CRN Interview: Donn Atkins, IBM

IBM&s General Manager of Global Business Partners Donn Atkins spoke with Industry Editor Craig Zarley about the value of multivendor partners. Following are excerpts from that interview.

CRN: What is your view on having multivendor vs. IBM-only business partners?

ATKINS: I have the very good fortune of having a diverse partner community. That&s important because customers are very diverse. We, as a company, have embraced that reality for a number of years. There was a time in the past that we [were] a very proprietary company, but customers told us that was not a reality.

We are dealing with customers that have a variety of investments [in IT infrastructure]. We need to enable partners to incorporate IBM technology as part of a total solutions portfolio. Having a partner that has the ability to respond to customers in this reality of mixed environments, we think it&s an advantage. Rather than trying to be so directive with partners to put strong pressure to focus only on our portfolio, what we are saying is that we welcome all partners and want to help them understand the value of the IBM portfolio and to incorporate that into as much of their solutions as possible. If I say to partners, ‘Make it all IBM& and if an element of the solution is not IBM, I would be disadvantaging my partner by saying, ‘I want you to make it all my stuff.& [Instead] I am going to use support and enablement vs. a set of rules, and I believe at the end of the day that they are going to vote on our approach.

CRN: Some multivendor partners say it is difficult to gain the trust of the IBM field-sales force because they are not 100 percent IBM. Are multivendor partners at a disadvantage when working with IBM?

ATKINS: As we continue to evolve our business toward more total solutions, partners that we bring into IBM that have a majority of their business with another vendor but have a particular deep set of skills, the client teams say, ‘Wait a minute, this guy was winning contracts from us where he was representing some one else&s server. The reason he was winning the server business was because he has a great solution.& Now we can bring the solution together with an IBM proposal. We can sit and do some kind of theoretical or financial model of a partner program and demonstrate the return to the vendor of having more product go on a sale, but again what I say is, ‘That&s great, that&s a good thing to strive for, but let&s go out and ask customers what they value.&

And the customer values a solution that&s right for their business and not necessarily one that&s pure for a particular vendor. I have partners that are new to me who have a significant part of their business with my competition and I have to respect these guys because it&s part of their business model. [Forcing them to sell IBM only] would be an insult to them. I am content to get in and access to their skills and capabilities and earn as much of their business as possible.