Channel Chief Kate Woodley takes a deep dive with CRN on IBM’s partner strategy, its new MSP program and why IBM is pushing the channel to become Palo Alto Networks partners following the sale of QRadar.

Kate Woolley, IBM’s global channel chief, sat down with CRN at IBM Think 2024 to discuss the company’s upcoming MSP program and IBM’s partner strategy behind selling its QRadar security business to Palo Alto Networks and what the channel should be doing about it.

“Once the acquisition closes, our partners will have the opportunity to join Palo Alto Networks’ partner program, if they’re not already part of that, so they will be able to then sell Palo Alto’s Cortex XSIAM,” said Kate Woolley, general manager of IBM Ecosystem. “Then also, our partners are going to play a key role where it makes sense for their clients to migrate clients to the Palo Alto Cortex XSIAM.”

Additionally, Woolley took a deep dive into the $62 billion Armonk, N.Y.-based company’s new MSP partner program set to launch later this year.

[Related: IBM Helping Partners Join Palo Alto Networks With QRadar Sale Ahead]

“We’re starting with our SaaS offerings within our automation portfolio,” Woolley said regarding the new MSP program. “At the moment, we’re building this program with our partners. We have multiple pilots running with MSP partners in this space to build what it needs to look like.”

IBM Triples Ecosystem Technical Resources

Woolley is spearheading IBM’s channel efforts on multiple fronts as the company’s global ecosystem leader. She leads global sales and programs which support tens of thousands of IBM partners.

After 14 years working as a partner for Bain & Company, Woolley joined IBM in 2020 as chief of staff to CEO Arvind Krishna. She was promoted to general manager of IBM’s ecosystem in 2022. Woolley said IBM has recently tripled the amount of resources it’s providing to its ecosystem.

“We’ve tripled the number of technical resources supporting our IBM ecosystem since the start of last year. So IBM continues to put more and more investment into the ecosystem,” she said. “The IBM strategy around hybrid cloud and AI is winning in the market.”

In an interview with CRN, Woolley talks about IBM and Red Hat’s openness market differentiation in the AI era, the new MSP program and IBM’s strategy with the $500 million sale of QRadar to Palo Alto Networks.

Why is IBM launching a new MSP partner program? What are the building blocks?

We looked at the ecosystem, our different partners, the MSPs we work with today, how the MSP market was evolving, and how IBM’s product portfolio was evolving as well. We felt this was a really big opportunity for us to bring parts of the IBM product portfolio in a very targeted and focused way that would bring a lot of value to our MSPs and ultimately MSP clients.

At the moment, we’re building this program with our partners.

We have multiple pilots running with MSP partners in this space to build what it needs to look like. Because just as we did with IBM Partner Plus, we want to make sure that we’re building the program for partners, with partners.

So we are starting with parts of our automation portfolio. We’re starting with our SaaS offerings within our automation portfolio.

We believe that’s a great area where we have a set of offerings that are ready for MSP consumption. We’re going to build the program around that with a very easy set of onboarding and the resources around that, in particular, the technical resources—how do we work with our MSPs as they do proof-of-concepts and that type of thing.

Other than IBM’s automation portfolio inside the MSP program, what other IBM products will be included inside the program?

We’re really starting with a focus on automation. We’re starting with our SaaS automation offerings. As we expand the program, we’ll bring in other parts of the IBM portfolio.

So Apptio is a big play for us there.

The [Apptio] Cloudability portfolio, we believe will provide a lot of value to MSPs and MSP clients.

So Apptio will be a core tenant of the MSP program when we launch it more broadly in the third quarter, as well as Turbonomic and Instana.

We believe those together, as we look at the kind of FinOps space, is a really nice place for us to start as we launch that.

For IBM partners, what’s your message to them and their customers with IBM’s sale of QRadar to Palo Alto Networks?

As we look at our QRadar on-prem clients and partners, we are going to be working with them to continue to support and enhance those products from an IBM perspective.

But also work in partnership with Palo Alto to look at: where does it make sense to modernize those clients onto the Cortex XSIAM offering or where does it make sense for them to stay where they are?

So we are working hand-in-hand with the Palo Alto ecosystem to make sure that IBM partners, if they’re not partners of Palo Alto already, we can quickly have them become part of the Palo Alto Partner Network. Or we’ll work hand in hand to make sure that that’s all coming together.

Then more broadly with Palo Alto, we’re also becoming big customers of each other, as we think about how they’re going to leverage Watsonx technology inside of their products and inside of Palo Alto, as a client of IBM. And in reverse, we are also leveraging Palo Alto technology internally.

I really look at the Palo Alto announcement as an expanded partnership. Palo Alto is now one of our key strategic partners.

You said you’re helping IBM partners become Palo Alto partners quickly. Is there like a fast-track onboarding process that you are doing there?

What we are working with Palo Alto to do is if IBM partners who are working with IBM QRadar technology are not part of Palo Alto’s partner network, we are working to ensure that Palo Alto has a very quick onboarding [process] to get them into the Palo Alto partner network.

What do you want IBM partners who aren’t Palo Alto Networks partners to do right now?

So everything is business as usual until the transaction closes in the third quarter.

We see partners as absolutely critical as we think about this expanded partnership and how do we address security challenges. And how do we do that across IBM and Palo Alto?

Once the acquisition closes, our partners will have the opportunity to join Palo Alto Networks’ partner program, if they’re not already part of that, so they will be able to then sell Palo Alto’s Cortex XSIAM.

Then also, our partners are going to play a key role where it makes sense for their clients to migrate clients to the Palo Alto Cortex XSIAM. And we will continue to work with partners who are working with their clients on QRadar on-prem products.

Is there any new product launched at IBM Think that partners should get excited about and take to market asap?

Let’s start with the IBM Concert piece.

As we think about the challenges that IBM Concert solves, and about all of the applications that are going to come to market—[IBM CEO] Arvind [Krishna] said 600 million to one billion new apps being created by the end of the decade—and how do we actually bring automation into the AI operations of our clients, our partners are dealing with that as well.

If I think about all of our partners—our resell partners, our distributors, and our service partners—they’re dealing with all of those same challenges. So the IBM Concert piece is very applicable to our partners as to how do they think about the automation space and taking that to their clients.

The Watsonx AI assistance piece, that’s very, very relevant. If we think about the modernization of our clients estates, all of the same challenges we’re seeing and addressing, all of our partners are seeing those as well.

Also the open sourcing of the large language model and the InstructLab is very relevant to how we’re going to see the generative AI evolve and have impact. So it’s going to impact our partners in lots of different ways.

As we think about our ecosystem of developers, if we think about Instructlab and how that allows us to advance open technology and how that advances and develops a lot of language models—that’s going to be very, very relevant to our broader ecosystem.

Can you talk about IBM and Red Hat’s openness in this era of AI? Is openness a big differentiation for IBM?

As we think about open sourcing our large language models in collaboration across IBM and Red Hat, this allows us to invite all of our clients, our developers, our partners, global experts, etc. to build on and really push the boundaries of what AI can do.

It allows us to push those boundaries so that we can continue to achieve more in what we’re doing. We do that in the most efficient and effective way.

The other analogy that we talk about a lot is if you look at what RHEL [Red Hat Enterprise Linux] did for Linux, we believe how that accelerated that part of the market, we believe open sourcing the large language models is going to do the same thing as we think about generative AI and how we develop that technology in the fastest way.

The other interesting thing with the InstructLab, that functionality allows our clients and our partners to contribute if they want to—because if they want to actually keep that contribution to themselves through the Apache license, they can. So they can contribute it back or they can keep it protected if they want to.

Why is it the best time to be an IBM partner right now? Why should partners be bullish and double down on IBM in 2024?

The IBM strategy around hybrid cloud and AI is winning in the market.

When we look at the market-leading hybrid cloud platform that we’ve built with Red Hat, when we look at Watsonx that is built for the enterprise and built for the trust and the transparency needed in the enterprise, IBM’s strategy and focus in the market is really resonating with our enterprise clients and with our partners.

To support all of that, we have the Partner Plus program that is simple, transparent and easy to engage in. We’ve brought in 1500 new partners since we launched Partner Plus. Partners want to engage and they want to be a part of the IBM ecosystem. It’s very easy to do and they have full transparency and visibility into what that means for them and the benefits.

IBM continues to have ecosystem front and center.

We’ve tripled the amount of technical resources supporting our IBM ecosystem since the start of last year. So IBM continues to put more and more investment into the ecosystem.

We’ve got the right strategy and the right product portfolio that’s resonating in the market. We’ve got a partner program to support that, and we’ve got the investment, support and the focus of the full power of IBM behind it.