IBM partners hoping for more synergy in 2025

More than 150 IBM partners from Asia Pacific attended the 2025 IBM APAC Ecosystem Growth Summit in Bali to discuss the partner ecosystem.

IBM partners in Asia Pacific are hoping for more synergy and collaboration opportunities in 2025. This was among the key takeaways at the 2025 IBM APAC Ecosystem Growth Summit in Bali which was held recently. The inaugural event for APAC was attended by more than 150 partners and distributors from the region.

According to Chetan Krishnamurthy, Asia Pacific President of Ecosystem and Digital Sales for IBM, the event served as a positive social campaign to discuss with partners on the values of IBM as well as understand what partners are hoping to achieve in 2025. Apart from keynotes and discussions, partners who attended the summit also took part in several workshops to understand more about IBM’s technology offering and how they can unlock more opportunities for customers.

“IBM’s reimagined Partner Plus approach enhances technical expertise and accelerates time to market, offering clients greater flexibility in selecting partners for their unique needs. By expanding our partner ecosystem across the region, we aim to deliver client solutions up to four times faster,” said Krishnamurthy.

Krishnamurthy also pointed out that 54% of businesses expect AI to drive long-term benefits such as innovation and revenue growth. As such, IBM’s partners play a critical role in ensuring this is achieved. Krishnamurthy also mentioned that currently, 48% of IBM partners in APAC are actively delivering AI solutions to their customers.

“This growing and crucial partner ecosystem is highlighted in the recent APAC AI Outlook 2025, where five IBM partners are among 17 best practices from across the region,” he said.

Examples of successful partner deliveries to customers in the region include Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance (SUD Life) that leverages GenAI to gain data-driven insights for better fund management. Another example is GS Lab | GAVS that enhances AI reliability with ZIF.AI, focusing on predictive capabilities and governance.

Apart from that, Feedloop AI integrates its FL1 LLM with IBM watsonx to help Indonesian businesses automate regulatory compliance. Meanwhile, Algobash.com transforms recruitment with AI-powered interview analysis and job postings, collaborating with IBM on a scalable Applicant Tracking System. In healthcare, DoctorTool reduces administrative time and improves healthcare delivery with AI solutions for queue management and medical records.

Building the ecosystem

As Krishnamurthy clearly pointed out, IBM’s goal in 2025 is ensuring the partner ecosystem has a frictionless experience when it comes to delivering what customers need. This includes getting partners activated, from skilling to enablement to drive GenAI collectively.

“We want to get everyone on the same page in understanding IBM’s technology and strategy. We’re also focused on driving a very frictionless experience for our clients. This means both our partners and us have a very smooth and trusted way of operating in the channel. We want to improve the experience,” added Krishnamurthy.

On partners desiring more synergy and collaboration in the ecosystem, Krishnamurthy acknowledged that while there are many synergies available, there may not be that many opportunities for synergies within the ecosystem. Partners are not doing the same things and are looking to build a solution with strategic partners.

“We got so many different vendors. We want to come together as a ecosystem and do better for our client. Synergies like in the hybrid cloud are seeing a lot of talk. Customers are looking at both the public cloud and what on-premises deployment to have on the edge. Customers are looking for platforms that are both on the cloud and also on-premises, given the strong discussions around governance,” said Krishnamurthy.

Moreover, Krishnamurthy also mentioned that there’s been a lot of discussions on vendor synergies. He believes this is essential because different vendors are working together to ensure there is an ecosystem for the supply chain as well. And this is where he believes IBM will be focused on bringing the pieces together for partners in 2025.

For Krishnamurthy, as customers look to move from proof of concepts to actual implementation of their AI use cases, ensuring partners have the right skills and capabilities to handle this is imperative for IBM. Another area he believes partners are looking to focus on is data security. With focus on governance increases, there will be talk on data life cycle and data management, especially with AI.

“By leveraging AI technologies like Gen AI and watsonx, our partners are addressing industry challenges, delivering scalable solutions, and driving business transformation in an increasingly AI-driven world,” he concluded.