IBM Software Taps Hanny To Lead ISV Charge Against Microsoft

Hanny, currently vice president of SMB and Partner Marketing for IBM Software, said Microsoft's push into enterprise software applications has alienated third-party software vendors.

Just this week CRN reported that Microsoft and Siebel Systems failed after months of negotiations to extend a three-year-old contract under which Microsoft resells Siebel's Midmarket CRM offering with Microsoft/Great Plains accounting software. While that news was positioned as an amicable parting of ways, many onlookers aren't buying it.

ISVs represent a hotly contested arena, Hanny said. "This is where the first battle between [Microsoft .Net and IBM will happen. This is Normandy beach," Hanny said. "There's a battle on for the minds of thousands of developers out there."

Hanny said, "The good news [for IBM is many developers who used to build on [Windows NT have come to us since Navision, since Great Plains--they like the fact that we will integrate them in our go-to market approach. We give them leverage they never had before."

Hanny's promotion was announced internally on Tuesday. His new title will likely read something like vice president of go-to-market operations, he told CRN Wednesday.

Ironically, as the two companies duke it out for customers and developers, they are in lockstep in promoting Web services to the masses, and have proclaimed themselves the leaders of the standardization effort underpinning those services.

Hanny said IBM will initially target "a thousand" Microsoft developers from small, vertical specialists to the largest of the large. The computing giant already inked a formal partnership with CRM kingpin Siebel Systems three years ago and has seen the share of its DB2 database going into new Siebel accounts grow significantly in that time, Hanny said.

Industry observers have long said Microsoft's foray into CRM, ERP and SCM, even at the very low end, is alienating such companies as SAP, Siebel, and PeopleSoft, which dominate business applications in the enterprise. Microsoft purchased Great Plains Accounting last year for $1.1 billion and Navision, a European purveyor of ERP and other business applications earlier this year for $1.3 billion.

Asked if his new duties will detract from attention focused on solution providers, Hanny said a successor will be named within a few weeks to bolster coverage. But he said he will continue to drive channel strategy in the software group.

Where Microsoft is diving into whole new application areas, IBM made a conscious decision to leave applications to third parties three years ago, Hanny said.

Microsoft could not be reached for comment.