Agentic IT Ops · a YoctoIT presentation

IBM Concert

The agentic AI platform that turns insights into action: it observes, optimizes, protects and automates your IT from a single point of control.

FOCUS · IBM CONCERT FOR POWER Vulnerability and patch management for AIX, IBM i, VIOS, firmware and HMC
July 2026 · YoctoIT presentation material for customers and partners
01 · The context

The response window has narrowed:
from weeks to hours

AI models have changed the rhythm of the attack: finding and exploiting a vulnerability takes hours, no longer weeks. Patching processes built on monthly change windows can no longer keep pace.

49.200+
CVEs published worldwide in 2025, up 23% over the previous year
ore
the new useful response time: with AI the defenses must accelerate too
300K $
the loss per hour of downtime estimated by 9 out of 10 large enterprises

Vulnerabilities published per year (CVEs, in thousands)

6,42016
14,72017
16,62018
17,32019
18,32020
20,22021
25,22022
29,12023
40,02024
49,22025
Source: IBM data, 2026
02 · The platform

IBM Concert: a unified operational layer

Concert connects the signals from the whole environment, generates context and coordinates the action across teams and tools. It doesn't replace what you have: it gets it to agree.

It surfaces what matters

less noise, more signal: a single view over applications, infrastructure and risk

It prioritizes by business impact

not just technical scores: decisions based on the real context of your environment

It orchestrates the action

governed workflows, with approvals and end-to-end traceability

AI-first experience · watsonxa unified assistant and coordinated agents
Observe
Optimize
Protect
Operate · events, incidents, fault management
Workflows · low-code automation, nearly 300 connectors
Resilience · posture measured across the whole life cycle
A common data model for signals, context and actions
03 · The modules

Six modules, a single platform

Observe

Full-stack observability: applications, infrastructure, network, digital experience and AI workloads. It includes the Instana technology.

Optimize

Performance and costs under control: data center, Kubernetes, cloud and AI workloads. With the Turbonomic technology.

Protect

Vulnerabilities, certificates, patches and compliance in a single view, prioritized by real impact.

Operate

Event management and incident resolution: the correlated events become coordinated actions.

Resilience

Resilience posture measured over time, with controls on catalogs like DORA and NIST.

Workflows

Cross-team low-code orchestration, with nearly 300 native connectors to your tools.

04 · Agentic AI

Not just a copilot:
a team of agents

Unified AI assistant

a single natural-language interface for questions, insights, dashboards and actions

Coordinator agent

the operational manager: it picks the right agents, keeps the context, sequences the work

Capability agent

specialized agents that investigate, prioritize and execute in the individual operational domains

InvestigationRisk and complianceWorkflow and executionResilienceOptimizationPlatform
The agents work on real data and tools, deterministically and traceably: the answers come from your systems, not from the model's imagination.
05 · Concert for Power

Your Power estate: discovered, explained, updated

Vulnerability and patch management built for IBM Power, with watsonx and integrated approval flows.

STEP 1

Discover

Automatic inventory via the HMC: AIX, IBM i, VIOS, Linux, firmware and I/O adapters, correlated with the IBM, Red Hat and SUSE security bulletins.

STEP 2

Understand

watsonx explains every CVE in your context: impacted components, attack vectors, the real criticality beyond the CVSS score.

STEP 3

Recommend

The optimal fix level that resolves the vulnerabilities: PTF group, Service Pack, Technology Level or firmware.

STEP 4

Act

Approval-driven patching, integrated with your change management (for example ServiceNow). On Power 11 it leverages Zero Planned Downtime.

Results measured by IBM: MTTR from 80 to 8 hours · patch time from 90 to 20 minutes per instance · up to 90% less time remediating critical CVEs
06 · Coverage

The whole Power stack. Now IBM i too.

Covered components

  • HMC (Hardware Management Console)
  • System firmware
  • I/O adapters
  • VIOS
  • AIX
  • Linux (RHEL and SLES)
  • IBM iNEW

IBM i enters the scene · version 2.4

  • Versions and PTFs inventoried and compared with the IBM security bulletins
  • watsonx recommends the optimal PTF group, Service Pack or iFix
  • The same approval-driven experience as AIX and VIOS: no more spreadsheets

Lightweight deployment, wherever you want

  • A single Linux VM directly on Power (ppc64le): no additional x86 footprint
  • Alternatively: a VM on x86 or OpenShift, with watsonx SaaS or on-premises

IBM i is the heart of very many Italian companies: it now falls under the same security governance as the rest of the estate.

07 · Power 11

With Power 11: zero-planned-downtime maintenance

Six nines of availability

99.9999% uptime: the platform at the top of reliability for over 15 years

Quantum-safe by design

ML-KEM and ML-DSA cryptography (NIST standards) on secure boot, memory and Live Partition Mobility traffic

Ransomware: a response in minutes

detection in under 1 minute and fast data recovery with IBM Cyber Vault

IBM Power 11 · full support

Full discovery, advisory and assessment. Automated remediation with Concert Workflows and Zero Planned Downtime: the updates don't stop the service.

IBM Power 10 · ready too

Full discovery, advisory and assessment. The remediation automation goes through Concert Workflows.

The existing estate starts right away. And for the technology refresh there's one more reason.

08 · Governance

Certificates and compliance, without surprises

Certificate life cycle

Automatic discovery of the expired and expiring certificates across infrastructure and applications. Renewal and rotation planned via workflow, with native integration towards Vault.

Over 23,000 enterprise certificates managed at IBM

Posture and audit

Continuous controls on the security and resilience posture, on catalogs like DORA and NIST. The evidence gets collected in the platform: ready for the auditors, with remediation suggestions.

Compliance that gets demonstrated, not declared

Shift-left security

The Concert Secure Code plugin brings the remedy all the way to the developer's IDE: when a vulnerability emerges, the fix's code arrives where it's needed.

From the finding to the fix, without changing tools

The TLS certificate lifetime will drop to as low as 47 days in the coming years: managing them by hand will no longer be sustainable.

09 · Workflows

Concert Workflows: the operational arm

The automation that closes the loop between decision and action, without throwing away what you've already built.

  • Low-code, cross-team and cross-domain orchestration
  • Nearly 300 native connectors: ticketing, cloud, Terraform, Ansible, CMDB, collaboration
  • Event-driven: it reacts to tickets, alerts and deadlines
  • It leverages the existing automations (playbooks, pipelines)
  • Missing connectors built on request in short order

Also available stand-alone: an excellent first step towards the platform.

Request or event

a ServiceNow ticket, an alert, a critical CVE, an expiring certificate

Approval

human in the loop, inside the approval flows you already use

Execution

patches, deployments, certificate rotation: Ansible, Terraform, HMC

Closing the loop

the CMDB updated, notifications to the teams, evidence for the audit

10 · YoctoIT

Var Group's IBM competence center

YoctoIT is a company of the Var Group, services division. We bring IBM Concert to our customers with the skills of those who work on IBM Power every day, since forever.

60+
IBM certifications in the team
200+
active certifications across 16 vendors
H24
NOC active 7 days a week, 365 days a year
99,9%
SLAs met
3.543
hosts monitored by our NOC
100+
active customers, 200+ projects in 3 years

Certified quality: ISO 9001:2015 · ISO 27001:2022 · ISO/IEC 27017 · ISO/IEC 27018 · IBM Fusion Certified Partner

“IT that never stops”

11 · How we start

From the first assessment to continuous management

01

Assessment

A snapshot of the Power estate: inventory, CVE exposure, immediate quick wins.

02

Activation

Deployment of the platform (a VM on Power or x86, OpenShift) and integration with the HMC and ticketing.

03

Tailored workflows

Approval-driven patching, certificates and compliance modeled on your real processes.

04

24/7 management

The platform lives in the YoctoIT Managed Services: monitoring, reports and continuous improvement.

Concert also activates on the Power estate already in production: no need to wait for the next technology refresh.