies, and especially tech companies, are in a really good position to be able to explain to both sides what the reality is, and stick to the reality. The reason why we can do that is because of our intimacy with our clients. IBM has very intimate relationships with key clients, especially state-owned enterprises, in this country. We know them inside and out. We’re participating in the backbone of the financial institution in this country; banks cannot run without IBM. This knowledge and intimacy puts us in a position to really explain to the US government, but also to Chinese counterparts, what the situation really is. We need to take advantage of that. And, of course, we use AmCham as the advocacy group and really the champion for these causes.

Alain Benichou: First of all, this is really an area where I think we absolutely need to focus. Technology is the priority of China’s 14^th 5-year plan, with high-quality growth. So, this comes from technology, hybrid cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), cyber security, and so on. The tech companies are here to say, we are in the fabric of business in China, we’ve been here for decades, we are very involved and very intimate with our clients. Technology companies can really help modernize the country. Today, only 18-20% of Chinese companies really use AI. Only 20% of the applications are cloud enabled – just 20% of them! There’s huge potential to ramp up. Who’s going to do that? Only local Chinese companies? We are here to help with digital transformation and to help further the very plan the government is putting in place.

Alain Benichou: With our new CEO, we have a very streamlined, focused strategy on hybrid cloud and AI. And we believe this is exactly what this country needs. What I mean by a hybrid cloud is this: today, a company can use up to 12 different clouds. And every cloud provider has one objective, of course, which is to lock you in. But then how do you leverage this innovation? You need to be able to move seamlessly from one cloud to another to do so, to move from on-premise to off-premise. These are the platforms that all the companies need. Part of this strategy is IBM’s recent acquisition of Red Hat OpenShift, the container platform, which is the best in the world. So, this is what we are now focusing on. We are landing the hybrid strategy and the AI strategy in China, and that’s the way we differentiate ourselves.

Alain Benichou: We are now focusing on the value of hybrid cloud and AI, and for that we need partnerships within the domestic ecosystem. So, first of all, we’re going to reach out even more to Chinese companies to localize these offerings. We’ve announced, for instance, a very strong partnership between Red Hat OpenShift and Digital China. They are going to take on these initiatives in this country, reach out to new customers, and generate new ideas and solutions. And we will continue to do that with other partners. The second is that we are very open to joint ventures. We have a joint venture with Inspur for our POWER business. We do this because we see value in bringing forward architecture ecosystems.

Alain Benichou: There are three aspects to this. Number one, you’re absolutely right, almost all the employees of IBM in China are Chinese, and I really think that this is the right thing to do. We invest in other countries because we want, first of all, to leverage the talent. There are tremendous talents and skills in China. So that’s the first thing – we are absolutely committed to being part of the fabric of China. The second thing is that Corporate Social Responsibility is a very important thing. As a tech company, we have a role to play in advancing STEM and tech with students here – not just the privileged but also the under-privileged. Recently we launched an AI Enlightenment Season with 2,000 volunteers from IBM, along with our business partners. We didn’t want only to be at Tsinghua University High School; we also wanted it to be accessible by more underprivileged, remote communities. We talked about the advantage of pursuing a career in tech, in STEM. I, myself, taught a math class, as part of this initiative. The third thing is dedication to development. We have a lot of people in development in China. This is not just about localizing the offerings, but also about bringing value to the rest of the world.