Chris Barnes

IBM Business Development Manager – Infrastructure at TD Synnex UK&I

IBM Storage

It’s not often I get to combine my love of football and IBM Storage (if you don’t believe me on the latter, check out these videos on YouTube that I make in my own time!), but it’s happened to me twice in the space of a month.

On 14th November, I had the honour of joining Jared Cary to represent TD SYNNEX UK&I as we collected our CRN Channel Awards Distributor of the Year (£300m+ category) accolade. As well as coming home with some great photos of an incredible night, I also bagged an auction prize that I never dreamed I’d get my hands on – Steven Gerrard’s signed shirt from Liverpool’s 2005 Champions League win, which now has pride of place in my office.

Next stop, Europe

After a few days of decompression (and boring colleagues on our Teams calls by pointing out my new wall-hanging), I headed off to the IBM Storage EMEA CyberDistrict Business Partner Study Tour. Taking place in Lisbon, it was designed to recognise the efforts of some of IBM’s most successful Storage Business Partners and educate us all on exciting new developments that will take us into next season and beyond.

Got, got, need

For those of you who have experienced the anticipation and excitement of a Panini World Cup sticker album, you would have loved how Wolfgang Kugler and the TBT team replicated this as a means to get everyone talking and working together.

Each attendee was issued with an album and a set of stickers featuring their own faces. The quest? To complete your album with a sticker for every person at the conference. It was a brilliant idea, making sure we were all having constructive conversations instead of just sticking (no pun intended) to our country groups.

Regulation, resilience and recovery

With the ice broken, we were treated to some world-class speakers on topics that are just as relevant in the changing room as they would be in the boardroom.

It was especially inspiring to hear from Andrew Walls. Andy is the ‘God Father’ of Flash System, and we were incredibly lucky to meet him, given that he’s just hung up his boots. Andy shared how advances in FlashSystem can deliver the resilience and recovery organisations need in light of the increase in cybercrime, coupled with tightened regulation in the form of DORA and NIS2.

We were also led by Ivo Koerner, Ian Shave and David Chancellor-Maddison in an exploration of the true cost of a cyber-attack, how an increasing number of organisations are opting for on prem to protect their critical data and maintain business operations, and the role that IBM FlashSystem has to play in providing a low cost, reliable starting point on that journey.

How to avoid an own goal

Given that football clubs are high-profile targets for cyber attackers (this Computer Weekly article offers good basic insights), I was sorely tempted during our tour of the Estádio da Luz to ask if I could drop in on the CTO of Benfica to see if they might offer me a little time to explain how they could use IBM Storage to avoid a cyber own goal. Whether I would have kept quiet about our record six wins of the Champions League to their two is another matter 😉.

Facts and stats

My position as a bit of a football statto fits well with my passion for tech, as it means I get the chance to memorise the facts and stats that make IBM Flash System storage stand out. Here are five of my favourites, accompanied by some headlines that’d make a pundit blush…

• What a screamer! The densest and highest performing storage in the market – achieving 1 petabyte on 1u.
• Great business in the transfer market! Lowest cost per terabyte in the market at c.£30k per 1u!
• Great defending by the team! Immutable Snapshots on Primary array which means much quicker recovery of critical data!
• To the managers relief! Patented FlashCore modules (FCM4’s) delivers encryption and compression without impacting performance!
• The spine of the team! Integrated threat detection at drive level offers additional resiliency other vendors simply can’t offer!

The third point sprang to mind when David Chancellor-Madison shared a story of how a customer who thought they’d lost everything in a cyber attack didn’t realise they had a safeguarded copy as part of their FlashSystem solution. Much like a penalty shoot-out, the customer went from heart in their mouth to pure elation at the win of getting business back online when it seemed like it was game over.

Get on the winning team

Once I was back in the office, I found myself continuing the footballing theme! TD SYNNEX offers the perfect backroom team that is geared towards partners achieving peak performance. Current highlights available through our close partnership with IBM include:

• Consistent communication with our partner community around incentives and promotions to help maximise value and margin, such as the Operational resiliency bundle for Q4, which offers free cache when quoting the FlashSystem 5300!
• Cyber resiliency assessments across any industry – including the DORA-oriented assessment for the financial services sector!
• The Test Drive incentive, where partners and end user customers can have a free of charge POC on-site through our iRent programme to push the performance and capacity of our FlashSystem to the max!
• A channel leading and dedicated team to support and elevate partner skills with existing and new partners through enablement and accreditation.
• Dedicated IBM apprentices aligned to TD SYNNEX who are on-hand to help newer partners with end-to-end opportunities and development.

Team talk

It would be remiss of me not to give a shout out to the wider TD SYNNEX team – each of whom has silky skills, whether up front working to get deals across the line or talking tactics on how to shore up your defences with deep Flash Systems professional services knowledge. Working with TD SYNNEX on IBM Storage gives you access to:

• A dedicated technical team with decades of experience around IBM infrastructure to help partners scope projects, build configs and offer guidance around IBM technology.
• A dedicated account manager to assist partners in creating deal registrations, providing quotes, loading purchase orders and directing partners to the correct contacts.
• An IBM Professional Services team that can support partners with initial installation at the fraction of the cost of IBM lab services!
• And the Business Development team, including me to support our partners with a structured and realistic plan to increase growth and productivity.

Start your winning streak

Ready to get into the IBM first team? I’m always scouting for new talent so please get in touch.