IBM focused on scaling growth, expanding reach, and strengthening alignment with ASEAN partners

“Business partners across Southeast Asia are seeing different opportunities and requiring different capabilities because the region varies widely in digital maturity, regulation, and market needs,” says Catherine Lian, General Manager and Technology Leader at IBM ASEAN.

Earlier this year, IBM announced that it is accelerating its Partner Plus Program with new incentives, expanded benefits and support, AI‑driven selling experiences and scalable co‑marketing funding to enable greater growth for its partners globally. The changes follows the vendor’s strategy for 2026 which is all about scaling business opportunities and business revenue for both IBM and its partners.

With the focus on volume and velocity in 2026, partners remain an integral part of IBM’s journey in the Asia Pacific region. In Southeast Asia, the vendor continues to rely heavily on its partner ecosystem on not just growing the business but also ensuring they meet all customer requirements.

Looking at the changes announced, CRN Asia reached out to Catherine Lian, General Manager and Technology Leader at IBM ASEAN to understand more about how partners in the region can be aligned with the updates announced by the vendor.

What are the biggest challenges for partners in the ASEAN region today?

Partners across ASEAN face a complex mix of challenges: rapid technology change and persistent skills gaps, fragmented regulations across markets, rising data sovereignty and cybersecurity demands, and uneven levels of digital maturity.

At the same time, intense competition requires partners to differentiate beyond reselling, while customers expect end-to-end support from strategy to implementation and ROI.

Success increasingly depends on strong ecosystem collaboration, localized expertise, and the ability to scale securely across diverse markets.

It seems that the changes that IBM is making for partners are focused on making it easier for them to do business and removing friction. How important is this for partners in Southeast Asia?

In today’s business environment, no organization succeeds alone. It’s about the ecosystem that we bring together. It is all about the different partners we work with to create the overall experience, but also the overall offering. At its core, the updated positioning is all about helping our partners to be even more successful and deliver even more value to clients.

In 2026, we are focused on scaling growth, expanding reach, and strengthening our alignment across our ecosystem through the acceleration of the IBM Partner Plus Program to support these efforts by helping partners move faster, amplify their impact, and deliver AI-driven solutions that set new market standards.

Program enhancements include new incentives, expanded benefits and support, AI-driven selling experiences, scalable co-marketing funding, and streamlined routes to market—such as hyperscaler marketplaces and IBM Agent Connect.

We have also tightened our execution and aligned our resources to support our ecosystem strategy. We’ve revised our coverage model, strengthened our focus on partner-centricity, and improved how we connect sellers and partners to drive deals faster. The outcomes we’re driving toward—volume, velocity, and ultimately revenue growth and reach—remain straightforward and consistent.

With resellers, we are removing friction by accelerating their ability to do business with us, improving incentives, automating where possible, and strengthening the offers and products that help drive pipeline.

Are partners in different markets in Southeast Asia seeing different opportunities and requiring different capabilities?

Yes. Business partners across Southeast Asia are seeing different opportunities and requiring different capabilities because the region varies widely in digital maturity, regulation, and market needs.

More advanced markets demand deep expertise in AI, cloud, security, and compliance, while fast-growing markets focus on scalable infrastructure, hybrid cloud adoption, and cost efficiency. Regulatory and data sovereignty requirements also differ by country, shaping how partners design and deliver solutions.

As a result, success in the region depends on localized strategies, market-specific capabilities, and flexible delivery models — not a one-size-fits-all approach.

Also, what areas in technology do you see being the key focus areas in the region? Will we see more investments in AI infrastructure or in AI development tools?

ASEAN’s digital environment is shifting fast. All nations are recalibrating their regulatory frameworks as cyberattacks are growing in scale and sophistication, and global politics is adding new layers of complexity. In this climate, digital sovereignty has become essential and both a safeguard and a strategic advantage.

Digital Sovereignty goes beyond data residency. It encompasses who operates and controls the technology environment, how data is accessed and governed, where workloads execute, and under whose jurisdiction AI models run. With a governed, secure AI infrastructure, the nation can build trusted, responsibly aligned systems and accelerate its digital economy.

With the sovereign cloud market projected to grow 4.5x by 2028 and 80% of multinationals expected to adopt sovereign data strategies by 2027, the time to act is now.

Building resilient digital ecosystems requires technology partnerships that leverage open cloud platforms, open AI models, fit-for-purpose domain-specific AI models, and enterprise-grade cybersecurity frameworks based on transparency and shared governance.

We recently introduced IBM’s Sovereign Core software foundation, which gives business partners a way to build repeatable deployments in multi-tenant models they operate, unlock more AI use cases for customers in regulated industries, and have an audit trail for compliance purposes.

IBM’s Sovereign Core will help enterprises, governments, and service providers have a way to deploy and operate AI-ready environments quickly and at scale while advancing the infrastructure and tooling they’ve already invested in.

Lastly, what's your advice to partners in the region? What else can they expect from IBM?

As AI adoption accelerates, businesses face growing interoperability challenges in managing data and applications securely across on-premises, private, and public clouds. Technology environments are becoming more complex across industries.

What enterprises want is simple: the freedom to use the best technology and innovate across multiple providers.

That makes choosing the right IT services partner essential. Trusted partners enable secure, agile transformation, bringing the expertise, solutions, and skills needed to scale and deliver lasting value.

IBM continues to work with our valued partners across ASEAN to help businesses to thrive in the era of efficiency and innovation. Through the IBM Partner Plus program, business partners will be able to gain access to deeper co‑marketing, AI‑powered demand generation, and seamless marketplace and hyperscaler integration to accelerate growth at scale.

Together, we’ll build differentiated solutions using IBM technology and expertise, helping you innovate across industries while delivering exceptional client experiences through unified digital platforms. The result: faster adoption, stronger expansion, and a clearer path to sustained, profitable growth.