The Fast & The Furious

White space in the IBM world translates to non-IBM accounts, namely ones controlled by Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, EMC and Dell. That simple, yet daunting mission yielded a whopping 875 percent revenue growth from 2003 through 2005, and Paragon is on track to do $30 million in sales this year, up from $19.5 in 2005, Hirstine says.

"In any given market, IBM has 20 [percent] to 25 percent market share," he says. "Our model from the beginning was to focus on the 80 percent that IBM doesn't have.

• Groupware: A Startling Comeback • Paragon: Mining Colorado Gold • NueVista: Why Slow Down? • Micro League: Plan For Growth Pays Off • Integration Systems: Winning Customer Hearts And Mining • Sword & Shield: Compliance Plus Security Equal Sales • MTM: The Road Less Traveled • EBS: Manna In The "M" Of SMB • ACS: A Simple Services Formula • Network Innovations: Go VoIP, Young Man

Hirstine came to the solution provider channel with some inside information about his new business strategy. A former IBMer himself, his job at the vendor was as a competitive rep focused on replacing competitive products with IBM hardware and software. Because of that, Hirstine says he fully understood both the opportunity and the challenges in converting a customer from a competitive platform to IBM.

Hirstine jumped into the IBM business partner channel in 2003 when he bought Mountain State Computer Systems, a small IBM VAR doing about $1.5 million annually selling Intel-based systems to small businesses. He admits that the purchase was just to get his foot in the door of the IBM business partner community. Hirstine immediately switched the focus of the business from PCs to the full gamut of IBM server and storage technology by hiring engineers who could help customers mitigate the risks in migrating from a competitor's platform, notably Sun and HP Unix, to IBM. "When you convince people to move their technology, you may have a great value statement, but they get concerned about mitigating the risk of changing," he says. "That's where our strong engineering focus comes in."