Vela allows efficiently deployment of AI workflows — from data pre-processing, model training and tuning, to deployment and even new product incubation

Vela was designed to be flexible and scalable, capable of training today’s large-scale generative AI models, and adaptable to new needs that may arise in the future. It was also designed such that its infrastructure could be efficiently deployed and managed anywhere in the world. Over the last year, AI practitioners from across IBM have trained and prototyped AI technologies on Vela, including IBM’s next-generation AI studio, watsonx.ai, which became generally available in July. Bringing a platform like watsonx.ai online so quickly around the world would not have been possible without Vela’s cloud-first design.

One year in, IBM is scaling Vela for what’s ahead. They are sharing several major upgrades they have made to Vela over the last year — including nearly doubling the capacity of the system and dramatically improving the speed of Vela’s network.