Key markets the focus for IBM and partners in APAC

“All markets are showing positive growth, and we're focused on our channel first approach for our select segment,” says Chetan Krishnamurthy Vice President, APAC Select Territory & Ecosystem, IBM.

At the IBM APAC Growth Summit in Danang last month, IBM shared with its partners on how Gen AI is having a greater impact on how they do business in the region. As businesses are moving beyond proof of concepts and pilots, the vendor is starting to see some emergence of ROI and clear use cases for businesses happening.

According to Chetan Krishnamurthy, Vice President, APAC Select Territory & Ecosystem, IBM, these outcomes are the result from how IBM and its partners have engaged with customers by enabling use case specific discussions versus always going broad stroke. This includes discussing the pain points, discovering the business value, and seeing where they can work together to go out and prove to the customers.

“The initial discussion that we had was a lot of productivity discussions. But I think now we're beginning to see a lot more discussion on how we create customer delight, how do we create customer satisfaction and also a lot of business model reinventions. It's a big focus for us here is where I think we are beginning to see smaller ISVs working with us in some cases to partner with some of the financial institutions in business model reinvention,” said Krishnamurthy in an interview with CRN Asia.

With manufacturing and the financial industry as well as the government agencies among the biggest sectors adopting AI in APAC, Krishnamurthy added that IBM is working with partners to bring value for these customers.

“Our focus is volume and velocity. We are going to go very deep with some of our build partners, ISV's in in the region. We'll work very closely with GSI's in the region. For our volume velocity business, I think the goal is how we can speed the transactions, how we can increase the volume of transactions, which means continuing to reduce friction in the whole. This process means improving skills within the ecosystem. I think we are spending a lot of time with our channel partners and enabling them, helping them with scaling POCs, and so on. And we’re being very clear about how we go to market with them, in terms of how we work with them and partner with them with very clear commitments,” added Krishnamurthy.

Opportunities in APAC

For IBM, the Asia Pacific market continues to hold plenty of opportunities for them. While IBM operates in the region by focusing on five different markets that are segmented by their geographic location, each market is still different from the other.

For example, India, which happens to be one of IBM’s biggest markets in the region, continues to experience a lot of growth through expansion and businesses scaling out opportunities. The Indian market also has a lot of ambition which requires IBM to work with its partners there to focus on how they can increase scale into places that they may not be in.

“There's a lot of emphasis on entry points and skilling in India. Just like the ASEAN market, India is also diverse, and we need to a local approach as in what is relevant to the country. So, we work with a lot of regional SI's and local partners who know the country and understand the context,” explained Krishnamurthy.

Krishnamurthy also highlighted the Australian market whereby there’s a lot of deep skills focus on the wastonx portfolio. He explained that IBM leverages partners for their skills when it comes to expansions in Australia.

“In Korea, there is also a lot of ambition to modernize the infrastructure. There's a lot of local companies whom we partner with. The focus is on infrastructure, infrastructure play and a lot of the bundling of services from IBM; we see that in Korea. So, infrastructures are partners that are actually bringing in software and they actually do some of these upgrades, refreshes for new workloads,” said Krishnamurthy.

“All markets are showing positive growth, and we're focused on our channel first approach for our select segment. Financial services is a big focus. Manufacturing is a very big focus. I would say there's a lot of things that we're beginning to see in the manufacturing space, both in terms of asset management, in terms of expert assistance. Definitely we're seeing a lot in the manufacturing segment come through.

For the telco industry, there is a big focus as well because of the partnership and the strong relationship that we have, I would say telco definitely is another big play from a channel perspective,” added Krishnamurthy.

When it comes to working with system integrators in these markets, he pointed out that some of the regional SIs are very big players as they have very strong relationships within the country and with some of the clients.

“SIs are a big transformational player. That are being led by these regional SI's in government sector, in some cases in the financial sector themselves because they are so strong and they have such deep relationships and our job then becomes the best of platform. So either we bring the platform and make it contextual to the to the GSI or RSI who has the relationships and the understanding or we work with some of these local boutique partners to actually build a use case where it becomes a few products versus the entire platform because they're looking at very narrow entry points,” he explained.

Expectations from partners

When asked if IBM will also be looking to grow its partner ecosystem in the markets it operates, Krishnamurthy said that they are looking at where the gaps within the markets are.

“Every market is different. We're looking at every country, for example, Indonesia may not have enough capacity for a particular partner. So, we will look at recruiting partners who are interested in working with that area who are committed to doing this with us 100%. That will be a big focus for us. We'll work through with our distributors in that space and make sure that we can get the right ecosystem constantly doing 100%. I think it'll be a very important area for us. It won't be mass broad recruiting, but we'll be very focused on where the gaps are and getting them on board,” said Krishnamurthy.

Given the focus on volume and velocity and growth IBM is planning with its partners in the region, Krishnamurthy hopes partners will focus on how they can accelerate this and drive more meaningful transactions at speed.

“It goes both ways. I think it goes both from IBM as a vendor and also the channel working together. Also, can we continue to skill the ecosystem together so that there is demonstrable skill on the channel side as well along with IBM, so that we can actually do a lot of things independently, especially in the software solution space as we go forward. Also, one of the sole most important things for me personally is to have a channel that's high on integrity, high on trust. I think we'll continue to hold each other accountable in that space as we go forward in 2026,” he concluded.