IBM Channel Chief Yusuf: The Most Important Thing We Can Give Partners Is ‘Clarity’

‘We’re great people to partner with because the one thing I can promise anyone in our ecosystem is clarity. I have committed to clarity and striving for simplicity, and you always know where I’m coming from,’ IBM Channel Chief Kareem Yusuf tells CRN.

As IBM Chairman, President and CEO Arvind Krishna navigates the AI era, pressure from increased component costs and the looming quantum computing revolution, the man at the center of translating the 115-year-old vendor’s technology strategy into a partner program for channel partners is Channel Chief Kareem Yusuf.

A 28-year veteran of Big Blue now in his second year as the vendor’s senior vice president, ecosystem, strategic partners and initiatives, Yusuf brings a strong technical background to the role with past positions like senior vice president of product management and growth for IBM’s software portfolio as well as general manager of IBM’s sustainability software and the IoT side of Watson.

Yusuf told CRN in an interview that he and his team have worked on improving automation between IBM’s systems and those of its value-added distributors, reducing the cost of VADs’ IBM business processing, helping existing IBM resellers and, perhaps, aiding with new partner recruitment.

IBM’s partner organization has also worked to help solution providers leveraging hyperscaler marketplaces to use customers’ committed spending with those vendors to speed up and simplify business, Yusuf said. He wants solution providers to see an IBM partner program that better differentiates incentives for partners based on their business models, with targeted resources for partners that embed IBM technology and other partner categories.

“We’re great people to partner with because the one thing I can promise anyone in our ecosystem is clarity,” Yusuf said. “I have committed to clarity and striving for simplicity, and you always know where I’m coming from. And I’m always looking to further simplify and make [the partner experience] easier.”

[This article is part of CRN’s August cover story on IBM. For an even more in-depth look, read: 'The New IBM Partner Agenda.']

IBM Sees Big Partner Opportunities In Storage, AI, Software

July marked the start of a major new resource for IBM solution providers working with IBM’s Select Territory customers, Yusuf said. The opt-in feature is meant to increase automation around sharing leads with partners, which must attain a score to prove they are suited for the deal, with a goal of removing friction around deal communication on both sides.

IBM has also been deepening its partnerships with distributors including Arrow Electronics and TD Synnex to address the more than 100,000 Select Territory organizations, representing around half of IBM’s addressable market.

Here’s more of what IBM’s channel chief had to say to CRN.

What are the biggest opportunities ahead for IBM solution providers?

Clearly, a lot of activity [lately] and opportunity in our infrastructure business, particularly in storage [the vendor’s data storage hardware and software-defined platforms including FlashSystem and DS8000].

We’ve seen a lot from the channel in general around our infrastructure, but particularly storage. And I think that’s really going to continue.

On the software side, everything—from AI through to automation. The new things we’ve brought to the to the table, like Confluent and Hashi.

And the existing things that we’ve been building out—the Watsonx [suite of IBM AI and data platform products], the Concert [suite of AI-powered IT operations and application management platform].

All of these products—Red Hat, let’s not forget that—play in where you either find opportunities for service partners. [For example], the SIs building out their skills, us designing in our products into their solution sets.

We’re seeing a lot more with the embed opportunity where they’re building their service assets on our technology.

In the case of the resellers—the VARs—it is back to that good age-old business of extending our reach. It’s driving more sales. They have got more to sell.

We [are focusing on] our Select Territory in particular and, obviously, with our other expansions around named accounts and what we call ‘Horizon’ [accounts]. It’s really just an ever-growing tapestry.

My focus really remains building a vibrant ecosystem, a vibrant community of participants who are aligned around the common goal. And that common goal is extending our reach, really extending our value proposition and driving sustainable revenue growth.

How is the role of distributors evolving for IBM?

There’s a particular segment where we’re very much partner-only, partner-led. And that’s an important growth segment for us.

It becomes even increasingly important that we are getting partners correctly motivated, enabled and activated with us in doing work in that segment.

Then you play that through the actual engine for that, our VADs and then the VARs that work through those VADs. And so, obviously, there’s been lots of work we’ve been doing with the VADs to make doing business easier.

It’s become even more important because if you’re really trying to scale, particularly in what I would call a high-volume, high-velocity type segment, then you’ve got to really make sure that, first of all, with your VADs and then with your VARs, you actually have built what I would call the appropriate harness to support that kind of velocity business.

And to be very honest, we weren’t yet there. So one of the major things that we’ve done and invested in and is now live is the automation between us and VADs and their systems.

In the world of enterprises, you’ve got to revisit what did you have, get the right integration feed going. Update, modernize, make sure it’s tuned to the kind of business you want to do.

It reduces the cost for the VADs in actually processing business with us, and it allows us to push more volume.

What should partners know about your work with hyperscaler marketplaces?

That also is a major unlock because it allows the business partners themselves, as they’re driving these deals, to leverage the marketplaces to close those business [deals].

Your client has got committed spend [available through these marketplaces]. In qualification terms, that’s budget available. Let’s go get that spend consumed to deliver your value prop in that way.

But another important element is streamlining almost what I would call the procurement engagement.

Especially when you’re dealing with a new client—who, by the way, could be completely new to IBM.

They already have that contractual framework with the hyperscaler. And so doing business under that actually just accelerates delivery. You don’t have to think about them establishing stand-alone contractual relationships all the time and the delay that can bring in.

So making sure our partners can take advantage of that, support them in driving and scaling the business makes a lot of sense.

What is IBM’s differentiator at this point in the AI era?

We have got a full [product] stack focused on our priorities: hybrid cloud and AI, running from core infrastructure, storage, Power—which has seen a [growing] interest—through to the software stack, starting with the Red Hat platform, and then all the software we build on top. So that’s all goodness.

For them [services partners], it is about delivering the best possible solution to their client. And can they bet on the technology that we’re providing and us standing behind it.

A lot of our investments in what we call designing—so working with them to make sure it fits the solutions they’re taking [to market]—I will tell you the big effort was just changing the conversation.

All our conversations with service partners start with, ‘What are you working on?’ We align to what their priorities are, not what we’ve got to push. ‘Oh, this is what you're working on. OK, what from my inventory can I bring to bear?’ Let’s have a conversation.

That I think has really shifted the whole dynamic because they now really see us as you’re not trying to push something at them. We’re trying to actually support them in their objectives. And for us, we want them to positively influence the landing of our technology in their clients where it aligns with the problems that we think we’re suitable for.

That has been a key differentiation in the way of working, as well as obviously what we actually do with the technology. And that has bled over to them wanting to embed our technology in various service assets they build.

And then just our stand-alone build motion. Really [zeroing] in on the right ISVs, what technology components they want, how to make it easy for them to consume. Bob [IBM’s AI-powered software development and coding agent] has been very important in addressing that.

Bob has been the on-site FDE [forward-deployed engineer] on the build team, where it really is helping with that consumption of our technology in the context of embedding in another application—which is a very different deployment context than stand-alone use.

That’s how we’ve been trying to drive our differentiation and focus—by being specific and making sure that we’re crafting to the specific personas and roles that we need to serve in the ecosystem.

Even though we are years away from the quantum era, we do see IBM solution providers with post-quantum cryptography practices already, right?

If you step back from what I would call quantum execution to quantum safety and what you can do now, we definitely have a lot of activity with our Guardium Cryptography Manager in the ecosystem, with both service partners and resellers, as people get on with managing their inventory of encryption and making sure they’re on the right side of where they want to be.

What’s the future hold for IBM’s partner program?

The work around the portal, making it easier for them to actually engage with us as we work through business opportunities together.

The work around tooling, to make portals easier, leveraging AI, you’d expect that.

One of the things that we just turned on, literally, 1st of July, that to me was one of those important exemplars was what we call Auto Deal Share.

This is building in the automation to effectively share leads with our partners right from the systems with no manual touch. Partners opt in. We have an ideal partner profile concept that we’ve been using to score partners. It’s a normal scoring system whereby you can make sure you are passing leads to people who can actually progress them.

We have started that as a way to really increase deal velocity, particularly in what we refer to as Select Territory. And really to just remove friction as well as making sure our partners have the right access through the portal to also inform us about where the deal is so we’re both having transparency on both sides.

How about partner skilling, what’s the future hold there?

The big next area I’ve really been thinking about is this notion of what does it mean to be a skilled partner in our evolving world? It has to be more than proficiency badges.

We’re doing a lot of what I would call deep thinking, ground floor work or foundational work on how to define that. What are the right demonstrators that would show those outcomes?

So you could think about how a partner follows through a sale, supporting adoption and consumption, for example.

And then what is the education that we need to have, the enablement, and the ways to allow them to actually do that? The tooling, the support to be really best in class in that.

When you think about a skilled partner, there’s an outcome element of it versus an ‘I passed an exam’ element of it. That’s probably my next big unlock.

How do I enable partners to become more skilled in the business that they’re doing with us around any given technology? And it’s not that you can install and configure. I mean, in all elements of what it means to actually successfully scale a product at a client.

Would you like to see the partner ecosystem grow in numbers?

Take these in the sense of the conceptual framework as we still work through the specifics.

One element of the conceptual framework is what I would call the farming system. Think minor league to major league. Our VADs can actually play a very important role in that farming system so there’s a way for even the completely new entrant to get going and build up their profile.

The ecosystem, as well, needs to have a level of diversity in it from a perspective of building that robustness so that it doesn’t become overconcentrated one way or the other.

I’m not into, ‘Give me a gazillion people.’ But you have got to have people in the wings.

The other angle is what I would call targeted recruitment. So when you think about any given technology, we can look through it and go do we have the right number that we think we need?

And so then you’re going in to recruit, bring the player in. And you’re getting them developed.

We’ll be able to do enough to ensure those who want to engage can engage no matter the level of what I would call maturity or familiarity.

How are partner economics changing at this point in the AI era?

With all business, the basics are still the basics. You have got a cost. You have got revenue. You want to make profit.

Every time we look at everything going on in the business world around us and it looks very complicated, you can often distill it back to those basics. And I often like to joke that when it’s complicated, it’s because the basics, the fundamentals, aren’t good.

So to me, the fundamentals of managing an ecosystem of partners doing business with us still comes back down then to margin. The incentive stack.

I have spent a lot of time evolving and refining our incentive stack to very clearly align with our business strategies and to drive them. Very much clarity in what we pay for.

While getting necessary feedback from partners, we have made changes.

And they have been actually very grateful for it, very robust with their feedback. When they were positive, or they didn’t like it, it allowed us to get under [the hood].

Sometimes you get very interesting insights that the challenges were actually nothing to do with what you did, but implications of something elsewhere.

‘The cost of doing business with you has not come down.’ And if you go fix that and dramatically leverage your tools, automation, that number is not really a big deal.

So sometimes it allows you to really engage in these robust conversations, and I think that’s important. I think people have to be very clear what do they earn for doing business.

Services businesses often get very much into outcome-type deals. And I still think these things are very much defined by client bases. I don’t think there are generic ways that they’re done.

I remain somewhat sanguine on outcome-based businesses. They will be applied where it ultimately makes sense.

But ultimately we are in, from a technology perspective, the product business. So I’m actually selling a product that underpins a value proposition that ultimately then supports an outcome and making sure we can streamline that. Making sure our partners can be effective in that for those who want to increase their surface area, so making sure that they’re involved in deployment, consumption, ongoing expansion and renewal.

Then making sure we’re extending to support that so that they’ve got various additional touch points to do business. I think that’s just the way I approach it in terms of the big picture.

What do you want IBM solution providers to know about your margin allocation strategy?

People talk about things going down, but they don’t talk about what goes up or where it stayed the same. When I talk about aligning incentives with business strategy, you will find that where [there is] something we want to do more of, it probably did not change.

Or where are you doing it? That’s another important thing. Are you doing it in new markets for me? That means you're extending reach. Lots [of incentives]. You’re doing it in accounts we are all in together? Not so much [incentives].

It often behooves folks to take a closer look.

We are in the business of delivering technology to clients that solve problems that they care about. To participate in my ecosystem, first and foremost, you have got to want to be in that kind of business. That’s the ethos.

We had become [too] reductionist in how we thought about the ecosystem because it was just partner with no recognition of partners fitting different categories with different kinds of work have different drivers and different things that incent them.

The way the SI wishes to operate or anybody in a service partner mode is very different from the resale discussion, is very different from the embed discussion.

What we’ve tried to do is create that distinction and make sure that we respond in that regard.

People coming in, I always say, ‘What do you want to partner around?’ Technology area. Partner type.

It’s really back to the foundational build-up and then making sure that the things you have in place kind of support and reinforce that thinking.

We’re great people to partner with because the one thing I can promise anyone in our ecosystem is clarity.

I have committed to clarity and striving for simplicity, and you always know where I’m coming from.

And I’m always looking to further simplify and make it easier for us to then do the business we want to do together.

What’s your advice to partners in their customer conversations given this spending environment around data center components?

Where I’m really trying to lean toward is use case marketing. I do think we have to do a lot of work on value proposition clarification, identification and ease of delivering a clear value prop.

This is particularly important when you think about our client expansion goals in what we refer to as Select Territory. In the named accounts—enterprise, strategic—we have the deep relationships.

Where we need to expand is really what I would call the product-led motion. The product is actually what’s going to introduce you [to the client].

You’re becoming very clear about what capability set, matched against with which problem, with which kind of differentiation.

We are spending a lot of time on really working to refine that, partnering with our partners then on that kind of messaging, that kind of packaging, doing prospecting days together.

[Those are] new things that we’re bringing into the mix. We are fixating a lot on the art of the selling, but it is really the biggest part of what the ecosystem fundamentally does.

In this environment, you have to really take the discipline of being clear on your value proposition and making that is as simple for your partner and your client to consume.

That also speaks to things like packaging, pricing approaches. How do you do more where you package where it can be add-on capabilities instead of complete new sales? How do you leverage many of these vehicles like marketplaces that are available? I’m spending a lot more time on e-commerce, which helps with self-service, and exploring with partners if things like partner carts would help them, especially for what we call the ‘microtransactions.’

We’re actually doing some pilots there right now to get a sense of where does it really resonate? What kind of partner does it resonate with? At what kind of value level that they can do a quick pass through, ‘Oh, you’re interested in that? Here’s a link.’

That takes them through to the cart, and that’s done, versus normal processes. And ensuring they get the appropriate recognition, all that good fun stuff.

So those are the kind of things that we are really fixated on.

My advice to partners is, we all need to simplify. That’s how you respond to these times.

Quite frankly, these times shouldn’t make you be simplifying. But I do think it’s even more important now. The value propositions need to be very, very clear.

What are the best places for solution providers adopting AI to improve operations?

For most people, most businesses, adoption of AI will be how it’s embedded in tools they use.

We are embedding a lot of AI in our partner portal. So if they are using the partner portal, they’ll be adopting AI to, hopefully, make their interactions and the insights and all the stuff they get from that partner portal more effective. They’re going to see it in their productivity tools.

It really just comes back down to the use cases that people fixate on.

[IBM focuses] in the world of software development life cycle, agentic development life cycle. We’ve got a big position in that. And also just the management and orchestration of all these agents that are being built on our platform or on others and how those are working together in the context of any business process.

AI is a technology. It comes down to how you use it. And the world has hit some of the low-hanging fruits, and now we’re beginning to ask ourselves where does it really apply in critical business processes? And what are the right things you need around it?

And with AI for business, that’s where we feel we differentiate ourselves.

How about the most effective ways for solution providers to talk to customers about AI given how much experimentation and distraction still happens?

There are clear data problems to be solved, and there’s clear opportunity around data.

There is clear agent sprawl, agent control plane problems to be solved—that is something we focus on. There are ancillary problems related to how you then effectively manage the infrastructure that’s supporting your AI or the security around your AI, and we have things there. This is why I like to fixate on use case marketing and the personas they are targeted to.

As clients explore this field, we have reads on some various things that I think are relevant to the exploration and adoption and getting the best out of it.

Where should solution providers focus on building skills in the agentic era?

I’ll be very blunt. I don’t know that there’s a clear answer to that particular question at the moment.

Let’s look at the classic one, the most clearly developed use case: software development. I’m not talking about vibe coding on the weekend.

Anyone who is paying attention and is looking at these tools knows that to get the best out of them, you actually need to know something about building applications.

You can’t just say, ‘I’m just going to give some instructions.’ Yes, you’ll get something that works. But how do you tune it? How do you debug it?

You can, say, fix it yourself. But at some point, if you have no idea what it’s doing, you truly have no idea what you’re building or what you’re releasing. The world is littered already with stories of such.

The foundational skills that we all need in the technology arena remain. You have got to understand the technology. You have got to understand its application. You have got to understand the best way to think about it to make sure they deliver value. Solutioning has not gone away. You still need to solution and architecture this stuff.

Agents, they become enablers of the end goal. They, yes, can reduce the need or increase the speed by which we can address things. But I still think that foundational and fundamental understanding is still required. [Otherwise], you’re not in control.

In business, you need to be in control.

How should IBM solution providers view the vendor’s investments in forward-deployed engineers?

It is a role that we are staffing to serve clients. It is a role that our partners will also consider as they look at how they engage with clients. For certain partners, it will make a lot of sense.

For some, based on their model, they may not be doing that. But I just think of it as a role that various entities engaged with, what I would call, the sale, deployment, configuration and productive use of software will look at how such a role figures in their setup.

I would not be surprised to see partners build FDE crews. It would make a lot of sense.

What should solution providers know about the speed IBM’s partner organization brings acquired companies and organic innovations into the program?

It’s within weeks. And the interesting thing to note is, with many of the acquisitions, they don’t necessarily leverage sell in the same way.

They often have had more of the system integration, service partner side. So this has actually been a boost to our sales channel because it’s new product in the channel that they can also develop skills and drive business around with enablement.

We’re very quick in integrating the various partner networks. As you would imagine, there’s always a level of overlap [in partners in the ecosystems].

There are new partners. We bring them in, keep them successful at what they’re doing, and there’s now other things they can tap into.

That’s definitely been the way [with] Apptio, Hashi, Confluent, for example. With Red Hat, we continue to strengthen our cross-pollination there. And I would just expect that to continue.

There are some very unique partner relationships that they have. They’re also ones that are really software relationships.

We’re ensuring the partner doesn’t feel torn between us, that is very important, and that they can operate effectively across us.