Ibm software general manager

Think about it. What's the cost of eBay if their site goes down? What's the price of Ford Motor Company if their anti-lock breaks don't work and they get sued, particularly with the settlements as they've been lately? I've heard that IBM has so many tools that it wouldn't hurt them to get rid of some and combine some. Do you think there will be consolidation? Devlin: Absolutely. Over time, we'll consolidate products on this common architecture. As opposed to a team product, like ClearCase, which has a server element and supports team interconnection, we'll also use Eclipse for the client side, but Eclipse is not a server-side platform.

That's the direction we're going. Will that cause us to change the packaging to simplify it? Of course. Do we know today what that's going to be? We're getting a lot of input from our customers and analysts, and if you have any ideas we'd love to have them.

The feedback we get from customers is that we need to simplify the product line over time on a couple of dimensions, making them easier to use and having a common user interface and making it easier to deploy to workstations to all the developers around the world.

We're building those capabilities into our products, the packaging and pricing issues. So we're going to have packages to address that. Some are going to want the integrated solution, and some of it is just optimizing for different industries and markets. We didn't want to have to train the IBM sales force on every product, so we have a set of product offerings and packages that make sense.

We're learning how to leverage a different sales force. CRN: : Will some of the Lotus-specific tools be coming over to your division as well? Devlin: Not all tools will move into our team.

But the framework and the architecture and the direction and the core tools will be what we're responsible for. But there will be many groups,in fact, we want to encourage not just other parts of IBM but business partners and everybody else to build tools on that framework.

We don't want to be responsible for every tool that has to be built. So my guess is that some of the technologies will move in, but the Lotus team will continue to build tools, the DB2 team will continue to build tools and our business partners will build a ton of tools.

We'd already been working with them. So there's a number of areas where we're working with them today. One is they're using our technology and best practices for a number of engagements and that's obviously becoming more widespread now within Global Services.

Secondly, they also capture a lot of best practices, so we're trying to learn things from them and incorporate them into the Rational process over time. They can't be seen as IBM totally. Does it hurt you being part of IBM now? Is it a net gain or a net loss or just a wash? CRN: : Have you seen more product sales with the addition of this huge consulting arm or is it the same because they have to be agnostic? Devlin: Our product sales have definitely improved. I don't know.

Devlin: Yeah. If the customer dictates something they'll go with whatever the customer dictates. That doesn't just apply to Rational, it applies to WebSphere and the rest of the software. Devlin: I'd prefer not to talk about our competitors. Let me say it this way. There are some companies that define their strategy by reacting to what other companies are doing. We introduced Rational Suite and a complete solution seven years ago, something like that. So other companies define their strategy by reacting to and copying as opposed to building up their product portfolio by acquiring or building market-leading products.

They can only afford to have products that don't have the same market share and momentum. Our strategy is not to look so much to what our competitors are doing to decide our strategy. Our goal is to set the agenda for our industry so while our competitors might be trying to implement the strategy we were on seven years ago, we've moved well beyond that. This calendar year competition has not been a primary issue for us in driving the business. What's been an issue is figuring out how to leverage the IBM sales force, and in a very difficult economic environment making sure our team can articulate the business value and return on investment of our solution, which is the place where IBM has helped us.

Some of us, and you heard it this morning, tend to do better talking to the technical people at the customer and don't always fully articulate the business value of our solution. Being part of IBM has really helped us focus more on the business solution and the ROI, which is what customers care about.

CRN: : But if you go into an account, nobody is going to spend a gazillion dollars on tools without evaluating some competitors. If you're going into a customer like Lockheed Martin, who is on the short list besides you guys, for example, against Rational Rose?

Oracle and CA are in there. If you look across the product line, Oracle and CA have products in this space, Borland has products in this space, Microsoft has products. Technology is moving extremely fast and you don't want to miss anything, sign up to our newsletter and you will get all the latest tech news straight into your inbox! I want to recieve updates for the followoing:. I accept that the data provided on this form will be processed, stored, and used in accordance with the terms set out in our privacy policy.

No thanks I don't want to stay up to date. New EMEA GM Assis has previously held a number of executive positions during her 25 years with IBM , including general manager for the Latin America region, during which she drove sustained growth, and increased market share. Assis has also held multiple IBM strategic business positions in the United States, as well as holding the role of vice-president of software sales in China. Below is a list of the biggest senior technology hires, including chief technology officer CTO and chief information officer CIO appointments.

Read here. Picciano and Rennie told Lotus channel partners about the change Sunday morning during the "Business Day" portion of the Lotusphere conference in Orlando, Fla. A formal announcement of the management change is expected Monday during the first full day of Lotusphere. Rennie, in his earlier development and support post, was responsible for the strategy and development of IBM's collaboration application portfolio.