Lenovo Outlines 2015 Ambitions

At the Lenovo Accelerate 2015 Partner Conference this week the new leadership of the company’s North American operations outlined goals for the next fiscal year that includes 15 percent growth in its PC business and 30 percent growth for its server business.

While that might strike some Lenovo channel partners has aggressive, Aymar de Lencquesaing, the new president of Lenovo North America, said those numbers are attainable in part because the launch of Windows 10 will create opportunities to displace PC rivals, while an more open distribution model means that Lenovo will be invited to bid on more server deals.

Overseeing the channel programs that will drive that growth is Sammy Kinlaw, who is now channel chief for North America for Lenovo. Former Lenovo channel chief Chris Frey has been tasked with creating a new high-touch sales organization that will work with Lenovo channel partners specifically to go after business opportunities involving 1,000 or more seats.

In the PC space Lenovo’s share of the market in the United States with 11.6 percent. But de Lencquesaing said there is still plenty of upside to be had by going after the other 89 percent of the market.

Meanwhile, in the wake of acquiring the System X server business from IBM, Lenovo has opened that platform to every major distributor. IBM, in contrast, sold most of its servers either direct or through a limited number of distribution partners.

Lenovo also intends to expand the active number of partners it has in the channel to 13,000 PC partners from 11,000 and 5,000 partners to 3,000 server partners. Obviously, not all those partners will be exclusively committed to Lenovo, so the challenge will be getting more of its partners to lead with its offerings versus rival platforms. To that end, Kinlaw said Lenovo is obsessed with making sure it has the right product configurations available via its distribution partners at the exact moment there is any shift in the market demand.

In addition, Kinlaw noted that Lenovo has one single channel program covering both PC and servers, which reduces any friction involved in selling PC and servers together. In all, the channel now accounts for 89 percent of its sales, according to Lenovo, and the only time the company will take a deal direct is when the end customer absolutely insists on it.

In short, the new North America leadership for Lenovo is calling for exponential growth at rates that can only come at the expense of its arch rivals. Whether Lenovo can achieve that remains to be seen, but with 968 partners in attendance this week, it’s off to a solid start.