New York, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna on Tuesday urged companies to build resiliency into their businesses and their networks in response to the unprecedented challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.

During his keynote address at the IBM's 'Think Digital' event joined by 90,000 virtual attendees from across the world, Krishna also announced new AI, Edge and Cloud capabilities to help clients accelerate recovery and transformation.

"History will look back on this as the moment when the digital transformation of business and society suddenly accelerated," Krishna said.

"This is an opportunity to develop new solutions, new ways of working and new partnerships that will benefit your company and your customers, not just today, but for years to come," he added.

Krishna called Hybrid Cloud and AI "the two dominant forces driving digital transformation."

Krishna announced broad range of AI-powered capabilities and services that are designed to help CIOs automate their IT infrastructures to be more resilient to future disruptions and to help reduce costs.

One such new offering, Watson AIOps, uses AI to self-detect, diagnose and respond to IT anomalies in real time.

Watson AIOps is built on Red Hat OpenShift to run across hybrid cloud environments and works with collaboration technologies at the center of today's distributed work environment, such as Slack and Box.

With new offerings built on Red Hat OpenShift, enterprises can autonomously manage workloads across a massive volume of edge devices.

Telecommunications providers can quickly orchestrate virtual and container network functions to help them provide new services today and as 5G adoption expands.

"Technology platforms are the basis for competitive advantage in the 21st century," Krishna said.

"They will determine how quickly you can pivot to new market opportunities, how well you serve your clients, how much you can scale, and how fast you can respond to a crisis like the one we're facing today," the IBM CEO emphasized.

As enterprises embark on a journey of digital transformation, there's a fundamental shift in the role that IT plays in the business - in defining business strategy and driving topline growth, and India has played a key role towards achieving this.

"The IT delivery platform needs to transform to a hybrid cloud IT architecture - which is scalable and adaptable to business and operational needs. At IBM Research lab, we are leveraging AI to transform IT and help our clients accelerate, automate and modernize their IT landscape to stay ahead," said Gargi Dasgupta, Director, IBM Research India and CTO, IBM India /South Asia.

IBM Research India played a significant role in envisioning, researching and developing many of these AI- driven innovations, in collaboration with other IBM Research labs.

IBM also announced a reimagined Business Partner programme that gives partners the flexibility to engage in one or more pathways to success.