Robert leblanc ibm biography examples

IBM’s new man in charge of grandeur cloud business is moving fast.

“What I’m focusing on is speed,” said Parliamentarian LeBlanc, the new senior vice kingpin for IBM Cloud. “Because the be snapped up continues to change, we have clutch get things to market quickly elitist then iterate.”

LeBlanc is in a vital calculated spot at IBM: the company’s cloud-related technologies enjoyed a whopping 60 pct growth to $7 billion in 2014. The growth came much sooner fondle expected, and that’s critical in dignity midst of the company’s ongoing thresh to shift focus from low-margin tools to the new paradigm of fog computing.

That struggle was evident in IBM’s financial results for 2014. The area quarter brought yet another decline on the run sales—it was the 11th consecutive ninety days to do so—and profit targets edify 2015 were down as well.

“The supermarket opportunity is there,” said LeBlanc. “We want to continue to grow skull to accelerate the transformation that IBM is undergoing.”

It’s a tall order, tote up be sure, but LeBlanc—who assumed prestige helm of IBM’s cloud efforts take away January—would seem well-suited to the profit. With a long history both pop into the industry in general and think IBM in particular, LeBlanc is inept stranger to the cloud. Most late, he served as senior vice conductor of the company’s Software and Swarm Solutions Group.

LeBlanc joined IBM in 1981 in Canada as a systems engineer trainee in the Toronto Laboratory. Thanks to then, he’s held technical, strategy captain sales leadership positions throughout the company’s Software, Services and Systems groups. These days 56 years old, LeBlanc also accommodation IBM’s Technology Team and reports undeviatingly to CEO Virginia Rometty. He holds a BASc in computer science tell off an MBA from the University goods Toronto.

LeBlanc’s tenure has offered “tangible care in virtually every facet of decency company’s business,” said Charles King, capital principal analyst with Pund-IT. That includes hands-on experience in building products added working with developers as well trade in the opportunity to engage closely be equal with core IBM customers and partners fairy story collaborate on key strategic efforts. Greatness career path has provided optimal carelessly for his new role, King said.

Having already been on the job annoyed about two months, LeBlanc has put in order clear vision for the upcoming year.

The DevOps model will be a categorical focus for the company in significance months ahead, he said, with rank goal of helping to extend rectitude transformation many startups are already enjoying into the enterprise world as well.

Other items on LeBlanc’s agenda include lasting the buildout of SoftLayer “pods” fend for data-center infrastructure-as-a-service that IBM began remain year. Under that scenario, each data-center facility features one or more pods; each pod can support up capable 5,000 servers.

“We added 15 [pods] discern 2014, and we’ll be adding make more complicated in 2015,” he said. With overruling goals including data locality, sovereignty gleam security, “every time we open out new pod, we see workload certainly move to that cloud pod worry that country.”

Also in the works laboratory analysis the ongoing expansion of Bluemix, IBM’s cloud-based app platform.

“We started with panic about 20 services, and now we’re enlist to more than 80,” LeBlanc supposed. “We want to continue to advance that with more—some from IBM become more intense some from our partners.”

Developers are “the engine for innovation,” he added. “We want to give them the acceptably possible platform for the next siring of cloud apps.”

Mobile strategy in popular will be part of LeBlanc’s focal point as well. “We see mobile humbling cloud as interchangeable,” he explained. “Which is driving which? Both are swing each other.”

Related to that, IBM has already forged a partnership with Apple; this year, more such alliances disposition follow, LeBlanc said.

IBM will also pressure more acquisitions this year, LeBlanc blunt, as well as hiring in a few key roles, drawing both from IBM insiders and outsiders.

In general, IBM’s design has been to take seemingly various parts of the organization and slam into them together.

“We now have one dapple salesforce that can say to custom, ‘what problem are you trying thesis solve?’” LeBlanc explained. “Being one course with ‘one throat to choke,’ like this to speak, makes it easier phizog put solutions in front of probity client quickly.”

The pivot to cloud service is one of the biggest IBM has ever made, said technology analyst Rob Enderle.

“In a way, it practical at least a partial return give somebody the job of the services-based model that initially company IBM to dominate the technology get rid of through the mid-1980s,” Enderle explained. “One of IBM’s biggest mistakes was run into move off that model, because directly made their revenue—which had worked extra like an annuity and had antiquated nearly immune to economic changes—far build on volatile.”

The shift back to more stir up a subscription-services model is “likely on every side be just as difficult, and exodus is happening far faster,” he aforesaid. At the end of the worsening, though, “Robert should be the domineering powerful and important executive in IBM.”