In this episode of The Connector Podcast, host Koen Vanderhoydonk sits down with Michel van der Poorten (IBM AI partner recruitment) and Francis Mukweyanzo (Arrow ACS business development) to discuss IBM’s AI strategy, ethics, and global partnership model with Arrow. Michel outlines IBM’s historical AI milestones, notably Project Debater, and emphasizes the company’s principle of augmenting rather than replacing humans while ensuring client data ownership. He explains IBM’s AI Ethics Board, led by Francesca Rossi and Christina Montgomery, its integration into corporate governance, and the focus on training employees on ethical AI. The conversation moves to regional regulatory landscapes, highlighting the EU’s advanced AI regulations and emerging US initiatives, and how IBM assists clients in compliance. Michel introduces Watsonx, the evolution of Watson, and identifies three primary use‑case domains—customer interaction, internal optimization, and developer coding assistance—that are globally consistent. The discussion then shifts to partnership dynamics: IBM’s ecosystem‑first go‑to‑market strategy, Arrow’s role as the interface to end‑partners, and collaborative efforts to combine open‑source AI stacks with IBM’s enterprise‑grade technology, including joint work on regulatory‑compliance solutions. Francis describes Arrow’s AI Lab, a sandbox for partners to test, train, and deploy AI solutions, and its coordination with IBM’s client‑engineering team. They also touch on AI’s role in cybersecurity, such as ransomware mitigation and memory‑chip‑level threat detection. Looking ahead, Michel mentions IBM’s focus on lean, energy‑efficient large language models, open‑source community development, and upcoming collaborations with Arrow’s AI Lab. The episode closes with an announcement of a Luxembourg roundtable on “AI for Good” scheduled for 25 June, and both guests share their contact information for further engagement.
Chapters
Welcome to the Connector Podcast, an ongoing conversation connecting fintechs, banks, and regulators worldwide. Join CEO and founder Koen Vanderhoydonk as you learn more about the latest available trends and solutions in the markets. Welcome to another podcast episode from the Connector, and today I have a special guest. It's a partnership, and it's IBM and Arrow. So can I start with you, Michel, IBM?
Sure. So hi everybody, I'm Michel van der Poorten. I'm working at IBM and I'm in charge of recruiting new partners to our ecosystem and been involved with AI for the past 10 years.
Oh, excellent. And on my right side, Francis from Arrow.
Thank you for the opportunity indeed. So my name is Francis. I am Francis Mukweyanzo. I am part of Arrow ACS, who is IBM's value-add distributor, and I'm responsible for the business development activities, helping our business partners grow and expand their businesses.
Guys, I hope you're as excited as I am today because it's a real joy to have one of the forefront players in AI, IBM, around the table. And everyone probably knows about Deep Blue, about Jeopardy! And about all these magical things that were done by IBM. But what I'm wondering is, what is the future like, Michel?
Sure. So, Koen, let me first take you back 6 years in our history to 2018, when we had something which you didn't mention yet, which is Project Debater. Project Debater was actually a large language model avant la lettre. Because we were able to play the game of debating and actually win against professional debaters and win on the information side. However, on the way the message was brought, the human debater was better. So for me, it really underpins already one of the fundamental principles we have. It is about augmenting humans, not replacing humans. The other thing which we think is crucial is that AI is there to help business. And that also means that what our clients are doing with our solutions, the insights are theirs, the data is theirs. We don't want anything to do with their own stuff. It is their stuff and will remain their stuff. That's the way we view the use of AI.
All right.
So basically AI for business.
I think a very important element that you touch upon immediately, especially when you talk about human interactions, it's around the ethics of AI. So what's the view on ethics?
So for us, it's the basis of everything, actually. So inside of IBM, we have 2 ladies who are in charge of our AI Ethics Board. Those 2 ladies are Francesca Rossi and Christina Montgomery. Now, Francesca Rossi was originally a professor in Italy, but she's one of the ladies who participated in the High Expert Council for the EU legislation. So she's been involved from day one on distilling this legislation and then brought those insights into IBM. And we now have a board which reports directly into our corporate board on how do we handle AI ethically. And that has been brought into a complete methodology which is being deployed across the whole of IBM, also making sure that everybody at IBM is trained to understand what it actually means to have ethical AI. So it's really at the corner or at the center rather of our way to go to market to develop our products.
And because, I mean, IBM has always been a global leader and still is today. So I'm wondering, if you look at AI and the applications, do you actually see a difference in regions, in areas, in countries?
So for sure, the EU is ahead of the pack as far as regulations go. We, as everybody knows here, we have now, I think for 2 weeks, the regulation has been passed. Now, of course, needs to be translated in local legislation, but the regulation as such has been passed. So that's excellent. We see some upcoming regulation in the States. There's the Presidential Act on AI. There are a number of organizations being built around ethical AI. So I think it's completely different in landscape, but you see that it's picking up interest and importance all across the globe. So what we're trying to do from an IBM perspective is, because we're working with global clients as well, is to help them understand what are the regulations in the different regions and make sure that we help them confirm— conform rather to the local legislations to make sure that they don't get into trouble.
And would you see from a Watson application point of view that there are also different applications in different regions of the world?
So Watson is our older name. We now have Watsonx. Why did we add Watsonx to it? The x indicates that we're now also able to handle, next to traditional AI, machine learning and so on, we can also handle generative AI. Are there differences in what we see across the world? Not that much, I would say, today. For us, the 3 main use cases are customer interactions. Secondly, it's all about internal optimization. And third is everything to do with coding, helping developers code in a more efficient way. Those are 3. big domains, and those 3 big domains help us distill offerings which work across the globe, actually. So that's what I see. I don't see that many differences from a use case perspective, I have to admit, at the moment.
Well, I think you're the ultimate person to ask because you're responsible for partnerships. A lot of what we see today is around collaboration. How would you manage partnership collaboration in AI?
Yeah.
So actually IBM has made a huge change over the past 2 years. And for us, the first route to market is actually our ecosystem partnerships. And by the way, Arrow is in that domain crucial for us because they are the interface towards the end partners. And those end partners have their end clients. So for us, this is the first route to market. Secondly, what we see is that a lot of those new partners are working on AI technology, but they're using full open source stacks, which is great. But what they sometimes lack is the possibility to bring it to an enterprise level. And that's where we can combine our technologies with their open-source knowledge, together often with their own intellectual property, which we can enhance with bringing our technology into their solutions so that they can focus on what sets them apart from the competition, and we can help them strengthen their offering in different domains, from a platform level, from a cybersecurity level. Those are different topics we can also address together with these startups, which typically don't have that expertise in those domains.
But I guess also in addition, like from a regulation-related aspect.
Of course. So we also help those BPs make sure that their solutions comply to the regulation because they are ultimately selling this solution to their clients. They need to make sure that what they're offering meets the requirements of the regulation in the country where the client is operating.
And do you have some examples that you can share with us where collaboration in AI was established?
So we have a partner, and by the way, we've been working together with Arrow on that partner, and that partner has developed a minimal viable product on helping their clients understand the regulation on AI and what they have to do to be able to afterwards translate it into a real solution. So they have ingested all regulation on AI. The DPO, so the data privacy officer or the chief data officer, can ask questions to the system. The system will ask clarifying questions. The DPO or CDO can then give those additional information, gets back the correct information on the regulation, can even look at the source of that information, and then tell to the business who wants to do certain project, okay, this is in line with regulation or not. And what we're also looking there together with Arrow is to be able to involve the AI lab of Arrow. Maybe, Francis, you can give some more details on that side.
Yeah, sure. So first of all, just to kind of clarify the role of our AI lab, to, on a nutshell, and to put it simple. So we have, in a spirit of collaboration, but also of empowering and helping our business partners really acquire the right knowledge and have all the capabilities needed to implement AI into their organization or throughout their organization. So the AI lab is there to help our business partners go through testing projects, trainings, deployment aspect, but also to be able to use it as a sandbox for them to really train themselves.
Very important.
So it's a really— I think it's a very strong initiative that's really adding a differentiating value for our business partners. So in that perspective, we are indeed working very closely with the IBM Client Engineering team to really make sure that we have a total package helping our business partners with their go-to-market initiatives. Yeah.
Well, thank you for sharing that. I cannot help it because when talking to somebody from IBM, I think what comes to me is that you guys are so much involved in a lot of the big organizations worldwide. So today we talk AI, but I could also have like a call on cloud and cybersecurity, but Let's maybe put them in the mix. So how do you see AI is actually helping on those more traditional elements in business?
Sure. So what we see is that AI, whether that's traditional AI, so machine learning, or generative AI, will be a great help in increasing the cybersecurity. Now, we should not kid ourselves. The bad actors will also have access to this kind of technology. So it will be—
Of course.
As always, it will be a race to make sure that we stay ahead of what the bad actors can do. At the same time, we also know, and unfortunately we have had very recent examples here in Belgium as well, on bad actors able to get into organizations. So there we're also working on and even have developed solutions which are there to protect against ransomware. Or if ransomware has been unfortunately deployed and the data is blocked, we are able to get back to operational state as quickly as possible, because we can ensure that the data is indeed safe. And we now have even introduced at the level of memory chips that we can detect at the level of a memory chip, whether there is a virus being added or a Trojan. So we really have, even at that level now, the capability of detecting that kind of behavior.
Amazing. Amazing. So I guess we're almost to our last question, and the last question is usually about what does the future look like. So I'm wondering, where does all this innovation lead to, and how does that look like For IBM, but also for Arrow?
Sure. So for us, one of the things we see, and you probably have heard about that, Koen, there are a lot of large language models which are being added all the time. You probably also heard that they consume a lot of energy. So one of the things we're looking at is making sure that with lean and mean large language models, we're able to address the requirements of the market, of our clients. But that's only one aspect. The second thing we've been working on, that's together with our colleagues in research, is on making sure that the way to develop new large language models can be done in open source and via community approach. And you will hear a lot more about that later this month. So I can already give a teaser there. And together, of course, with Arrow, we will certainly be using more and more their AI lab because they have functionality and possibilities there which we currently don't have even on our cloud. So that's great to be able to have that kind of collaboration.
So 1+ 1 makes 11, Francis.
Yeah, definitely. And to add up on top of that, I think from ARO's perspective, you know, like we represent a multitude of different vendors. So in the era where AI is such a big topic, a big important topic, we find it as part of our responsibility as well to make sure that any technology or solution we're providing to our partners, to the markets, are actually not only ethical but also secure. So I think one of the strengths that when you ask a question like looking ahead or whatsoever, in regards to IBM technology is it's a technology that's always, you know, like looking ahead in different aspects, including security, including, you know, regulations, but also market dynamics.
I think the market calls that AI for good. And it's probably a very good closure for this conversation because it opens up a lot of interest for more conversations. So maybe, Francis, I heard that something nice is to be announced.
Yeah, well, there are many things to be announced, many nice things to be announced, to be more precise. But in this particular case, yes, we have, as a distributor, we have several initiatives that we undertake to make sure that the market awareness is there, but also, you know, inspiring the markets on the right approaches, the right technologies, etc. So in that spirit, we are organizing a roundtable this time in Luxembourg and for our business partners whereby we want to provide them with, you know, practical insights on, okay, what is AI for good? And what does that mean? And how do you go about it? You know, like, where do you start? Where does it end? Does it even end somewhere? So this is on the 25th of June. So if you are interested, I think this is a right call to action, like, come and join the conversations.
Yeah, then let me make it even more concrete. How did I contact you?
It's very simple. So my name is Francis Mukweyanzo. I am actually the business development manager looking after IBM within Arrow. So please call Arrow or email me. I'm to be found on LinkedIn. So it's a very unique name and very quite easy to find. Mukweyanzo.
I will make sure I put it in the comments because I have a difficult name too. What about you, Michel? Where can people find you?
And for sure, I'm also on LinkedIn. You can also find me on Twitter. Sorry, on X, as it's called now. So my handle there is Michel VDP. But just reach out to me. And my name is also quite difficult to spell. So Koen, if you could put it in the comments.
I'll definitely do so.
And I thought I was the only one with a difficult name, but join the club.
Very good. Gentlemen. Thank you so much for having you both in this podcast. This was amazing. Thank you also for the audience of tuning in and more of these insights from the industry to be followed in this podcast channel. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thanks for listening to another episode of The Connector Podcast. To connect and keep up to date with all the latest, head over to www.jointheconnector.com. Or hit subscribe via your podcast streaming platform.
