IBM Partner Program — The Synergistic Ecosystem that’s Propelling IT Companies’ Growth

Article in partnership with IBM.

In 1993, I walked into IBM’s headquarters, in Naples, with a couple of CD-ROMs and a simple goal. I wanted to use the RISC System/6000, the company’s first Unix machine, to test the source code of my business management application, which was written in COBOL. Although the machine was conceived of as a workstation for graphics applications with the X Window system (X11), I had been tasked with porting our software to assess its applications and suitability for business environments.

On my first attempt, I was unable to complete the process because a third-party component had to be adapted to the new environment. But once everything was in place, I ran some source compiling and was amazed by how fast the RISC/6000 system could crunch through the code. Immediately, I understood that it was a machine to invest in, and I did just that.

The reason I’m sharing this with you all these years later is because this formative moment sums up my entire experience as an IBM business partner in the 90s. At the time, I was a partner in a business management software development company that operated in a vertical sector: industrial engineering, production planning, and control. Where it was a niche sector, we were already specialists and had our share of successes, but were only able to do our real market launch thanks to our partnership with IBM.