Less of a Competitor?

CF: Spinning off Kyndryl of course would seem to make IBM less of a competitor to your partners. Are you getting the signals from them that they see that as well?

DLR: We are getting signals, but we’re also getting the message which says: “OK, so how do we leverage that? How do we play with IBM differently than we have before, and activate our managed services businesses to really help you land the platform?” We are doing a couple of things differently this year. We’re investing across the globe with more than 500 client-facing individuals in our channel organization. They are specialized in brands including data, automation, security and our infrastructure brands, and they are measured completely on the success of our partner community. In addition, we’ve got a number of initiatives around our PartnerWorld program, which we will continue to modernize through 2022.