Let’s take a last look back at the recent Lenovo Accelerate conference. As is my tradition, I like to pause between my initial reporting and now (a couple weeks later) to reflect on what was communicated. Think of it this way. I call it the conference sun tan. When you attend and immediately leave a conference, you are typically pumped up and psyched. That’s the sun tan. What happens a week later? The sun tan starts to fade and we all return to normal. That’s the context for a look back.
Lenovo launched its annual partner confab by creating a humble vibe.
It’s painstakingly accepting past shortcomings in its partner program management (to be honest – I wasn’t aware of discontent) and push into 2018 with some fresh faces like newly installed Lenovo North America president Matt Zielinski (who I covered here ) and Rob Cato, who replaces Sammy Kinlaw as the new Executive Director, North America Channels.
Figure 1: At dinner with the Lenovo executive team and fellow bloggers/analysts at Lenovo Accelerate in Las Vegas.
13, 4, 3, 3, 1 Hike Hike
- Number 13: In the above piece featuring Zielinski, I share that he spent 13-years at AMD and has been at Lenovo 13-weeks when I Interviewed him at Lenovo Accelerate.
- Four Battles facing Lenovo
- PC returns to Number One in sales (currently sitting at 13.4% North America market share)
- Focus on Data Center (I covered that story here )
- Mobile. Merging PCs and mobility
- AI, Vertical Solutions, data, computing power and algorithms
- Three pillars
- Defend
- Build
- Invest
- Three Partner Messages. I’ll expand on this more in my forthcoming blog on Rob Cato but he shared these three priorities)
- Engage customers (end users, customers)
- Commitment and Trust. Make it easy to do business with Lenovo as a channel partner
- Smart growth. Add ¼ point market share quarterly.
And I end on the One Lenovo theme. This was introduced a couple years ago at the time of the IBM x86 server business acquisition. It’s still a work in progress but things take time inside $40b companies. I’ll keep you posted.