Borman's New Beat

The move, which places Borman at the head of IBM's iSeries division, comes just weeks after a switch in rival Hewlett-Packard's channel management saw HP's North American channel general manager leave his post.

The IBM channel shakeup blindsided the company's partners and injects an element of uncertainty into IBM's vaunted PartnerWorld strategy.

"Things were going great, and this just blows me away. I'm stunned," said Joe Vaught, COO at PCPC, an IBM Business Partner based in Houston.

Added Mike Cox, president and CEO of Logicalis, a Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based solution provider: "[Borman] was the executive assigned to our account, and he took a personal interest in helping us grow our business organically. This is surprising. We're going to miss him."

Atkins sought to allay IBM Business Partner concerns over Borman's departure from the channel position. "Our partners should not expect to see any radical changes here," said Atkins in a conference call after being named to replace Borman as head of the partner organization, whose membership generates $30 billion in annual revenue. "This is about taking a program that we are happy with and continuing to work in partnership with them to find ways to make it better."

Channel executives were hopeful Atkins would keep IBM's channel momentum going. "I think [Borman] did a phenomenal job running the channel," said Pete Peterson, vice president of product marketing, software and systems at Tech Data, Clearwater, Fla. "Two years ago, you'd hear more rhetoric in the channel about IBM, that they were taking business direct. I have not heard that in well over 18 months. I attribute a lot of that to Mike and his team."

Jerry Munson, senior vice president of the Technology Solutions Group at Data Systems International, an Overland Park, Kan.-based IBM solution provider, added: "Donn Atkins is a tremendous executive. He is as capable of continuing to build the channel, but [Borman] did an outstanding job. He was a real motivator. My thinking is iSeries is in the ditch, and they needed a mover and shaker to get that platform back on course. And they handpicked [Borman] to get back into a growth environment."

The change comes only two months after IBM named Doug Elix to head the $90 billion computer giant's massive sales effort as vice president and group executive of IBM Global Sales and Distribution. Borman, who had been reporting directly to Elix, will now head IBM's sluggish iSeries midrange server business, where he will report to Bill Zeitler, IBM's senior vice president and group executive for the Systems and Technology Group.

Atkins, who will now report to Elix, said he was working closely with Borman on partner strategy even before the shift.

"I don't expect there to be any startup time," Atkins said. "I am picking up something from Mike here that is working pretty darn well. My intent is to just build upon the success we have had with PartnerWorld and continue to try to refine it and drive to even more success."

As to why the changes were made, Atkins said it is an "opportunity for the IBM company to move some skills around to allow us to take some experiences that each of us had individually and apply them to different parts of the business. It gives us an opportunity to kind of grow our skills and build upon experiences we have."

STEVEN BURKE contributed to this story.