CRN Interview: John Pratt, IBM

John Pratt, vice president of channel services for IBM Global Services, recently met with editors to discuss IGS' partnership with solution providers that are part of Ingram Micro's VentureTech network. The two groups are preparing to launch pilot programs possibly within the next month.

CRN: Do you think, at least initially, that this deal will be more a case of IGS passing leads on to solution providers or solution providers passing leads to you?

PRATT: The value proposition has to be evident from both sides. In order to convince IGS that this thing is absolutely one of the top priorities to do, we're going to have to have some initial opportunities come from the partners. But when I talk to the partners, they have many examples of opportunities they could have engaged with but decided they couldn't move on because they didn't have the breadth and scope. %85 To get the momentum going in IGS, we're looking to keep this thing on the front burner by having examples where the partner has situations where they say, 'This is bigger than I can handle, what am I going to do now?' It gets us involved, and all of a sudden we use the rules of engagement to work with them and then we deploy.

CRN: Are there any regions or particular types of businesses targeted?

PRATT: We're starting out in the Southeast or Southwest because we have a very good propensity for those teams that already want to partner. [IGS]

doesn't have as many skills in every town that they need. There is so much potential to this thing, it's not even funny. Where it doesn't run as quickly is in %85 metro regions. Where we partner the best is in areas like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or the panhandle of Florida.

CRN: What is IGS doing to ensure everybody's working from the same page?

PRATT: In the SMB marketplace, we have roughly 80 territories. Each territory is covered by a territory partner manager on the SMB side. That territory partner manager is responsible for populating a map of how you go to market for their team, which includes the key business partners in their region.

What we're going to do is have [certain VentureTech] members highlighted in those territory maps. You have to weave this into the fabric of how IBM goes to market, because if you have it as a one-off situation %85 it won't be part of the formal fabric. So we have work going on to embed this model. Once we get through the pilot, get through the [general availability], you're going to see it show up in all these territories. We know how the system works, we just have to add a fixed-cost engine and pump more volume. We can get this done.