FAIR Changed the Generative AI Game in its First Six Months — A Look Back

In 2023, the business world made a hard pivot toward AI with the launch of several large-language models, including ChatGPT, which debuted on November 30, 2022. Less than seven months later, Rackspace Technology launched its own AI game changer — Foundry for AI by Rackspace (FAIR™). FAIR’s key aim is to be a force multiplier, accelerating the sensible and secure use-case-based adoption of generative AI in businesses across all industries.

The good news is that today AI is much more accessible to more companies in a wide range of use case scenarios. The bad news is that AI has the potential to unleash several new risk vectors. FAIR is the first AI program to take a head-on approach to three critical aspects of generative AI’s long-term success — the secure, responsible and sustainable adoption of generative AI solutions.

"We’re committed to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with generative AI."

—      Amar Maletira, CEO, Rackspace Technology

FAIR pushes AI boundaries right out of the gate

As the world heads into its second year of widespread generative AI adoption, we’re looking back at our rapid expansion of FAIR in the second half of 2023. Travel back with us as we overview the innovations we’ve already launched in just the first six months of FAIR.

(Like videos? Learn more about FAIR in our two one-minute here and here.)

June 13, 2023 — FAIR launches

Rackspace Technology announces FAIR’s launch and its three innovative offerings — Ideate, Incubate and Industrialize:

• Ideate: An interactive and collaborative workshop that provides a generative AI readiness diagnostic to help organizations discover ideal use cases for AI development.
• Incubate: A program that delivers a co-create service for establishing an AI technology stack to support seamless integration into an organization’s existing IT enterprise.
• Industrialize: A service that helps transform an AI solution into a product, including governance, metrics, and optimization of AI models and distributed cloud infrastructures.

June 28, 2023 — FAIR announces its global leader

Within two weeks of its launch, Rackspace appointed Srini Koushik to the role of Global Head of FAIR.

"As our customers chart new territories with generative AI, we’ll help them become trailblazers on their transformative journeys by pioneering the responsible and sustainable use of AI solutions.”

—      Srini Koushik, CTO, FAIR

June 29, 2023 — FAIR partners with Google Cloud

Google Cloud joined forces with FAIR to help enterprises realize the full potential of generative AI.

“The launch of FAIR for Google Cloud will provide businesses with the expertise needed to deploy new AI capabilities safely, responsibly and quickly.”

—      Jim Anderson, Vice President NA Partners Ecosystem & Channels, Google Cloud

 July 18, 2023 — FAIR launches AI literacy program

We created FAIR Learn to help Rackers become AI literate and exapnd their understanding of AI use cases. Already, hundreds of Rackers around the world have received — and proudly display — their official FAIR Learn badges.

July 27, 2023 — FAIR partners with Aible for deep insights

We forged a new partnership with Aible to provide customers with enterprise-scale conversational data analysis and storytelling capabilities that will let them generate deep insights through a proprietary conversational interface.

“With FAIR's enterprise-grade security and our secure AI platform capabilities, we will combine the

best of both AI technologies for a sustainable and secure AI solution ready for enterprise use." 
— Arijit Sengupta, Founder & CEO, Aible

August 8, 2023 — FAIR hosts Dell and NVIDIA AI private cloud solution

We announced a FAIR-hosted generative AI private cloud architecture — powered by another long-time partner, Dell® Technologies®, along with  NVIDIA AI.

"Through FAIR, Dell Generative AI solutions with NVIDIA offer access to training or tuning generative AI models and AI inferencing using our latest generation PowerEdge servers."

—      Jeff Boudreau, President, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell Technologies

 August 29, 2023 — Launch of FAIR AI Diagnostic

How can your organization determine that you’re ready for AI? FAIR has you covered with a free tool, FAIR AI Diagnostic. It gives organizations a fast and easy way to baseline their AI readiness. They also receive tailored expert recommendations on next steps. The tool captures and distills key AI best practices gathered from hundreds of customer use cases and years of collective technology experience.

Learn more about FAIR AI Diagnostic in this video of our FAIR CTO, Koushik, at Google Cloud Next ‘23 here.

September 12, 2023 — FAIR launches game-changing new AI assistant

Often companies want to know what practice use cases they can achieve with generative AI. The short answer is hundreds. Our new enterprise-level AI assistant, Intelligent Co-worker for the Enterprise (ICE™), provides one ideal example. ICE harnesses the power of AI for go-to-market operations. It automates routine tasks, identifies warm leads, surfaces relevant data and content, and provides real-time contextualized analytics for hyper-personalized customer interactions.

ICE capabilities include:

• Leveraging data sources to extract new insights, deliver real-time contextual analytics and increase productivity
• Accessing vast amounts of structured and unstructured data to accelerate customer presentation and proposal generation
• Allowing employees to have safe conversations with an AI assistant that’s aligned with company values and goals

“ICE is a game changer for businesses looking to harness the power their data to boost efficiency and deliver better customer outcomes.”

—      Nirmal Ranganathan, Chief Architect, FAIR

October 18, 2023 — FAIR launches AI data protection officer assistant

We announced the launch of a new partnership with data protection company, Straits Interactive. Together, we’ll deliver the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region’s first AI data protection officer assistant leveraging Rackspace Technology’s secure multicloud solutions and integration with Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.

"Our goal is to empower organizations of all sizes to create value with generative AI, while balancing it with managing risks and constraints, safeguarding their data and maintaining compliance."

— Kevin Sherpherdson, CEO, Straits Interactive

As you can see, our journey with FAIR has been an exciting ride so far — and there’s much more to come in 2024! Stay tuned.

How can FAIR help your organization leverage the power and potential of generative AI in 2024? Find out by watching our “5 points in 5 minutes” video here.