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So good morning. Good morning everyone. This is Kevin L. Jackson and Scott Luton with you here on digital transformers on supply chain. Now welcome to today's live stream. Hey Scott,
Kevin, how are you doing? I think I earned a degree in our pre-show session. There really enjoyed the conversation.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, on today's show, we are getting a sneak peek of one of the leading global events that pulls together business thought leaders from around the world every year. Think 2021, the future of hybrid cloud and AI is here. And I have my think cube right here, so I'm ready.
Oh, where's my son. When we need him, that reminds me of a comic book cube that powers movies these days and in comics saving the world. Well, Hey Kevin. You're right. We've got an outstanding session here today. Think 2021 is just right around the corner. May 11th here in the Americas, May 12th for APAC, Japan, and the Mia ton of great sessions teed up. But today, Kevin, we've got an executive dynamic executive from the Abbey and team. That's going to be joining us to kind of give us a sneak peek of what what's gonna be covered with think 20, 21 and some of the cool things that IBM and the ecosystem is doing, right?
Yeah. You know, Cod is my thing. So I was really excited do this. And I see I,
Well, I could tell you and our guests really make quite a one, two punch and appreciate it. And we're going to bring Brian on here in just a minute, but Hey, quit programming it before we get started. So you can find digital transformers own supply chain. Now the podcast channel every fourth, Monday of each month. So be sure to find that and subscribe. So you won't miss a single thing much like this show here today. And secondly, we've got, we're supporting a great nonprofit initiative to get supplies to India and their fight against the pandemic. You can learn more@vbatheibha.org, doing great work there to help our friends in India. Okay. With no further ado, let's say hello to a few folks. And they were going to bring our guests on. How about that, Kevin? Okay, let's do this. All right. So starting, uh, Shannon is back with us from Canada via LinkedIn. Great to see you here. Shannon. Andrea is back Andre. I hope this finds you and your sister Sophia well, and she says she's never seen a countdown before that way. Kevin's gotten a magic touch. I'll tell you,
Dean is with us via LinkedIn. Great to see you there. Newer Dean. Oh, Alabi is back via LinkedIn from Nigeria. So hello. Hello, Mervyn from Dublin Berlin. Great to see you hope your family are doing well.
I'll start. I really love about this show. It's it's it's global. We get, we have this audience just come from everywhere.
Agreed. And, and you know, it's like we're talking pre show. The world is getting smaller and smaller and, and bless be the ties that bind for sure. So Kevin, are we ready to bring in our, our featured guests here today?
You know, I can't wait. All right.
So this welcome man, Brian Fallon, vice president global sales for IBM partner ecosystem, of course, with big blue,
Well? Doing well, Scott, Kevin. Good to see you. Thanks for having me today.
No, thank you for coming. I mean, it's a, it's a hot time that I'll be em, getting ready for think.
Oh yes. We're in the final stages here with it kicking off next week. So very exciting time for us. Very exciting. Indeed.
Outstanding. Well, you know, Kevin, I appreciate it. We learned a little bit that Brian spent some time here in the Metro Atlanta area where supply chain now is based. And of course, uh, former colleagues, uh, you and Brian were with IBM. So I'll tell you lots of common bonds here, but let's start, you know, Brian, before we get to the heavy lifting and there's a ton of heavy lifting we're going to do between some of the cool technology trends and business trends, and think 2021 is going to be like, let's get to know you a little bit better. So tell us, tell us a little about yourself and where you're from and your role at IBM.
Okay. Well again, thanks for having me, Brian Fallon, currently the global vice president of sales for IBM's partner ecosystem. A little bit about me. I live here in the New York area. I did start with IBM, as you said, Scott in Atlanta have very fond memories of my three years. I spent there. I live here with my wife, Catherine, uh, and our son Liam, uh, who was born about six weeks ago. So new father here. Uh, thank you. Thank you. And I started with IBM through an actual, actually an internship, right, is what got me exposed to the culture of IBM at the TJ Watson research center. Kevin, I know you were in the white Plains area. So in Yorktown Heights, there was the research center. That's actually where I first started with IBM and then subsequently moved to Atlanta, Georgia to go through global sales school, which is how I spent some time.
That was a good old 1133 West Chester Avenue there in white Plains.
Yeah, I remember the office from years ago, but now I'm in, in the New York city area. And I'm happy to be here with you both today. So that's a little bit about may Scott,
Quick follow up question. So first off you're illustrating the of internships then when you're entering the industry and still certainly today. So certainly always encourage, uh, companies that are still wonderful vehicles to invest in and, and you're you're living and walking proof. And then secondly, more on the personal side, can you share with us who Liam was named after?
Not a family name, the middle name Maliki named after my father. So Leah Maliki, Fallon named after my father and him and my grandfather actually is, uh, is where that name comes from. But Liam was just something my wife and I thought it had a good ring to it. I love it. I love high aspirations, Kevin.
So Kevin, where are we going
Next? Well, one of the things that I'll want to really understand is that your title partner ecosystem, is it, I mean, I'm not sure if the audience really understands or appreciate what that mean. Can you sort of tell us how do you run or manage being executive okay.
Partner ecosystem. Okay. Fair question. So let's kind of break it down a little bit. So what is the partner ecosystem with? IBM, we have partnerships with over 45,000 firms, right? It's how we deliver scale through our technology mission, right? So what I'm responsible for is really delivering the technology business through this set of partners and reducing the friction to give them access to our technology, inclusive of software, our systems, you know, our infrastructure platforms as well as our public cloud capabilities. So this ecosystem is unified by a set of common goals, right? We all have a set of common goals and we have a belief in the strategy that IBM's going down and the capabilities that our offerings and products bring to bear. This is kind of the glue that holds us together. What my role works on is, as I said, reducing that friction, how do we get adoption of the technology through this ecosystem in an accelerated fashion? And what we really rolled out is, you know, three motions building on top of IBM technology and partners who adopt the technology through, through that delivering services around it, right? Not only implementation services, but managed services, utilizing pieces of our technology and intellectual property that our partners developed. And of course, you know, selling the technology and helping clients implement it as is in their enterprises. And that's really what we've been working on as, as the partner ecosystem at IBM.
Wow. I, uh, I read that, uh, there's like a billion dollars was invested and to expanding, providing, and, uh, I guess, uh, reducing that friction of being an IBM partner. Is that true?
You read correctly. Yeah. So with the new leadership under Arvin Krishna, our CEO chairman, we've made a concerted effort on how do we measure value for the IBM corporation. And that's not just value for customers, but also value for our partners. It's got to have both in order for IBM to really get that multiple effects. So we've invested heavily that billion is in the form of investment funds to help our partners migrate to our technologies, to help them build a solutions and capabilities on top of our technologies, as I previously spoke to, we've also made investments in more technical resources, such as our hybrid cloud build team led by my colleague, Willie, to Hata. We, we made that investment so that partners can get access to the individuals who have skills on these platforms so that we can help them learn faster, adopt quicker, get to market with our technology. And that's kind of in a nutshell, what we've done with the billion dollars, but we're not done yet.
Oh, well, I'm going to pull on that string a little bit about the IBM cloud. Your approach seems different than what people would typically expect from a cloud service provider. I mean, the, uh, the appropriate visual is a menu of options that you have to select from, with sort of a take it or leave it service level agreement. But that seems like IBM took a different direction in this partner ecosystem. Why?
Well, I think it comes down to the fact that 75% of enterprise workloads have not migrated to public cloud. Right? And if you look at IBM's heritage and the success that we've enjoyed over, you know, a hundred plus years, some of that is, is not in the cloud space. Although you could argue, we were one of the early adopters to what was the predecessor to cloud and how we, you know, shared managed services and the capabilities we bring with our mainframe platform. Now, that being said, our approach is about openness and, and the reality that the world is hybrid, right? So having a multicloud approach is sort of table stakes in this role. And that's where our approach differ because we didn't take it from the strategy, from a public cloud, kind of going into the data center. We're looking at it from a data center approach, going out to the cloud, not all workloads are created equal, right? Not everything has a final destination that may reside on the public cloud, but giving customers the flexibility to make that choice based on the application, the security requirements, the user requirements gives you flexibility and choice. And you'll hear me talk about consistency, flexibility, and choice to the customer. That's really what the, you know, open hybrid and AI enabled architecture that IBM is working on is all about,
Well, when technology is here, flexibility, you know, open source sort of flashes in front of them. And, uh, IBM has really been a leader and an open source. How, how does this support your partner ecosystem?
So the first way I would say it supports our partner ecosystem, is that in serving our partners and clients, right? They value this consistency and openness, right? Because it avoids that lock in strategy. The minute you start creating something on a set of technology that you create difficulties down the road, right? So beginning with, uh, an architecture where you can design once deploy to an environment of your choosing gives you tremendous flexibility to start from many organizations. I cited the 75% of enterprise workloads that haven't moved well, why? Because it's really hard work, right? This isn't trivial, you know, work we're talking about. So it takes a lot of thought and planning as you're going through this, and it's, you know, there's an expense to it. You want them to be thoughtful. And so that every investment pays a dividend in the future, and that you're not going back and refactoring and trying to recreate these workloads, the approach that we have, you know, very much helps to accelerate that, but do so in a secure and supported manner, our partners are seeing value in that because one it's helping show a value to their customer in terms of the longevity.
So the return on an investment is more near term, too. It's helping to accelerate that move. So the flexibility that they're able to offer is allowing clients to reduce their expenses in the near term and provide greater flexibility. So they're actually able to extract insight from the data that resides across their organization. As one simple example, 2021 seems to be built around evolving that IBM partner experience. Is that true? It is. It's very much a partner centric approach. And in everything we're doing, including our flagship conference here at think w we had tremendous registration already, not only from customers, but partners alike, I'm sure we'll see that continue to ramp over the coming days with it. So, you know, so quickly approaching the, you know, the event is really tailored in a way where there's a little bit of something for everybody. I don't know if you've gone through the agenda, but I mean, there are some really technical tracks that our partners can take advantage of.
There's the ability to go out and get competencies, right? And actually we have a promotion going on now, we're partners who sign up for things, get access to a free voucher for a competency on average partners with these competencies earn about 25 bucks, what partners that don't have them, right? So there's a value to this in terms of, you know, knowledge being power here, what this there's a, there's a tremendous up-skilling opportunity at thing. And we're going to be making a ton of announcements as well. So you're going to want to tune in for that as well. Kevin Scott, what do you think about this?
Just one big key key trade. Ella question, Brian, how good is the food think 2020?
Well, it depends how close you're going to virtually take it from your kitchen, Scott. I mean, that's the beauty of this, right? You can, you can do it in the comfort of your own home.
I love it. Knowledge is power and admire the companies that really have doubled down, especially from a virtual standpoint, global standpoint, to give folks the opportunity as remote, wherever they are to plug in and better themselves as an organization and 25 X Holy cow, that is quite a return. So you shared a lot of different things. IBM's working on the partners we're working on, and that will be covered. Some things that we covered at think 2021, but in particular, this IBM, uh, satellite cloud. Can you tell me more about that? Especially from a non technologist standpoint, perhaps.
Okay. Well, it's a game changer, right? From a non technologist standpoint. What, why is that? So we talked about enterprises wanting to move to the cloud. There's a ton of considerations to make what workload, how will I get it there as you're making these decisions, it's not going to be a move everything, right? So you've gotta, you gotta be thinking about, well, how am I going to manage these disparate environments? Right? I'm going to have some consuming on-prem resource, some on a public cloud, maybe private instances off, uh, at another location as well. How do I manage these various interfaces and technologies, right? Cause it's not consistent as you get into these different environments. What IBM cloud satellite allows you to do is to take that instance to buy IBM cloud and put it anywhere you want in your data center. In another data center, in a public cloud that is not even IBM public cloud, right?
You can put it in another competitive cloud offering if you want, but get that same consistency and connectivity have a central point of management. And, you know, really from a security standpoint, there's a lot of advantages to, right, from a monitoring and security standpoint, you get consistency in a single pane of glass. So, you know, the experience from our client has been, they feel more confident in the move to cloud with IBM cloud satellite. I guess that's how I would sum it up. It's about confidence in your ability to make that move because it's not a trivial task, as I said earlier.
Yeah. I was just saying, it sounds like the satellite cloud is intent on accelerating the transition to cloud or making it, I guess, a better business case.
That's what I heard as well. Kevin that's certainly accelerating is, is one of the common themes with what Brian is sharing with us thus far. And, you know, as we know with cloud, especially a proven successful cloud solutions at flexibility and choice, which is so important, whether it's global supply chain or global business. So business leaders are craving, craving, flex, meaningful, practical flexibility, uh, in 20, 21 and beyond.
Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, we've talked a lot about cloud, but think is more in cloud. That seems to be a, maybe a equivalent focus on artificial intelligence, I think is, uh, can you explain that?
Yeah, it's, it's a good observation. Kevin, as, as you know, IBM really becomes this we're a technology company, right? We're a technology company led by software and systems and cloud capabilities. And with that, you know, our mentality is that AI should be infused across all of those things. It's not separate it's, it's included in. So from a customer perspective, and as our partners are evaluating this technology, they're saying, you know, well, we need to do, you know, we need to modernize certain legacy environments. We need to help our customers predict outcomes or adapt to changing situations. We've seen a lot of that with this unfortunate pandemic situation that has found us having to adjust everything supply chains have certainly had a dramatic impact, but you know, really the remote workforce in a, in a shift to that has, has created a lot of change. And predicting that change is very difficult for, for an organization depending on what your specialty is.
As you look at securing it, how do I secure this environment as we're going through that modernization? So the technology that we have here is really kind of the basis for AI. I would say that cloud is sort of the gateway to AI. Let's start there. Maybe Kevin. And what we've done is started to infuse, you know, the Watson AI capabilities into our offerings, right? Because once you can automate processes, the next logical function is to start to, you know, automate and predict and remove the manual work that goes into what you just automated, right? Because you're, you're, you're improving the value of those monotonous tasks. You're, you're increasing the cost for the organization and doing those monotonous tasks and you're helping them to keep systems online, uh, more efficiently and more effectively than they were doing it manually. So the AI capabilities you'll start to see it and it's already, you know, you'll seeing it and things like Watson AI ops, right. We've already infused it in certain products today. And you'll see that continue for the duration.
Wow. This is, seems to be a real game changer, but one thing that you didn't say, and in these types of conversations, you always hear about the internet of things, IOT, cloud, artificial intelligence. What about IOT? How do organizations work with IBM in that area?
Great question. The, so the internet of things or IOT, I'd say we've evolved, right? We've been, we've evolved to this, um, this internet that thinks right. I'll give credit to my, my colleague Sujit bot who came up with that kind of term, it's the internet that thinks everything is smarter, right? Devices and machines that didn't previously have compute capability on board now have it, right. It kind of leads into the edge conversation, right. And computing at the edge. But now when you have all of these smart devices, the problem turns to, well, we want to predict and automate how we manage those. Right. You've got more security vulnerabilities, potential. How do you manage that in an autonomous way to remove some of the manual work that would otherwise have to go into, uh, you know, thousands of sensors, sensors that could be reutilized on a factory floor, for example, or deployed to a, a different, um, a different use case than previously assigned.
Do you have policies that could push that out automatically? That's really where we're thinking about the internet of things. I think automation and the internet it's like table stakes. Now the next frontier is how do I manage that reality? How do I automate it? And how do I start to predict the, the changes that we're seeing from the data that we're collecting? How do I react to that quicker? And that's how organizations will improve their efficiency, improved, you know, safety for workers as an example. Um, the use cases are sort of endless there as you really get into more mainstream enterprise applications.
Yeah. I was just, just a little follow-up on that. The other term that's always pulled out is edge computing. So will we see edge computing?
Absolutely. Absolutely. You'll hear about IBM edge application manager. I kind of spoke about that in concept in my last response, but you know, Kevin, I think edge computing gives us the ability to do, to use our data faster. Let me say it that way, right? To use the data that we've collected faster and more secure, you're preventing the need to move data. And of course, moving data has, you know, intrinsic security risks with that. So can we do more processing at the edge? That's really where IBM solution is going. And we've, we've utilized the red hat OpenShift platform as our basis for our edge solution, right? As a, as a software company, that's really where we're moving. All of our software has got that OpenShift foundation, which gives us the flexibility and choice. I mentioned earlier in the conversation, right. And that's true of the edge, right?
Because as the edge becomes an, I think 5g, you're going to see, you know, the continued move to more edge computing because of that technology and the capabilities that it brings from a, you know, a speed and, and data latency perspective, you'll have more and more, uh, edge computing occurring, right? So we moved out of the data center, kind of the centralized, you know, old approach to things. If you will, to more of a decentralized edge based approach that lets you get into the internet of things and, and utilizing all those sensors more effectively to do more real time interactions, then you bring the AI on top of it. You infuse AI into everything, right? So that becomes the predictable way. You can make decisions. It's about, you know, improving the insight that humans can make, not replacing humans. It's important to mention that, right? Cause we, we started the conversation with internships. We're not here for a place. People let's be really clear about that. IBM has got a program called the summit program. That's our, our kind of new hire program for in the sales role where I live in with an IBM that's an important distinction here, right? Because I think as you look at how we're utilizing this, it really changes the way individuals interface with this technology and how productive they can be.
Yeah. So Scott, I know politics are cutting you off, but you had a comment
The whole back and want to comment from what Brian is. Sharing are so much that that gets my blood running. I love one of his last comments there around augmentation, right? Augmentation and how technology is really empowering folks, especially folks that are willing to learn new things and step into new windows of opportunity and whatnot. So I love that going back, you know, I know that we're going to make sure grabbing any of, any of your other thoughts around think 2021, but looking back, Brian, I bet you, I bet you've been through a number of these events, these conferences that, that IBM and its partners put on, what's one of your favorite elements or aspects to these, to these events, whether they're in person, which we'll eventually get back to, or some of these outstanding virtual events we've seen.
Well, I mean the part I enjoy most is connecting with our partners from around the world, right? It's, it's obviously maybe a little bit more fun in a, in an in-person setting, but seeing folks gather from around the world and you know, at these locations and catching up on the really innovative things that we're doing is, is fantastic. You'll hopefully you'll tune in and you'll hear me talk to, you know, one of our partners about the solutions that they're building, but it's really that comradery that we're building as an ecosystem because it it's a community, as I said earlier, right. You know, everybody here at this event has a common interest in, in the technology and the power that it has to drive, you know, real results for our customers, right. That innovation and how it unfolds in front of the customer in terms of real business value.
And they're passionate folks there they're really passionate about not only the IBM components, but the, the intellectual property that they bring to bear. And that's a lot of what we've been trying to infuse in this, you know, the shift of the billion dollars that you mentioned earlier, Kevin, to help clients unlock that creativity use the IBM platforms to accelerate their, go to market and create new solutions to the benefit of our, of our customers and our industry. And there's numerous examples that you'll hear at think of that, but to answer your direct question, Scott, it's, it's the connections I just miss, you know, I'm sure I'll speak to virtually, you know, 20, 50, you know, partners, right. However many, you know, the, the days and the, and the, the hours in the day allow for, but it just doesn't make up for, you know, sitting down and having a meal with, with folks that you haven't seen. And, you know, sometimes a few months or a year, especially with the travel restrictions that have been in place. So I'm really looking forward to getting back to that in the near future.
You're singing my song for sure. I love the connectivity in the, and that's true sense of community and, and reconnecting with old and new colleagues and partners. One final point, Kevin, before I toss it back over to you. Yeah. I love how Brian described how we've got to redefine the definition of value. I think, um, without pointing fingers, there are some organizations that are clinging to really old old-fashioned traditional, um, old ways of defining value and, and, and consumers and organizations alike are measuring real value. Bottom line, move the needle value in so many different ways these days. So, Brian, I appreciate you sharing that from earlier.
Oh, thank you. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a statement of scale, I think is what it comes down to it. No, no one organization can do to, can do great things alone. Right. And what, what we're really embracing at IBM is the complimentary value that our partners bring to our customers. Right. And I mentioned the solution aspect of it, but, you know, deploying our technologies is something that, you know, our partners are experts at, right? And they, they become evangelists of the platform. So really grateful for the, for the network of partners that we have and, and looking forward to hopefully meeting some new ones that think, uh, Scott this year.
Well, I mean, one of the things you talked about, the important to partners, and if we haven't learned, you know, capacity has been tough in a lot of ways, but one way that it's changed our life is the appreciation of technology and end up in the business world. That meant an accelerated adoption of technology. I know many people have told me, you know, w we are doing all these virtual events and endless zoom calls as a, as a business person. Right. Um, but this collaboration that we've been able to really bring out of the closet because the technology was already there, but the adoption would kind of slow. And because we were forced, we have really accelerated the adoption of a lot of these technologies and companies that had the adoption or the rollout of some of these fast technologies, you know, two, three years down the road suddenly had to do it. Now, how does this play in your ecosystem and your partner strategy?
Yeah. Well, one way, and I talked a lot about the technology, sorry to geek out on the technology, but let me talk about the piece that I missed, which is the industry expertise, the domain expertise, the use case knowledge that our partners bring to bear. I was working with a partner the other day, who, you know, frankly, IBM alone could not have achieved what we did together for this customer, right? It was in the life sciences space, the expertise that they had around this very niche supply chain for this, for this industry, right? It was a pharmaceutical industry is something that together we had the technology and the domain knowledge to rapidly improve a process that was in need of improvement, right. That had that real value to this particular customer. So it's the combination that, that, that they bring together. It's not just the technology understanding they're great technologists, but when you find those that have domain expertise and, you know, we worked with another partner, I worked with another partner recently, I should say, around a healthcare solution, right.
That infuse some of our cloud Pak for data technology, cloud pack for integration, they brought it together in a, a highly regulated healthcare environment. The highly regulated nature of the, of the industry was, was something that this partner had tremendous experience with more importantly, they had the customer's confidence, and that is what, let them move forward with a solution that involves IBM technology and this partner skills to make it a reality, you know, in, in record time really. Right. So they, they, they did a migration that was very complex and record time delighted the client got them on new technology. The technology is kind of secondary because, you know, if you do it right, you don't really see the technology you're delaying the end users. You know, in this case, it was, um, you know, practitioners in a hospital or payers, um, you know, at an insurance company.
So what I hear you saying is that the partners enable that acceleration of, uh, uh, adoption of technology, and more than that, the ability to fit the technology into the business process or the business case. So without partners, IBM really can't deliver that perfect solution. And Tom,
Well, as the partner ecosystem, it's sort of, self-serving for me to agree with you there. So I'm going to do that. Um, I, and I, and I do believe that in the, you know, in my heart of hearts, uh, Kevin, I do believe we absolutely need the ecosystem to get that accelerated growth. I would suggest you, we have these, you know, these five levers, um, for building on the IBM technology that help partners become two and a half times more productive, right? Didn't come, you know, it, it kind of breaks down to, from a developer standpoint, you could be more effective, you know, managing the tool chain. You can help reduce the, the security vulnerabilities and provide a consolidated degree of support around the application that you're developing, et cetera. So there's also a value proposition for our partners based on the technology that we're bringing to market. And these products that are available today in the form of cloud packs.
So sort of claw packs really enable your partners to leverage your technology, to increase their own sales.
100%, 100%. We see that every day, right? Not only in using it as a tool to modernize clients that they have been working with over the years, but also partners who are building on these technologies, like our automation foundation, as an example, to kind of leapfrog their, go to market, to get to market faster by leveraging the building blocks that we have in the cloud pack.
So there's partnering and solutions like cloud, uh, Pat really drive performance or the variability of the solutions and marketability of your partner's business offerings. And really, uh, I guess in a word, supercharges, your partners businesses.
Yeah. And that's the intent, right? And, you know, to provide a basis that's open and secure, right. To provide that management capability and offer your customer consistency and choice, right? So they have the competence that adopting that technology has longevity sort of future-proofing the investment, right? Because they're not bound to an infrastructure or a chip set anymore. They're able to have portability, which I would, I would suggest to you is, you know, future-proofing, and there's a, there's a real value in, in terms of a return on investment for the client over the longterm. Right.
To look forward to it. We can only really hit the tip of the iceberg here in less than an hour, but Brian man, a lot of good stuff and a lot of reasons to join, I think 20, 21, I think we've got the link and, and, and w w we want to make sure we didn't miss anything, but I think we've got a link we're gonna make it really easy, uh, that we're going to drop in the comments. And before we do Brian, what's the best way that folks can connect with you and IBM team
Drop that link in the comments. I mean, that's the best way sign up for think 2021, you can request a meeting with me. And many of my colleagues there would love to w would love to meet with you and talk about our, about our, our IBM partner programs and our technology. Uh, you can also get me on LinkedIn, linkedin.com forward slash in forward slash BP Fallon is my, uh, address.
Wonderful. Hey, before we let Brian go. Um, I think Brian had mentioned, he's got a, he's got a hot meeting right at the bottom of the hour, but Kevin what's, you know, if folks really think and remember one or two things from today's kind of sneak peak and then some, what are, what are some things that folks should take away from what Brian has shared here today?
The number one thing is that, um, yam is there for their partners. It seems that they are bringing their, their technology so that their partners can build upon their own businesses. They could take the basics and customize it or make it perfect for the business for their customers. So it's a real change. And it's a different thought process if you, if you think about IBM as a cloud service provider, because they, yeah, they are a cloud service provider, but they are really, uh, from the very beginning a solution provider and cloud is just one of, one of the components of an end-to-end solution. And hybrid cloud is on the tip of everyone's tongue, of course, but it's really a harbored information. Technology companies will still have the data center. They will still have managed services. They will also leverage cloud, but they need to be able to integrate that with, uh, artificial intelligence, as we transition into that thinking internet. And I wrote that down, but thinking
You know, a little bit of all of it that the satellite cloud game-changer, it sounds like not as cliche, but it really seemed like that that's going to change the landscape. I love acceleration has been important for change, especially meaningful, successful acceleration for years now. But if 2020 and 2021 really, uh, taught us, uh, some painful lessons about the need to really drive change faster and more effectively. And in these remote environments, right? Um, so many businesses have elected big, small, and all points in between to maintain at the very least a harbored approach, but some cases fully remote, because they've seen the, the great number, different advantages, but the great employee experience advantage by offering a successful remote working environment. So to do all of that, to offer all of that, to offer the speed and the flexibility that Brian spoke to throughout, uh, as common themes here today, you've got to have a technology partner and an ecosystem that you can work with to make all that happen and to make it happen as seamlessly as possible.
You know, there's a reason a lot of new technology stays on the shelf. It's because employees don't know how to use it in business leaders. You know, they struggle with the change and, and implementation and, and tying, you know, wiring it all together. And, and, and a lot of what Brian spoke to you, not that change is ever easy, but depending on your partners, that can be easier. So, uh, Brian and, and those are just some of my 17 pages of notes from what you've shared here today, Brian, well, nothing worth doing is easy. Right? Absolutely. And, and, you know, folks, especially in, in, in this series here, uh, Kevin leaves certainly speaks to global business, but just in that supply chain standpoint, supply chain is not easy. And everyone, a lot of, a lot of folks, a lot of consumers that didn't, you know, didn't know exactly what supply chain was, have found that out. And, uh, but you know,
It wasn't there. Right, right. Until it wasn't there. I think we all, as humans
Have that, uh, take things for granted, but it's not easy. You don't get into professional to, um, to have the easy way out. But, but that global business is what's pulling us into this post pandemics. And, uh, I look forward to learning a lot more about what the IBM ecosystem is doing and your partners at think 2021. Uh, I've got a comment here for a couple of comments here. Let's see here. Shannon says really excited to see how ever changing technology is going to drive supply chain in other industry even further and really want to really want to learn more. So I'll definitely sign up for think 20, 21. How about that, Shannon? Hey, ask, thank you, Shannon. And let's see here. I don't think I said hello to Peter bullae on the front end. Uh, but Peter, uh, he enjoyed the discussion here today. Really appreciate that. Peter hope this finds you will up in Canada and Daria asks a great question, but we're kind of at the end of our time with Brian, uh, Daria, thank you so much being here
Next time. Maybe we bring Brian back or a member of the IBM team. We'll talk about sustainability, Kevin, anything else before we, uh, we, uh, bid our featured guests here at Duke. Now, I just want to say thank you very much, uh, for, for coming. I mean, you really outlined the importance of the ecosystem and, and, and why. And this is another reason why IBM has been around for over a hundred years because they had the pulse on society or on technology and how it supports business. And they're in their wisdom. They, they know it's all about the ecosystem. So thank you. Yeah. Well, thank you both for having me here. I, I greatly appreciate the opportunity and, um, would look forward to an opportunity to be back and hope to see you both at think. We're bringing you back. You'll see Brian Fallon, vice president global sales with IBM's partner ecosystem. Thanks so much for your time here today.
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