Rob Cato Ready to Lead as NA Chief for Consolidated One Lenovo Channel
Lenovo has brought together the separate channel organizations for devices and data center infrastructure products.
October 19, 2021
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Channel Futures: Now that the new One Lenovo organization is in place, how does that map with Lenovo 360?
Rob Cato: With the new North America channel organization, Steve [Biondi] and I are organizing our two teams [IDG and ISG, respectively] together. We are working to make our programs act better together, so that partners who want to sell both the IDG and ISG offerings and solutions from SSG can see accretive earnings opportunities. The Lenovo 360 framework includes processes and tools. We want to make it seamless for our partners to do business with Lenovo. We think that maybe some of our competition is taking their eye off of that. With our continued channel commitment, we believe that doing this right now in the channel is the perfect opportunity for Lenovo.
CF: Are you saying that your competitors are taking their eye off the ball in terms of their go to market through the channel?
RC: We just had our business partner executive meetings and some virtual events with different partners. The message that we’re hearing from those partners focused on the client side of the market is that one of our biggest competitors has said they believe their opportunity going forward is through a more direct model. They’re taking resources out of the channel, moving to compensation models and other things to reward their salespeople for selling more of a direct solution rather than with a channel partner. We see that as an opportunity. That’s not to say that they’re not a formidable competitor; they absolutely are. But for us, our go-to-market strategy is unwavering. We think that the right solution is to combine our efforts with our channel partners to deliver the best, most robust solutions to address their pain.
CF: Is it just the client side of the business that you’re seeing your competitors selling more products direct or are you seeing this activity with data center infrastructure?
Steve Biondi: It’s not only on the client side, but on the data center side as well. Our TruScale announcement at Lenovo Tech World is going to be a partner-led discussion. Think about our hybrid cloud offerings. We’re enabling partners to lead with, and put on their paper, solutions that will satisfy customers’ needs. We’re going to help with deploying the services and we’re going to be training them to do that themselves. That is a distinct advantage that we’re going to have from a go-to-market standpoint. Let’s face it, most of these customers we’re dealing with work with business partners, and they have for years and years and years. They’re family, and we are enabling these partners to extend their reach with TruScale, and our technology on the data center side, coupled with our unwavering focus on the client side to continue to be channel-first. That’s a pretty good combination for sure.
CF: Now that the new organization is in place, what is your message to partners?
SB: One Lenovo is really an internal moniker. It’s us getting more efficient internally, to be able to break down barriers between the different silos within organizations and make it easier for customers and partners and businesses. What the partner should see is an easier vehicle to be able to prosecute orders for our customers. It’s as simple as that. Last year, we rolled out the Lenovo Partner Hub that is global and now satisfies both the IDG and ISG product lines.
CF: What’s the next step in evolution of Lenovo 360?
SB: We’re aligning internally to continue that evolution of making it easier for partners to do business with us. Partners will see a better experience overall. We’ll have further announcements in the upcoming months about accretive plans, and about Lenovo 360. We’re trying to put a global framework in place to complement our existing program stacks.
CF: And of course, part of that strategy is to get more partners that have historically focused on either selling only data center solutions or only selling client solutions to broaden what they are offering to their customers.
SB: We think there’s a great opportunity to enable partners that have been more focused on intelligent devices to extend their reach and enable them to sell data center solutions. Likewise, we’re giving data center-focused partners the ability to get into the intelligent devices and edge space. But also, we’re going to be aggressive in talking to our competitors’ partners that feel a little bit out on a limb right now. And the timing of us doing this, couldn’t be better.
CF: What type of partners are you seeing the most potential in terms of those who might expand their coverage of Lenovo products? Is it those selling primarily selling client devices, or those carry your data center solutions?
RC: I think it’s both. Honestly, many IDG partners that do sell data center solutions, or infrastructure solutions, haven’t looked closely at Lenovo as their lead-with offering in the market. Now those conversations are starting to grow. And then on the other side of the equation, with the pandemic and the new hybrid work environment, many ISG partners who haven’t offered client solutions, or provided that as part of their full solution sets, are certainly looking at adding that now. There is a huge demand in the marketplace for complete solutions that will enable that hybrid work or work-from-anywhere approach. Many MSPs, and many of our national providers that haven’t looked at both of those solutions, are now starting to do that. And now that we’re bringing our teams together, we’ve been able to pool our biggest asset, which is our people. And the talent and the skill that they bring to the equation is going to be a huge differentiator for us.
CF: What are partners starting to see that’s different? And how is that going to progress with this change?
SB: We’re adding several things. First, we’re offering metal parity, meaning if you’re a partner in the IDG space today, and let’s say you’re a platinum partner but you haven’t sold data center solutions in a while, or you’re just starting to, we’re going to grandfather you in as a platinum partner on the data center side and vice versa. That’s the immediate and distinct value out of the gate. Secondly, we’re doing that same approach to our competitors’ biggest partners by knocking on their doors and offering them the ability to come into our program with the same kind of metal position. We’re not being shy here. We’re going to take it to the streets and make sure that people are recognizing the fact that we are going to leverage the channel with every and all opportunities.
RC: As we put this organization together, there’s an overarching global structure that Steve and I are participating in. But there’s real flexibility around the local or geography approach. We’re allowing partners who do have global reach, or have or need international support, to be able to get that across the other geographies through our [Lenovo’s new International Sales Organization].
CF: While you are now able to go to partners with these programmatic changes, how much does the product set itself and the technology come into play?
RC: One of the things that we were doing as part of our SSG organization is defining some turnkey type solutions that we can bring to market and not necessarily changing the technology, but allowing it to work better together. There will be more to come there; we’re going to be doing some announcements around Lenovo 360, when it is formally launched in January of next year. And then shortly thereafter, we’ll start to bring some of these various solutions, both horizontal as well as vertical solutions to the market.
CF: While we’re speaking about technology, how are you helping partners navigate the transition to hybrid cloud, DevOps and modern cloud applications?
SB: This has been a journey for a while. Because of the pandemic, customers are accelerating their as-a-service consumption model concepts, and they’re going to broaden it to not just be necessarily backup and recovery and easier kinds of transitions. They’re looking to do wholesale changes in terms of their business models. And they can use TruScale, our everything as-a-service program, which means anything from pocket to cloud. As partners and customers continue to accelerate that consumption model, it will uncover and ferret out other opportunities for us to do DevOps and applications solutioning. And if you factor in as well things like the Motorola brand that we own, we can leverage their 5G capabilities.
CF: How do you see using Motorola’s 5G technology?
SB: If you think about enabling 5G and data center solutioning, and intelligent devices, we’re going to be the only vendor out there that can give you 5G capabilities, and, maybe have a data center with no wires soon. We have the technology that satisfies it all. And I think we’re poised to be agile enough to take advantage of where these trends are going.
CF: Are you seeing more partners embracing the as-a-service model or are there still many who are afraid of it?
SB: On the data center side, they are embracing it. Most of them are starting to evolve their business models to become managed service providers, or cloud service providers. We’re in a fantastic position to help them do that, either through TruScale or enabling them to set up their own managed service offerings based on our gear. And we have service offerings to help them enable that and get that up and running.
RC: On the device side it is very similar. Whether that’s through virtual meetings or work from anywhere, that consumption model is driving behavior that will drive faster upgrades and a faster refresh cycle. I do think you’re going to see a quicker adoption of as-a-service from both service providers, solutions providers, as well as more of the traditional hardware providers who need to convert some of their business over to an annuity stream.
CF: What about Windows 11? Now that it is out, how do you see it moving into the commercial organizations and enterprises?
RC: I think it’ll follow the traditional migration path of new operating systems where it’ll start with consumers and maybe small business early on; then, it will be some of the earlier adopters and then eventually moving into the enterprise space as we go into calendar year 2022. We still have many customers, believe it or not, that are that are on Windows 7, that haven’t moved to Windows 10. I think there will be opportunities to move them 7 to 11.
CF: Can you share what impact the global supply chain delays are having on Lenovo’s business?
RC: It is definitely challenging. Clearly not having the components, especially the integrated circuits that go into both desktop and mobile computers, has put us in a very challenging position. And we see that continuing well into 2022. But I do think that Lenovo is in a better position than many because of our supply chain and our logistics capabilities.
CF: Is there any advice that you’re giving to partners in terms of how they should set expectations for customers about the supply chain issue?
SB: We’re very, very transparent with our partner community. We have regular conversations, daily, multiple-times-a-day reviews, with these folks. Because everything we do goes through the channel, our partners knowing what we’re doing, and how we’re able to manage through the supply challenges, is paramount to our success.
RC: The biggest thing that Steve and I both share with the team and our partners is that we continue to be flexible and adaptable. Being able to pivot successfully to alternative models, in some cases could make the difference of being able to deliver successfully to a project timeline that many of our partners have with their customers.
CF: In terms of the Lenovo 360 transition next year, does that have any implications at all as to how you will interact with your distributors?
SB: The partner side of Lenovo TruScale is going to come out in January, as well as Lenovo 360, and we’re leveraging the entire ecosystem for that. Distribution will have an active role in our hybrid cloud offering that we facilitate, to and through the channel. We’re not cutting them out in any way, shape, or form. They’re helping us execute the strategy here.
CF: In terms of the Lenovo 360 transition next year, does that have any implications at all as to how you will interact with your distributors?
SB: The partner side of Lenovo TruScale is going to come out in January, as well as Lenovo 360, and we’re leveraging the entire ecosystem for that. Distribution will have an active role in our hybrid cloud offering that we facilitate, to and through the channel. We’re not cutting them out in any way, shape, or form. They’re helping us execute the strategy here.
A newly consolidated One Lenovo channel organization is in place, now headed in North America by company veteran Rob Cato. The move, which took effect this month, brings together separate channel teams that were dedicated to Lenovo’s different product groups.
Lenovo’s Rob Cato
Cato joined Lenovo as a channel executive in 2008 after nearly 11 years with IBM. Since 2019, Cato has served as channel chief for the vendor’s PC and client devices business in North America.
Lenovo had signaled in June that it would combine the channel organizations dedicated to the company’s different product organizations. The company announced the unification plan under the new Lenovo 360, set to go live in early 2022. Lenovo 360 promises to let partners more easily offer client, devices, data center infrastructure, software and services under one umbrella.
The introduction of Lenovo 360 builds on the company’s reorganization into three business units: Intelligent Devices Group (IDG), consisting of PCs, tablets, meeting room systems and edge devices; Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG), the company’s data center infrastructure equipment; and the Solutions and Services Group (SSG).
While the company’s Motorola subsidiary is not part of any of those groups, executives say they work together. The Lenovo 360 framework is a global partner program with the new Lenovo Partner Hub as its foundation. That’s a revamped portal launched last year that offers personalized and real-time sales tools, enablement and other resources.
Lenovo 360 Strategy
Lenovo’s Pascal Bourget
Global channel chief Pascal Bourguet in June revealed the Lenovo 360 strategy.
“The entire notion of this new global framework is to create an existing business that not only allows you to sell PC services and data center, it empowers you to provide additional solutions,” he said at the time. “We’re providing you the new solutions enablement and access to training to ensure that you have all the decisions.”
Lenovo’s Steve Biondi
Under the new structure in North America, Cato reports to senior VP Vladimir Rozanovich. Steve Biondi, who oversaw data center solutions, in now executive director of that ISG cannels group. Biondi continues to report to Wilfredo Sotolongo and indirectly to Cato.
Channel Futures spoke to Cato and Biondi together about the implications of the consolidated channel programs to North American partners. Excerpts from that interview, with minor edits for clarity, are in the slideshow above.
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