Arvind Krishna tells partners to tell clients "you need an ROI" and focus on a few scalable projects
“Partners there can help our clients by saying, ‘Look, people, you need an ROI. Let’s focus in on one, two, three things where we can scale the answer so that it makes a real difference across the enterprise,’”
Reported August 20, 2026 by crn.com. Checked word for word against that report.
IBM chief Arvind Krishna is pushing the company's outside partners to take a much larger role in selling AI and software, especially to a broad tier of customers IBM plans to reach indirectly. He told CRN that partner-involved business now makes up about one-quarter of IBM's roughly $17 billion in revenue, and he wants that share to reach one-half—a goal that would require partner revenue to about triple. With many businesses still running small AI tests, Krishna said partners should steer clients toward a limited number of projects with clear financial returns that can be expanded across the whole organization. IBM expects partners to lead for the next roughly 100,000 customers, according to Krishna.
- crn.com ↗︎20 AUG 2026