David Boucher: IBM's Channel Advocate

e probably won't be seeing the likes of David Boucher anytime soon.

By sheer force of personality, IBM's former channel executive laid the foundation for today's solution provider channel, colleagues say. A mentor, diplomat and untiring channel advocate, Boucher mobilized a disparate army of PC reselling entrepreneurs to battle a doubtful vendor community that believed selling direct was the only way to go to market.

Today, vendors infused with Boucher's channel religion see a clear path to the new breed of e-business solution providers. The new wave of Web commerce software and tools vendors,realizing that the channel remains the quickest route to success,is making "channel-only" a pillar of its business strategy.
Behind that philosophy is Boucher's more-than-16-year mission to build and nurture a value-added channel with an infrastructure ready-made for the new breed of vendors.

"Boucher built the channel on personal relationships, and he paved the way for all of the solution providers today," says Martin Wolf, president of Martin Wolf Associates and a former ComputerLand executive. "He is a master at cultivating personal relationships and is the single hardest-working man in the channel."

IBM'S CHANNEL AVOCATE As the e-business revolution rolls on, IT vendors continue to see solution providers as a pillar of the sales equation. No one understood that better than Boucher, IBM's longtime channel point man. This high-tech diplomat convinced skeptical vendors that going direct wasn't the best course, the real value lay in the community of solution providers.

Those who worked with Boucher at IBM say he built his team at the company with the same personal touch he used to build his channel friendships.

"He taught us all to balance work with our personal life," says Frank Vitagliano, vice president of distribution channels management at IBM Personal Systems Group. "If we had a problem with a sick parent or a family emergency, he would make sure that we got the time off we needed. He helped us all to put things into perspective."

Boucher, who retired earlier this year after 30 years at IBM, confesses that he was an anomaly at the IT giant. Instead of jumping from job to job to advance his career, he spent his last 16 years at IBM as its PC channel point man.

He started his IBM career in 1970, working in Richmond, Va., as a new-account salesman. "My first sale was an IBM System 3 Model 6 to Richmond Harness and Saddlery," he says.

Soon after, Boucher began his journey down the traditional IBM career path: holding one job briefly and then moving on to something bigger and better. He jumped to large accounts such as Philip Morris and Reynolds Metals before beginning a stint as an instructor at IBM sales school in Endicott, N.Y. He eventually became the school's manager and counted rising IBM executives Dave Carlucci, John Judge and Fernand Sarrat among his students.

Yet it was the PC that changed the game for IBM and sent Boucher on his channel-building quest. In the fall of 1983, Boucher was summoned to the Westchester County airport for a flight on the corporate jet to Boca Raton, Fla., with Don Estridge, head of IBM's PC group. Boucher says Estridge was carrying a magazine with the headline, "The PC War is Over, IBM Has Won."

By the time the jet landed, Estridge had convinced Boucher to join the fledgling PC group. "Don was convinced that the only affordable way to sell the PC was through the channel," Boucher says.

Boucher's objectives were to cultivate channel relationships and convince a reluctant IBM direct sales force that the channel added value to the sales equation. As it turned out, achieving those goals would occupy the rest of his career at IBM.

"IBM believed [it] owned the customer," Boucher says. As a result, many at IBM felt the channel was ineffective at demand generation. "But I tried to convince them that the channel was very good at influencing the choice of brands, and we needed the channel," he says. "Because I lived in the field and I knew the channel and how [the channel players] ran their businesses, it was very easy for me to defend my position within IBM."

	ACHIEVEMENTS
	A 30-year IBM veteran, Boucher admits he was somewhat of an anomaly at the company. Instead of advancing his career by moving up the job ladder, he made his mark by preaching a channel-only philosophy. Persuaded a reluctant IBM sales force that the channel, not direct sales, was the best conduit for selling product. Organized channel summits of industry notables, forging a crucial link between the vendor and solution provider communities. Helped create a value-added channel ready to feed the new Web-based economy.

Perhaps more important were relationships he built in the channel. "Boucher had the ability to bring all of the top channel executives together in a non-threatening environment so that we could share information without fearing that we'd give up the family jewels," Dataflex's Rose says. "That allowed a bunch of smart guys to get together in a room and come up with some good ideas that one person couldn't figure on [his] own."

The summits run by Boucher helped shape the channel's development, Rose adds.

"There wasn't a channel, so we invented it," he says. "We came up with the ideas of warranties and channel terms and conditions, such as price protection. And Boucher would go back to IBM and fight some unbelievable battles on our behalf. All of us took a lot of arrows in those days."

Boucher's ability to convene the channel's entire brain trust in a single room was most evident in his legendary Comdex parties at Bally's. Among the guests were Martha Ingram, Chip Lacy, Steve Raymund, Bill Tauscher, Bill Fairfield, Ed Andersen and Jeff McKeever,many of whom made the pilgrimage to Las Vegas specifically because Boucher asked them to come.

In contrast, today's solution provider channel is more diverse and fragmented, with no clear-cut leaders and force of personality to assemble a party list, let alone a summit. What's more, the value-added channel built around PC integration has given way to a more complex, robust channel centered on the Web, the foundation on which today's providers build their solutions.

In the frenetic new economy, where start-ups rise and then flame out like shooting stars and where executives place a higher value on stock options than on long-term relationships, Boucher's reign in the channel won't likely be challenged.

What has Boucher been up to in the year since his retirement? Golfing and watching his grandson play soccer,while also remaining knee deep in the development of the new economy.

His new company, Dave Boucher Enterprises, nurtures and advises new economy start-ups. Boucher says the firm has its headquarters in his cellular phone.

"Small companies are desperate for executives who still have a high level of enthusiasm, an interest in the business and the channel skills that I have," Boucher says. "They need someone to spend time to talk to them and to network for them. [They turn to me] because my Rolodex is pretty extensive," he says.