QandA: IBM's U.S. Channel Chief Vows More Services Partnering

Towney Kennard, IBM's newly appointed vice president Business Partners, Americas, spoke with CRN news Editor Steve Burke and CRN Industry Editor Craig Zarley about his Business partner agenda at CMP's Solution Provider XChange in New Orleans. Excerpts from that interview follow:

CRN:: You were at IBM Global Services (IGS) prior to being appointed to your channel post. How is that going to help you drive more services business through partners?

Kennard:: My IGS experience will be extremely helpful. The last five years [at IGS] I was involved with alliances. I can bring a view of what we have to do to drive our partners to the value equation [needed to drive services led engagements]. My message to partners is engage with IGS people in your territory or with the [IGS SMB sales team] or come to us and we'll get you to the right person. The key word is to engage because it's going to take many [partnering] forms. Prime [contractor] one time, sub the next and joint the next.

CRN:: Only 5 percent of IBM Global Services revenue is generated by Business Partners. Do you have plans or goals to increase Business partner participation in services?

Kennard:: Global Services has been viewed for years as a reluctant partner or a direct competitor with our Business Partners. Last year about mid-year IGS made a strategic shift and appointed Jim Corgel as the general manager for SMB services and channels and he reports directly to [IGS head] John Joyce. Before hand our IGS SMB and channels marketing was in our marketing group. It sat down a level or two below and didn't get the attention or the investment because of where it sat in the organization. Jim came to the conclusion that we had to have a partnering strategy to be successful in the SMB space. We couldn't scale enough and we couldn't provide the solutions that would allow us to be successful in services in that marketplace by ourselves.

Jim has also appointed a head of channels in IGS. That's the first time they've had a dedicated channel executive at that level. The second leg of the stool is our SMB teams. And then there is us, the partner group, who really have most of the interface with our channel partners. This is going to be a multi-step process.

Business Consulting Services has dedicated a small group of consultants in the SMB space to work with partners. [BCS] is going to scale up to 250 business partner consultants in the U.S. this year. And then you heard us talk about better enabling our partners to sell maintenance. Because service is an annuity, what we find is that by being the maintainer, it opens up a lot of other services opportunities for you. By opening the aperture of service maintenance we believe it will drag both them and us into a deeper relationship on the services side with our customers.

CRN:: Now that IBM.com has stopped selling maintenance contracts. Are you doing anything else to reduce conflict between Business partners and IBM.com?

Kennard:: The market is big enough that you shouldn't bump into each other. We don't want IBM or multiple partners calling on the same opportunity, nor do we want IBM.com and partners competing against one another. As we continue to mature, you will see us further delineate what IBM.com goes after and what our partners go after. We get a large number of our leads from .com that they pass over to Business Partners, so they are a significant generator for demand and opportunity for our Business Partners. We are working very hard internally to make sure that there is nothing that makes us misbehave.

CRN:: All of the brands except software have announced that they will become part of IBM's bid certification program, which rewards the partner who generated the business with steeper product discounts. When will software come on board?

Kennard:: We have a great [channel] champion in Mike Borman. He just took over as sales and marketing worldwide for the Software Group. He and I have had a number of conversations and he is acutely aware and motivated to make Software Group's channel program become part of the IBM channel program so that we have a single face to our partners. You will see that over time throughout 2005 as we get our programs aligned so that the look and feel and touch is the same.

CRN:: Are there any changes this year as far as major new channel initiates or changes to employee compensation to ease channel conflicts?

Kennard:: My key word is consistency. We're not going to radically change anything because noting major is broken. We've gotten rid of some of the conflict in how .com [employees] we're paid and fixed some [sales conflicts] issues on maintenance contracts. We want to make sure if we change A it doesn't have an affect on B, and if it does, fix it.