Support and resources remain key for IBM A/NZ partners

Increasing technical resources, lead generation and support are a few things that are top of mind for IBM ecosystem general manager Kate Woolley. 

Australian-born Woolley has been based in the US for the past 14 years and stepped into her current IBM leadership role in 2022. 

From the top down at IBM, one mission remains clear: the partner ecosystem is a priority growth engine. 

“We’ve been undergoing a big focus in transitioning around the ecosystem,” she said. 

“How do we continue to invest more in partners and put the support and the resources around them so that we can grow together to meet our clients where they’re at?”

IBM caters to different businesses within its partner landscape featuring traditional resellers, ‘build’ and ‘service’ partners alongside distribution. 

At the start of last year, IBM launched its Partner Plus program, which was centred on providing partners with a simple, transparent, predictable program and putting their earning capability in their hands. Woolley said that while IBM focused on skills and increasing technical resources, it also introduced a deal share program.

“We also made all of our skilling and enablement training available to our partners free of charge,” she said. 

“We are investing more resources into our partner ecosystem.”

“We’re also doing a lot around how we generate leads with our partners and how we engage them early in these deals so that they’ve got the right skills.”

IBM A/NZ country manager Nick Flood added that, on top of ramping up resources, IBM was taking a new approach with partners that was focused on creating an end-user experience. 

“That’s really generating a lot of value for our partners because they’ve got people that they can rely upon and lean on in IBM, who know the technology stack and who can solve problems for end-user clients much more easily,” he said. 

Hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence were the two key engagement areas that Woolley highlighted in terms of helping partners build skills. 

At its annual Think conference held in May, IBM announced several new updates to its watsonx platform one year after its introduction, as well as upcoming data and automation capabilities designed to make artificial intelligence (AI) more open, cost effective, and flexible for businesses.

During his opening keynote, CEO Arvind Krishna shared the company’s plans to invest in, build and contribute to the open-source AI community as a core part of IBM’s strategy.

“When we look at what clients are asking for, and as we think about the transformation and the impact of AI, it’s critical that our partners are building the skills in that area,” she said. 

“This is also coming to life through our service partners who are building centres of excellence around our AI technology.”

Woolley used Wipro as an example, citing its recent launch of an enterprise AI-ready platform that was built using watsonX.

“As we look at AI, we’re at that point where we’re transitioning from a huge amount of hype to how this actually becomes reality for our clients,” she said. 

Some of the use cases are springing up around digital labour, customer care and code modernisation. 

“These are critical places where our partners with their clients can have a huge impact straightaway,” she said.