David La Rose: Strengthening Partner Commitment in the Ecosystem Era

Ecosystem Aces

15-11-2022 • 29 mins

Last year, IBM’s CEO, Arvind Krishna made a bold commitment to invest over $1 billion in the IBM partner ecosystem. Since that time, the IBM ecosystem team has been rolling out a number of initiatives to make good on that promise.
David La Rose, General Manager - IBM Partner Ecosystem, Sales at IBM, shares the inside view as he and his team are transforming partnering at IBM. With nearly 55,000 partners, the company is fully committed to its ecosystem by partnering with more global resellers, system integrators, ISVs, MSPs, and others.
IBM has been doubling the number of partner-facing resources this year, with an increase in the technical community service for partners by 35%. And recently, the company has reported 15% growth, with partnerships playing a significant role in that growth.
Join us as we discuss:
How David’s background prepared him for this global partner role
Significant commitments IBM is making to the partner ecosystem
Opening up IBM internal training and enablement to all ecosystem partners


Here are some additional episodes featuring other ecosystem leaders that might interest you:
#121 Aligning Ecosystem Strategy with Your Customer as the North Star with Lara Caimi, Chief Partner Officer, ServiceNow
#122 There’s No Easy Button For Partnering with Nicole Napiltonia, VP Of Alliances and OEM Sales, at Barracuda
#106 The Secrets to Managing Alliances Like Microsoft with David Totten, Chief Technology Officer, US Partner Ecosystem at Microsoft
#97 Why Quality Always Beats Quantity in Software Ecosystems with Tom Roberts, Senior Vice President at the Global Partner Organization over at SAP
Learn more about how WorkSpan helps customers accelerate their ecosystem flywheel through Co-selling, Co-innovating, Co-investing, and Co-marketing.
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To contact the host, Chip Rodgers, with topic ideas, suggest a guest, or join the conversation about modern partnering, he can be reached on Twitter, LinkedIn, or send Chip an email at: chip@workspan.com


This episode of Ecosystem Aces is sponsored by WorkSpan.
WorkSpan is the #1 ecosystem business management platform. We give CROs a digital platform to turbocharge indirect revenue with their partner teams at higher win rates and lower costs. We connect your partners on a live network with cross-company business applications to build, market, and sell together. We power the top 10 business ecosystems in the technology and communications industry today, managing over $50 billion in the joint pipeline.