5 Insights From IBM's Partner Transformation Guru

Partner Transformation At IBM

Mike Gerentine, vice president of global partner marketing at IBM, is the company's go-to expert when it comes to gleaning insight into the transformation of IBM's business partner community. We caught up with him as part of an extended story on how IBM is transforming right alongside its partners. Here is what Gerentine had to say about IBM's new breed of cloud-centric partners on which the company is pinning its future.

So who are today's IBM's typical partners?

There is no longer one partner you can call traditional anymore. We have a lot of hybrid partners that have made the transition from pushing one-off hardware and software deals. Today's partners are selling cloud, SaaS offerings, they are hiring their own developers and creating their own intellectual property. IBM has a whole new set of partners that you can't really call an ISV, MSP or VAR anymore based on their business model and what they do.

Talk about partner margins on cloud services. What are IBM partners seeing when it comes to margins selling SoftLayer?

At the end of the day if you are selling high-value offerings and high-value solutions, you are going to make more margin, which is more money.

If you are able to solve a problem for a midmarket client, they are not asking you how much it cost to solve that problem. As our partners sell more value-add strategic solutions -- versus selling one-off commodity products -- they are not getting into price wars and are able to retain margins and offer things at a higher price point because they are delivering higher value.

Who are the IBM partners of the future?

If you talk to partners that are part of this IT transformation, they are ISVs, resellers, system integrators or MSPs. These partners at the end of the day are evolving their business model to deliver higher value and developing intellectual property of their own.

Partners are now hiring developers and engineers, developing Software-as-a-Service that can sit on top of IBM SoftLayer. We are creating a new ecosystem for partners. That includes ISVs, developers, startups and academia.

Can you explain how IBM's most recent reorganization is impacting its internal channel team and how that impacts what Marc Dupaquier, general manager of Global Business Partners at IBM, does?

IBM's reorg is an attempt to more accurately reflect the way its partner base is using IBM technology today.

Internally, we have taken software and hardware and Global Business Services and put them under Marc Dupaquier (pictured). We are trying to make it simple for the business partners so they have a single point of contact inside IBM. And depending on their core skills -- and what their core growth areas are -- we are providing them with the right enablement, education, support, incentives and relationship leads to help them grow.

What are the risks IBM runs if it becomes just another back-end enabler that can power a partner's SaaS offering right up until the day a partner goes with a cheaper cloud offering from Amazon or Google?

Obviously, we have to deliver value and high quality. And if we do that, IBM continues to be a thought leader. IBM is a leader on so many fronts -- we consistently make major R&D investments and are a worldwide leader in winning patents every year. We will continue to be a leader and we will win in the marketplace. Of course, there is a possibility that a partner can jump IBM's ship -- just as they can also jump to IBM.