Partnership has its rewards

Yesterday we wrapped up the North America Business Partner Advisory Council for IBM Storage in what has become my home town (New York City). We had a fantastic mix of Sales and Technical sales leaders from our Business Partner community who exchanged ideas over 2 days across a wide variety of topics.

Day 1 - Karen Hsu (Americas Channel Sales VP) got us going with a welcome & introduction session where we learned what everyone dreamed of being when they were 6 - some quite varied ambitions were revealed from a being professional football (soccer) player, to a broadway star. . .we even had a someone who wanted nothing more than to be a prison warden. It's always a great icebreaker to share something about our lives outside of the workplace and got us off to fun start.

Following Karen, Kelly Robinson (WW Sales VP) provided some global perspectives on the IBM Storage business and the focus areas where we are seeing tremendous success and business opportunity - the proverbial drum the IBM sales force is marching to.

Our new Americas Storage Sales VP Stacie Mason was next up to share her extensive experiences working with the ecosystem, reinforce the IBM (and her own) partner-first approach and illustrate the tangible investments she has made in her first 90 days on the job - in both incremental resources and some (almost ludicrous) individual incentives we've just announced for FlashSystem. More information on these incentives available to our Partner community here.

IBM General Manager of Storage Denis Kennelly then shared insights on the IBM Storage strategy for AI, Hybrid Cloud & Data Resilience and Sam Werner (WW Product Management VP) gave everyone a look at imminent and mid-term offering roadmaps around Ceph, Fusion, Scale & FlashSytem (amongst others) that support that strategy (hint: there's some truly "wow" stuff in here).

We closed the afternoon with a tour of the IBM Innovation Center with a talk and demonstration of Watsonx (where IBM Storage also had a leading role to play with Ceph and Fusion) leading to an amazing dinner at the very top of New York's spectacular skyline at the One World Observatory.

Day 2 - with the specter of ransomware and regulatory compliance ever present (and very publicly top of mind), Ian Shave and Shelly Howrigon stole the show with an extremely compelling and differentiated narrative and set of capabilities around operational resilience - showing "what good looks like" and where everyone else falls down. LOTS of questions and discussion (leading to some being inducted into the caped-crusader ranks) and universal demand for follow-on engagement.

Our partners are always pretty transparent with what they like and don't (that's why we have such meetings) but the level of enthusiasm, engagement, discussion, friendly banter and desire for success was palpable throughout the entire 2 days. A truly rewarding experience.

I want to thank each of them for taking the time out of their busy schedules to provide their candor and council - it betters us all.

Randy Daniel Andrew Bishop Katie Miles Jessica Johnson Natalia De Greiff Meghan McCracken Sara Krumrei Mike Adams Phil Godwin Greg Rhoades Andrew Gauzza Bo Gebbie Kyle Foster Alex Talmor , President GlassHouse Systems Mark Miller Ryan Slone Greg Lefelar Michael Vannette Annette Bray Bob Elliott John Lambert Pete Ingrasci Martin Chagnon Alain Cormier Brandon Worrell Ruben Lee John Zawistowski John Ellis Jim Oller Rod Wright Richard Zimmermann Marty Mackey Eleanor A. Lewin Paul Heard Jude Lancaster, CISSP, CCSP Kathleen Macchio Diego Genicolo Muniz Tayron Roa Clavijo Fabio Voltasio Brent Webster Mark Steele

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