Name- Lata Singh, IBM India / South Asia
Designation- Director, One-Channel, IBM India /South Asia
Educational Qualification – Post Graduation in English Literature
Contribution to the corporate business and practices
In my role as Head of IBM India’s Partner Ecosystem, I drive revenue growth for IBM across the IBM portfolio with a specific focus on Cloud, AI, Security & Systems. Our partner ecosystem consists of System Integrators, value added distributors, solution providers and niche specialized players.
People management is a critical aspect in my line of work; especially with the passion I bring to it and the desire to see my team’s success. I love taking up firefighting tasks since it leads to a lot of problem solving and that’s a critical function in any role. Above all, the best practice that I bring to my work is integrity and ethics – a commitment that I’m keen on holding up regardless of the situation and one that I wish to pass on to the people around me.
It’s important for me to be connected to teams and individuals and so I ensure that I don’t miss out on catching up with people regardless of how busy my schedule is. I also enquire to see how they are faring professionally as well as personally. Learning and training is the best thing to stay relevant and hence I incorporate that in everything I do. I create moments for myself to learn and enjoy taking on stretch assignments related to my role or outside that helps me build a new skill set.
Impact on the industry
The key is “To Do Good” which primarily means the business should have an impact on society. IBM has been investing in creating and scaling new programmes that build skills through various initiatives along with the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Directorate General of Training (DGT), Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE) and Atal Tinkering Lab. We have announced number of initiatives that have the potential to improve the skills and careers of in total more than 1 million female students and provide education resources to more than 4 million teachers over three years.
On a more personal note, I love collaboration and have the ability to bring diverse players on one platform to drive projects that has a meaningful impact for individuals, organizations and society at large. The key goal for me is to do social work, to do it constantly in different ways and that it must not be done in a big bang manner.
Roadmap
As mentioned previously, my role requirement is to drive revenue growth for IBM through the brand channel teams with a specific focus on key areas in Cloud, Cognitive, Security etc. We have a three-pronged channel strategy that enables our partners to execute and evolve while enabling their clients who are on the Chapter 2 of the digital transformation journey. Chapter 2 is about moving from experimentation with emerging technologies such as AI, Cloud, IoT, blockchain etc to true transformation, gaining speed and scale.
Our strategy is –
Enabling our business partners with skills to address the client needs of digital transformation Engaging with them to address new workloads to address customer requirements.
Empowering them by identifying new revenue streams they can add to their offerings through our products & solutions.
We are working with our partner community to accelerate the development and delivery of cloud and AI solutions to our clients and at the same time improve our partner end-to-end experience, which is core to the relationship. IBM’s channel team will focus on encouraging partners to gain expertise around hybrid cloud, security and AI as well as emerging technologies like blockchain. With the right skills, our partners can lead the discussions with the clients on their transformation journey. We’re enabling partners’ cloud adoption with IBM Cloud Paks that are enterprise-grade container software packages with guidance and step-by-step instructions to quickly build with open standards to enable hybrid and multicloud deployments. Built for Kubernetes on the IBM Cloud, IBM Cloud Paks are designed to accelerate time to production and improve readiness at lower cost than containers alone. We also have a Cloud Digital Technical Engagement program for partners and clients who give an unprecedented, self-service access to technical assets focused on product demos and tutorials.
One of the most significant challenges associated with hybrid multi-cloud deployments is achieving interoperability, portability and security compliance of applications across multiple cloud environments. The use of open-source cloud development platforms through our acquisition of Red Hat provides an effective way to overcome these challenges as well as manage workloads across multiple clouds. This is a game-changer for the cloud market as we are the two best-in-class hybrid cloud providers that together will help companies move to the next chapter of the cloud while addressing the issues around portability, management consistency, security and remaining open to avoid vendor lock-in.
As the clients’ needs change so do their expectations from their solution providers, hence we must sharpen our focus on new monetization models – of assets and operating models. We are therefore working to unleash the power of the ecosystem through embedded solutions and enabling the third-party marketplace and SaaS delivery models focused on customer success.
Mentoring entrepreneurs
I actively mentor professionals and recently have done so for two entrepreneurs in different fields. Mentoring is something close to my heart and it’s also the time when I gain the most respect for all the learning that I’ve done. Mentoring depends on the depth of your experience and how you can derive lessons that can be implemented in another scenario. It makes you internalize those lessons and also makes you rethink on some of your own notions about planning and execution.
