Grimes: I applaud what IBM has been able to do. There's one IBM to deal with from the outside world's point of view. It's understanding what your strategy is and then executing against that strategy. Every organization has different agendas, different objectives, different measurement criteria, different metrics. It's the company that can figure out how to integrate those into the broader interest and then execute against that without compromising any of the individual things that are successful. If we could only execute as effectively as IBM. I think about our relationship with IBM. IBM supplies components to us for some of our peripherals as well as some of our processors. Their Global Services organization is a reseller of our product. They are obviously a competitor. That is a complex set of dynamics. You have to keep in mind how you address the challenges--presumably one and one has to equal more than two or there's no point in doing it.
Kafkarkou: I take my hat off to IBM here. Many vendors, they have a great channel strategy when things are not going well. But [IBM has] executed well and was one of the first companies many years ago to consistently pay attention to the channel.
VB: What have you learned from running large-scale partner organizations?
Borman: We look at four elements that are really important to our partners. One is consistency, in good times or bad. The second is they have to make money, and so in good times and in bad you've got to find a way to change enough so that they can survive. Third is the ease of doing business. If we're not easy, it costs our partners more to do business with us. Finally, we send our partners to the same classes and embrace them the same way we treat our own sales staff. It's got to be part of your DNA. Just like you treat a sales guy, you treat a partner.
Grimes: Your products have to be designed from the very start to be partner-friendly. Cost structures have to be factored in, collateral designed and everything else.
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