As the year comes to an end and the fourth quarter closes, it’s only natural to take stock of our achievements together. More importantly, it’s time to go beyond that. After all, “business as usual” is a cliché for a reason—in my endless travels around the globe, I’m hearing that you, our IBM Business Partners, are just as excited as IBM about joining us on our journey into the Cognitive Era, where Watson and solutions based on Watson have begun to represent the future of meeting client demand.

As an IBM Business Partner faced with a growing set of options around hybrid clouds, zeroing in on that special sauce that gives you and your clients a competitive edge can be overwhelmingly challenging. Software defined storage (SDS) has been positioned by storage analysts as one of the critical technologies that can really help clients in their journey to the cloud—private or public.

Hybrid cloud technologies and Flash storage are crucial to your customers’ business. IBM’s announcement of new hybrid cloud solutions and all-Flash offerings based on our award-winning IBM Spectrum Storage family underscores IBM’s continuing commitment to delivering the best in hybrid cloud solutions for our mutual clients

You have invested in on-premises solutions, skills and certifications to develop your practice into what it is today. Now is the time to leverage those competencies and look at how IBM’s new software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings can expand your portfolio

On August 23, IBM Storage announced truly revolutionary all-flash storage offerings at prices aimed squarely at small and mid-sized firms. The new all-flash IBM Storwize V7000F and IBM Storwize V5030F are just the ticket to provide safe, primary storage for cloud or cognitive applications and workloads.