Telefónica Tech, the Iberian telco giant's digital technology and services unit, has joined forces with tech giant IBM to drive the deployment of AI, and to promote analytics and data governance solutions for enterprises. The agreement, which is initially limited to Telefónica's home market of Spain, will see the pair focus their collaboration on a common goal to help customers deal with "the complexity of managing new technologies in a heterogeneous and changing environment" while extracting "the full value" of these technologies. In its statement announcing the move, Telefónica Tech referred to an IBM study that suggests almost half of the Spanish companies already working with AI have accelerated their investment in the technology in the past two years – which highlights a need for new tools and solutions to aid these companies' digital transformation journeys.