Featuring: Jerry Green, World Wide Open Source Sales and Strategy Leader at IBM
IBM and Cloudera joined forces to bring the best of both companies to enterprises seeking advanced data and AI solutions. Jerry Green, World Wide Open Source Sales and Strategy Leader at IBM, has been instrumental with the relationship since its inception. We wanted to probe deeper into the man, the myth, the legend, Jerry Green!
Since this is “Coffee with Cloudera”, tell us what’s your favorite coffee drink or “pick me up” in the morning?
Always start the day out with FANCY K-CUPS of PEET’S, followed quickly by Diet Coke… Yes weird combination but caffeine in any form is critical.
As someone who has been very involved with the partnership, how has the partnership evolved over the years?
For the most part, we have been fortunate enough to have the same core individuals executing at a high level now as we did at the partnership inception, so we have all taken a very personal interest in its success. Growing a business such as ours, has its fair share of organic challenges, but I believe we have created an environment of collaboration from marketing to sales to professional services, that allows us to change and adapt as needed. We have evolved into a very cohesive team that works hard and plays hard together…
What do you do for fun?
Fun for me these days generally revolves around family, primarily kids activities. Either attending lacrosse, soccer or basketball practices with my 13 year old daughter Sydney, or visiting my oldest daughter Courtney who is a FRESHMAN at PENN STATE. We had hoped to have more family tailgates with her but unfortunately with COVID, things are a bit weird. Still holding out hope for an opportunity to support her and the Nittany Lions!!! Miss those tailgate opportunities…
What were some of the biggest challenges you had making this partnership so successful, how did you and the team overcome them?
The IBM field sales organization is large, spread across the globe and they have a HUGE product portfolio to sell as they engage with clients. Cloudera is our #1 partnership and extremely significant to our go to market. It has been my commitment to ensure the IBM sales teams are educated and plugged into the value of CDP Private Cloud Base and fully understand how to leverage the benefits of our strategic partnership. I am not sure I would call this a “challenge,” but it is a necessary step of a committed partner.
What’s been your family’s go-to meal during COVID?
The good news for the family is my wife is very healthy so she takes the time to prepare us all a nice, healthy dinner. However, if I’m left to my own vices, Ramen Noodles is the GO-TO and only takes 3 minutes!!!
What do you enjoy most about the partnership?
The Cloudera partnership has been extremely exciting to help cultivate. The synergy between our organizations is unparalleled and it makes nurturing strategic client relationships that much more satisfying because I am helping enterprises leverage the best of both companies to successfully complete their journey to hybrid cloud and AI.
IBM and Cloudera shared a booth at Strata in 2019. I heard there is an interesting story behind the booth graphics, can you tell us about it?
Sure… we wanted to showcase IBM and Cloudera at Strata 2019 as more than just mere partners, and that set the wheels in motion for what would be a Herculean effort to pull off but would eventually represent our extremely cohesive relationship perfectly. Everywhere you looked that week, there was IBM and Cloudera, it was great. So at the conclusion of the conference, I removed the beautifully done booth backdrop and took it home. Who knows, maybe one day folks will see it as a backdrop behind me on a Zoom call.
Thank you Jerry Green for your candid responses about the IBM and Cloudera partnership and for sharing some fun facts about yourself. We appreciate all of the terrific work that you and your team have done alongside the Cloudera Channel and Alliances team to ensure clients leverage, as you said so eloquently “the best of both companies to successfully complete their journey to hybrid cloud and AI.”
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