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CRN: During the partner conference, you talked about how important partners are to meet IBM's 2015 goals. Can you talk more about what are the five-year goals for this current period and what are the milestones partners have to meet to reach those goals?
Hennessy: It's pretty straightforward. We lay out a roadmap for our own team to see the strategy, as well as for our shareholders to see the strategy, and the marketplace as a whole. One of the key elements of that is growing revenue, particularly in growth areas around cloud, analytics, smarter planet solutions and the growth markets. And in each of those areas, we see significant participation from partners. In fact, those different solution areas can't achieve their goals for the 2015 roadmap without significant expansion in the business partner community. That's why we're so excited about the adoption we've seen from partners, the references that we have, the certifications that we're seeing in these different areas.
I know, as a company, we need to continue to increase business partner participation across all of our major brands -- hardware, software and services -- if we're going to meet those 2015 aspirations. Look at analytics and the doubling of the [partner] certifications that we have there. Look at cloud, [where] we have over 1,000 business partners now engaged with us on cloud projects. And, the majority of the [growth market] transactional business will come through partners. It's across the board. In all of our growth areas, partners are a real key to our success.
CRN: About 20 percent of IBM's total sales go through the channel. Do you see that number growing, software specifically, say five years out?
Hennessy: Yes. I won't forecast, but I will tell you that business partner participation will continue to increase. That's all part of the 2015 roadmap. And, that will be across hardware, software and services. Again, think about the reach that our partners have, the client insight that our partners have, the skills and capabilities that they bring to the market, the solutions that they bring to the market. It's a critically important channel for the IBM company.
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