Thomas Decorte // Junior business and data analyst at CD-Invest 

I’ve been working with the IBM i platform for a year. I’ve also been teaching sessions on using AI and R on IBM i at several events such as COMMON Luxembourg, COMMON Iberia, the Benelux Power* event, and several meetups in Belgium and Luxemburg.

At our office in Oostkamp, Belgium, near the medieval town of Bruges, we’re working with a lot of new, innovative solutions and open-source projects. We’re proud of our 12 official case studies, including our 3-D configurator on IBM i. At the moment, we’re using different AI techniques in customer projects across several business aspects such as sales prediction and invoice to cash collection. We’re also implementing AI chatbots for customers to automate various functions.

Our company uses IBM i to help solve customer problems. For example, one customer wanted to predict which new stores would be the best investments. I came up with the idea to build a performant model on the customer’s IBM i to calculate the investments. The customer was pleased that the solution could run on its current IBM machine next to its other business applications. This opened doors for other customers to invest in their IBM i and in AI for their Db2* for IBM i data.

A modern platform like the IBM i must be able to run new solutions. This means running AI solutions with R, Python and others on top of customers’ databases and data systems to maximize business value. I’m amazed by what my colleagues show me is possible with IBM i. I always thought of it as just an old system with green screens. Finding out that all the open-source packages I’m working with, including Python and R, can also run on IBM i shows me that it’s a platform for innovators.

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