IBM’s $6 billion ‘book of business around AI—80 percent of that in our own consulting business—is reflective of the opportunity that we now have with the GSIs,’ says IBM Partner Ecosystem Sales General Manager David La Rose.
David La Rose, general manager of IBM’s partner ecosystem sales, said the tech giant’s solution providers should expect more artificial intelligence in improving the technical aspects of the now-three-year-old Partner Plus program, including portal enhancements.
The Armonk, N.Y.-based mainframe, cloud and AI vendor has seen its global systems integrator (GSI) partners play a major role in bringing the cutting-edge technology—along with more autonomous AI agents—to customers, La Rose told CRN in an interview.
“The AI story is more than resonating with them,” he said. IBM’s $6 billion “book of business around AI—80 percent of that in our own consulting business—is reflective of the opportunity that we now have with the GSIs.”
[RELATED: IBM Launches Partner Plus ‘Service’ Track]
IBM Partner Plus
La Rose spoke with CRN prior to IBM Ecosystem General Manager Kate Woolley announcingher departure from the vendor.
Bo Gebbie, president of Minneapolis-based IBM solution provider Evolving Solutions—No. 162 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500—told CRN in a recent interview that he is seeing continued IT investment by clients but with extra reviews given economic uncertainty as countries continue to negotiate global tariffs.
Customers are expressing interest in automation tools and the capabilities of solution providers like Evolving Solutions at a time when hiring highly skilled employees is difficult.
“We are seeing more scrutiny, making sure that the dollars being spent are driving something that’s really helping grow the business,” Gebbie said. “We’re challenging our team [to make] sure we’re clarifying the outcomes and the objectives up front—where [has this] helped them solve a problem or drive business? Where can we help their teams build those cases?”
La Rose also told CRN about new promotions to assist solution providers with selling IBM SaaS products.
“That’s really all centered around the lower end of the segment that we’re trying to hit,” La Rose said. “You can expect that we’ll continue to expand from there.”
Although IBM doesn’t break out exact numbers for its partner ecosystem, La Rose said the vendor sees a 1,000 partner per annum run rate, largely due to the efforts of distributors.
He predicts more consolidation in the channel as time moves on, pointing to the recent merger of Converge Technology Solutions—No. 32 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500—and Mainline Information Systems as an example.
“Our top 30-odd partners globally … represent about 30 percent of our overall ecosystem business,” he said. “So making the bigger partners bigger with the focus on the portfolio that we have, the differentiation that we’ve got around the FinOps and the AI part of the portfolio is where we want to go.”
Here’s more of what La Rose had to say around partners selling more of the IBM portfolio and how IBM is investing in solution providers.
How is IBM partner activity around the recently acquired companies?
Apptio now is completely embedded into the portfolio. From a partner perspective, they’re fully integrated into our program.
HashiCorp is now coming on board. And it brings such a different set of partners that augment the ecosystem that we currently have. But it’s got us thinking a lot more around this concept of the services capability that we have.
[HashiCorp partners] come in with a very, very strong services orientation. Very sticky with their clients, able to navigate the expansive portfolio that HashiCorp actually has and bringing that to life in the clients. HashiCorp has been operating more on a direct basis.
Apptio has been a learning experience for both sides in terms of what we can learn from them in terms of speed, simplicity.
Then this concept of the embedded partners and the ISVs that will actually bring their own solution with the embedded level of technology that we’ve got. We’re seeing more and more of that. That’s probably the biggest and fastest-growing segment of our ecosystem in the last 12 months.
If you take the global systems integrators, I would say what’s landed with them is the agentic AI and how we can now differentiate with the Watson portfolio.
Which GSIs are building what practices—it varies based on their industry expertise and even where they’re operating in the world. But the AI story is more than resonating with them.
[IBM’s $6 billion] book of business around AI—80 percent of that in our own consulting business—is reflective of the opportunity that we now have with the GSIs.
Is customer investment in AI evolving?
It’s all about what is the return on investment that we’re getting from AI?
There’s no more of this concept of experimental just for the sake of experimental.
If you just look at FinOps for a second, at Apptio, the average proof of concept is perhaps somewhere between two to four weeks.
By two weeks, they’ve identified enough opportunity to effectively fund—by the time they get to the four weeks—the cost of the licensing. And the product just doesn’t come out of the [proof of concept].
This ROI concept is very real as it relates to FinOps and some of the offerings that we’ve got with [IBM cloud financial management platform] Cloudability and [the more holistic] Apptio One.
We’re seeing the same trend as it relates to [IBM workflow platform Watsonx] Orchestrate and the Watson suite—[Watsonx.governance and Watsonx.data] in particular.
The conversation has moved away from experimentation to return on investment.
There’s no slowdown in the opportunity that we’re seeing very specifically into … FinOps because the investment is tied to operational savings or development savings, and AI.
Those that have seen a return are where we’re seeing new business come from the fastest. It’s really that simple.
[We’re] also using our own technology to drive efficiencies across the enterprise in areas of HR and in areas of sales assistance.
The partners that I see and the clients that I touch, it’s all about those that are seeing quick returns of the first [AI and FinOps projects] and ready to go with the next project.
Assuming IBM plans for more acquisitions, what’s the message to partners about how quickly the new capabilities get to them?
We want to have the skill capability and the proficiencies that we have in the program ready and available on the new products and the new content at the day of transfer of business.
There’s zero time to get integrated into the program. And that’s as well as contracting, on-boarding, etc.
If you look at the go-to-market, it runs adjacent to the existing teams for about 12 months. And it has really got to be returning against the business case in that 12-month period.
The expectation is that we return on this quickly. As someone who has been around for and seen a couple of these acquisitions in the last decade, Apptio, webMethods and—no doubt in my mind HashiCorp—will be really good examples of how we do this well, off the back of what was already being done with Red Hat.
Is there room for IBM-focused solution providers to get deeper into the Red Hat portfolio?
A lot of our resell partners are operating across the IBM portfolio as well as Red Hat, and it really comes together for them with the work that our distributors do.
And they do a really terrific job in this area of integrating how it would come together in front of clients on behalf of that partner.
Red Hat, from an ecosystem perspective, has been additive for our partners while they were operating with RHEL [Red Hat Enterprise Linux] consistently, even before we acquired them.
Ansible and the work that is now integrated into the whole hybrid cloud story is only getting stronger.
When you look at [IBM] hybrid cloud, that really is the story around Red Hat. So by definition, the portfolio now brings Red Hat very much into the value proposition that our partners are seeing.
Is IBM getting deeper with distributors?
We’ve done a good job in the last two years since we introduced the program around new partner acquisition. We’re on a run rate of about 1,000 partners per annum—not just contracting and on-boarding but activating those partners.
That engine will continue to go. And the distributors are the premier individuals responsible for delivering on that.
However, you look at the activity in the marketplace … Converge [Technology Solutions] and Mainline [Information Systems, which merged in April and became Pellera Technologies] … CDW and Sirius [which merged in 2021].
There’s going to be a consolidation at the top end. And we’re continuing to see that. And that is something we want to see. We see that as a strength for us.
Our top 30-odd partners globally … represent about 30 percent of our overall ecosystem business. So, making the bigger partners bigger with the focus on the portfolio that we have, the differentiation that we’ve got around the FinOps and the AI part of the portfolio is where we want to go.
And then from a distribution perspective, we’ve been on almost a two-year journey now up-leveling our performance across the world with our distributors.
We haven’t done anything specifically here in the United States because we have the three globals here represented across the Americas. But if you look at Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and Africa, we’ve been on a very deliberate assessment of distributors’ performances. Meaning terminations. Meaning new relationships coming in.
We don’t want to be in a situation of overdistribution. That’s the worst possible case that we can be in. That’s our continued focus.
What do you want solution providers to know about IBM’s strategy around ISVs?
What’s important is embeddable AI. That’s the offering that we want to go sell.
That’s allowed us to be very focused on who we now target, how we’ve gone to market with that, what the offerings look like, as well as what our program looks like.
You’re going to see that theme continue going forward. It’s going to be a very, very narrow, focused effort around embeddable AI.
What should solution providers know about how the partner program is evolving in 2025?
It’s been in the market now for three years. A lot’s changed. Our portfolio’s changed. Market’s changed.
[We are] infusing AI into everything that we do around the program, whether that’s the portal activity, how people manage their own journey through the IBM Partner Plus program.
But the other one is around growth. You can expect that we’ll look at how do we strengthen our SaaS differentiation in partner earnings as we go forward?
And that’s really all centered around the lower end of the segment that we’re trying to hit. There’s some of the things that you can expect as we go forward.
We announced two promotions—an additional 10 points for partners as they sell new SaaS offerings to new IBM clients. So that’s clients that haven’t purchased IBM technology in the last three years. That’s a 10-point incremental.
And then we’ve also announced for a select set of SaaS offerings a 15 percent consumption or adoption bonus. So how do we accelerate the adoption of SaaS? And if you can get 50 percent of the adoption in the first 12 months, then you have got a 15-point bonus on the ACV [annual contract value].
Those are some of the early things that are in market. You can expect that we’ll continue to expand from there.
