IBM partners with Atolio on the sovereign AI knowledge layer

Permission-aware retrieval across every enterprise system, running entirely on IBM Fusion HCI. No data leaves your perimeter.

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Every enterprise has an AI mandate. Almost none have a way to run it safely.

Generative AI is only as good as the context it can reach. When that context is fragmented, stale, and permission-blind, AI produces incomplete answers, exposes sensitive information, and never earns the trust it needs to reach production.

Permission chaos
Every system enforces access differently, or not at all. The moment knowledge crosses systems, permission-aware retrieval breaks down.
Shadow AI
When employees can't find trusted answers internally, they paste sensitive information into public tools outside enterprise control.
Rising AI cost
Federated search and MCP fan out to every connected system live. Results are slow and redundant, and the token bill grows with every tool added.
Governance sprawl
Point-to-point connections into dozens of systems make it near-impossible to enforce permissions, monitor retrieval, and audit usage centrally.
Stalled pilots
AI pilots demo well and never reach production, because permission logic and connectors are hand-built, fragile, and expensive to keep current.
Data residency
Most enterprise AI search is cloud-only: your data leaves your environment to be indexed. For regulated industries that ends the conversation.

IBM trusts Atolio to activate enterprise knowledge on IBM Fusion HCI

Two products, jointly engineered into one trusted environment for private AI. IBM brings the infrastructure enterprises already trust. Atolio brings the governed knowledge layer that makes it useful on day one.

IBM Fusion HCI
Where trusted AI runs
Turnkey OpenShift stack: compute, GPU, storage, and networking, pre-validated

NVMe-backed Storage Scale plus S3-compatible object storage for RAG

Built-in HA, disaster recovery, global namespace, application-consistent backup

Built for private, hybrid, regulated, and air-gapped environments
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Knowledge layer
What trusted AI knows
Object-level ACLs enforced at query time: no permissions granted or overridden

50+ in-house connectors: Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Jira, Confluence, and all other top systems

Governed RAG and hybrid search: semantic, keyword, and custom ranking

Collaboration Graph ranking results by identity, project, and expertise
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Together
A sovereign AI knowledge layer
Connectors, index, embeddings, and inference all inside the perimeter

Credentials and API tokens never leave the customer environment

No data migration and no custom middleware to maintain

Governed, auditable retrieval across every connected system
50+
systems unified into one governed layer, with permissions enforced at query time
Fewer tokens
with relevance filtering and Atolio's Collaboration Graph reducing what reaches the model for a sharper, stronger answer
Zero egress
everything runs inside IBM Fusion HCI; nothing leaves your walls
How it works

One stack, from the rack to the answer

Atolio indexes where the data already lives and hands models only what the requesting user is authorized to see. IBM Fusion HCI runs all of it – index, embeddings, inference – on hardware inside your perimeter.

search

Stop trading off between AI performance and keeping your internal knowledge secure

Grounded, trustworthy answers

Responses are verifiable because they are grounded in approved internal knowledge. Users see exactly where an answer came from, so decisions rest on facts rather than a model's guess.

Permission-enforced governance

Retrieval respects existing security boundaries and user access rights. One auditable retrieval layer replaces broad service accounts and fragile point-to-point connections.

Faster time to production

A pre-validated OpenShift foundation and a maintained connector fleet remove the integration work that stalls pilots. Deployment timelines run in weeks, not quarters.

Lower cost per answer

Feeding models only targeted, relevant, authorized content cuts token consumption, and lets cheaper models handle simple tasks without a quality penalty.

Use cases

One governed layer, hundreds of use cases

Not a point solution for one department. The same permission-aware engine serves every function, which is what makes it worth the rack it runs on.

AI readiness
An enterprise-wide AI foundation that keeps permissions and access controls intact, so business-critical information can be used safely with the LLM(s) of your choice: Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Granite, Llama, or whatever model you already run.
CDAO
Platform engineering
Decision intelligence
Pull CRM, financials, prior board materials, and project status into one ranked view before a decision gets made, not after.
Exec
Finance
Strategy
Legal & compliance
Assemble a regulatory response in minutes: policies, contracts, exceptions, and precedent, with information barriers held at retrieval.
Legal ops
Risk
Customer 360
Unify CRM, support history, contracts, and communications into one governed view of every account, ahead of the call.
Sales
Success
Support
Engineering self-service
Search across repos, tickets, runbooks, and internal chat so new engineers ramp faster and incidents don't stall on tracking someone down.
Engineering
IT
Knowledge retention
Keep institutional memory accessible when experts move or leave, including design rationale, account and incident history, and the reasoning behind decisions.
HR
KM
Transformation
Industry view

Where a sovereign knowledge layer resonates most

The capability is the same in every account. What changes is the regulatory pressure that makes on-premises non-negotiable, and the knowledge that is most expensive to lose.

Financial services
Regulators expect complete, defensible responses on short deadlines, while information barriers between desks and matter teams have to hold at retrieval rather than after it.
In Practice
A compliance officer assembles a regulatory response in minutes instead of two days, from contracts, audit logs, policy documents, and email she is authorized to see.
Healthcare & life sciences
Data protection rules make external model access hard to justify, and protocols, prior studies, and trial documentation sit across disconnected systems.
In Practice
Research and protocol history surfaces in one search with citations, instead of depending on which investigator is still at the institution.
Public sector & defense
Sovereignty by mandate. Classified and controlled environments where external model access is simply unavailable, and procurement runs through established vehicles.
In Practice
Air-gapped deployment on IBM Fusion HCI, available through Carahsoft, with retrieval that respects existing clearance and access boundaries.
Manufacturing & industrial
Design rationale is buried in old threads, incident history sits in ticketing disconnected from the specs it relates to, and plant environments cannot depend on external cloud services.
In Practice
Engineers recover the reasoning behind a design decision rather than reconstructing it, and incident history connects to the specifications it came from.
Legal & professional services
Precedent and prior work product are the firm’s core asset, but matters must stay visible only to the team on them.
In Practice
Matter research that legal will approve: object-level ACLs mean no permissions are granted or overridden to make the assistant work.
Insurance
Claims history, policy language, and underwriting precedent are spread across systems that rarely talk to each other.
In Practice
Adjusters and underwriters pull precedent and policy language into one ranked view, with every answer traceable to the record it came from.
Getting Started

A strong first AI workload for your IBM Fusion HCI environment

Organizations evaluating on-premises AI need a first production workload that proves value quickly. Atolio fits: broad employee benefit, read-only access to systems you already run, and a timeline measured in weeks rather than quarters.

01
Discovery conversation
A focused session on where teams lose time to scattered knowledge, and which systems hold the answers they need.
02
Connect a first set of systems
Start with two or three sources. Connectors are built and maintained in-house, read-only, and inherit each system’s existing permissions.
03
Deploy on your own IBM Fusion HCI
Atolio runs as a workload on the pre-validated OpenShift stack. No data migration, no custom middleware, nothing leaves the perimeter.
04
Expand from a working foundation
Once retrieval is trusted, the same governed layer feeds agents, assistants, and the next AI initiative without new plumbing.
Read-only by design
Atolio indexes; it never writes back to source systems or changes who can see what.
Weeks, not quarters
A pre-validated foundation removes the integration project that usually comes first.
Benefit across the business
Every employee gets value on day one, which is what makes the ROI case straightforward.

Start with a discovery conversation

Learn more about the future of sovereign AI, how this solution serves as the foundation for leading enterprises' sovereign AI strategy, and how deployment works in your environment. Public sector teams can transact through Carahsoft.

Book a discovery call