Borman: When you think about IBM, we have five brands in software and six brands in systems, and then PCs. Each one, in essence, competes with a different set of players out in the marketplace. And so I need to enable the brands to have some level of flexibility so that they're competitive in their channel programs. But at the same time, it needs to look like one IBM from marketing to sales.
Kafkarkou: I think there is recognition that CA as a company now is much easier to do business with than we used to be. In the past, we have abused the relationships with some of our partners, and people have long memories and don't forget these things. I haven't had one partner-complaint e-mail for technical support in North America for five months. We provide plenty of benefits and rewards to our entire channel community. We wanted to create a compensation model whereby everybody benefits, and it's amazing how much more collaboration we have. We also have rolled out a new licensing mechanism whereby partners can transact $1 million worth of business, and neither the partner nor the customer has to sign a single document. We also feel there will probably be less focus on procurement and much more focus on delivering integrated solutions with our partners.
Borman: We've reorganized our sales force into about 3,000 different clusters, so we cover business partners similarly to the way we cover accounts. We have a lead IBM salesperson covering this set of partners, with support from the software group and the systems group and PC and services. In the U.K., for example, we had 20 clusters, and in several of the clusters we determined that the software person had the best relationship with those partners in that cluster. We also have structured a number of our incentives so that they're more like IBM incentives rather than just an individual brand. We'll give them an incentive that includes storage along with systems [and] software; they can earn more money along with financing, for example.
Grimes: We are following Scott McNealy's mantra--attacking cost and complexity, building out services and mobility and security. Yes, these are complex times. There are a lot of moving parts. But our partners said we need to work on the profitability of our relationships, simplifying our business relationships and rewarding or recognizing [partners] for [their] investments, loyalty or whatever.
VB: Gary and George, you both compare yourselves to IBM and, in some cases, have hired IBMers. What do you think about IBM?
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