New role at IBM! Ecosystems on #Analytics, #socbiz , #Mobile, #Cloud & Big Data & Entrepreneurship

I am truly excited to be taking on a new role here at IBM! As General Manager of Ecosystems, ISVs and Entrepreneurs or our IDR group, I look forward to the opportunity to work with a wide range of talented and innovative business partners, clients and IBMers to help enhance IBM’s position as a leader – fostering growth and success through influencer partnerships. I’m hitting the ground running. Here’s a few areas I am focused on…

First, nurture our Startup partners so we can achieve more together! IBM’s commitment to the entrepreneurial community is stronger than ever and will continue to grow, as evidenced by the success of the

IBM Global Entrepreneur Program

Since 2010, this program has helped launch more than 500 new businesses in key areas such as green energy, health care and transportation. How? By nurturing startups, bringing them into our 121,000-strong business partner ecosystem and helping them get their technologies ready for market. IBM’s work with startup companies helps us build and strengthen new markets such as cloud, mobile and big data/analytics. It also extends our geographic reach — for example, to companies like Sproxil in Africa.

Second, continue to grow the IBM SmartCamp initiative. Past SmartCamp participants have gone on to generate more than $90 million in VC/Angel funding following their work with IBM. With your help, I intend to deepen our commitment – focusing on nurturing and deepening our relationships with Startups so we can achieve broader success with more partners.

Finally, in an effort to spur ecosystem growth, we will focus deeper on our fundamentals: drive awareness to recruit new ecosystem partners; work closely with partners to enable our technologies with their solutions; and actively drive our go-to-market activities and sales engagements.

We will continue to focus on strategic initiatives, including Smarter Analytics, Social Business, Mobile and Cloud computing and our overall Big Data strategy. And we will show our partners and customers how they can use IBM expertise and resources to drive results through our “Learn – Build – Sell” model:

Learn: Understand the benefits we offer our partners and increase their technical and business expertise

Build:  Differentiate partner solutions using our resources, and collaborate with leading technical experts

Sell: Expand the ecosystem network and drive demand for joint solutions

With our combined energy, innovation and expertise, I’m confident we can make it happen.

Time to get moving and I’d love to hear from each of you on how I can assist!