IBM U.S. Channel Chief Out, Global VP Takes The Reins

Tami Duncan, IBM's North American channel chief for the past 19 months, left the company Wednesday, according to an IBM spokesperson.

The 20-year IBM veteran, who took over as vice president of global business partners in February 2014, will be replaced by Michele Stern, a 34-year IBM veteran who has held the position of vice president of global business partner sales for the past 18 months, said the spokesperson.

"She's leaving the company of her own will," said the IBM spokesperson. "She's been there for 20 years and made the decision to reorient her career and her life in a different direction."

[Related: IBM Names New North American Channel Chief]

As channel chief Stern will focus on IBM's efforts to transform its channel partners from being simply resellers to offering higher-value solutions, said the spokesman.

Marc Dupaquier, IBM's general manager of global business partners, praised Duncan on the IBM PartnerWorld blog.

"Tami, who was in this role since February 2014, was instrumental in helping our Business Partners throughout North America in their transformation efforts, providing a competitive advantage to our organization. She and I worked closely over the last year to build our organization into one that delivers the best client value, retains the highest level of margin as well as encourages Business Partner integrity and ethical behavior."

Dupaquier said that Stern, in her new role effective Wednesday, "will be responsible for leading the North America One Channel Team and our ecosystem of channel partners on their transformational journey to higher-value solutions."

In February, just after IBM shed its x86 commodity server business to Lenovo, IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty said that the channel represents about 20 percent of IBM's overall revenue, the same figure as in 2014.

Rometty said IBM partners that focused their business around the strategic initiatives of cloud, analytics, mobile, social and security were seeing 14 percent higher growth.

But as IBM has sold off hardware assets, including its chip business to Globalfoundries, it has seen a steady decline in its overall number of partners. The channel drove 85 percent of x86 server sales, and ahead of the deal with Lenovo, IBM said it expected to lose roughly 2,000 partners.

PUBLISHED JULY 1, 2015