IBM Champions are individuals, non-IBMer and recognized professionals in the IBM community.
IBM introduced the IBM Champion program back in 2008, [1] [2] initially only in the IBM Information Management Software division. The program describes itself as: [3]
As of 2024, the program has elected 1247 professionals across the globe. [4]
Originally, champions were divided by categories:
IBM Champions are nominated by their peers. An IBM internal committee publishes the results once a year and the title is valid for one year. The champion needs to be nominated every year, with the exception of Lifetime IBM Champions.
In 2016, in addition to being elected as an IBM Champion on a yearly basis, IBM announced the entitlement for a lifetime achievement to the following personalities (as of 2023):
Collaboration Solutions
Power
Cloud and Automation
Data & AI (formerly Analytics)
IBM Z
Storage
Security
Db2 is a family of data management products, including database servers, developed by IBM. It initially supported the relational model, but was extended to support object–relational features and non-relational structures like JSON and XML. The brand name was originally styled as DB2 until 2017, when it changed to its present form.
NetApp, Inc. is an American data infrastructure company that provides unified data storage, integrated data services, and cloud operations (CloudOps) solutions to enterprise customers. The company is based in Cork City, Ireland. It has ranked in the Fortune 500 from 2012 to 2021. Founded in 1992 with an initial public offering in 1995, NetApp offers cloud data services for management of applications and data both online and physically.
UST, formerly known as UST Global, is a provider of digital technology and transformation, information technology and services, headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California, United States. Stephen Ross founded UST in 1998 in Laguna Hills. The company has offices in the Americas, EMEA, APAC, and India.
The IBM Storage product portfolio includes disk, flash, tape, NAS storage products, storage software and services. IBM's approach is to focus on data management.
Qlik [pronounced "klik"] provides a data integration, analytics, and artificial intelligence platform. The software company was founded in 1993 in Lund, Sweden and is now based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, United States. Thoma Bravo made the company private in 2016.
Samsung SDS Co., Ltd., Established in 1985 as a subsidiary of Samsung Group, is a provider of Information Technology (IT) services, including consulting, technical, and outsourcing services. SDS is also active in research and development of emerging IT technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT) and outsourcing in engineering. In 2019, Samsung SDS reported a net profit of 750.4 billion won, an increase of 17.5% year-on-year. The company is estimated to have the 11th most valuable brand among global IT service companies, at US$3.7 billion as of January 2020. Samsung SDS has headquarters in South Korea and eight other overseas subsidiaries, one in America, Asia-Pacific, China, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, India, and Vietnam.
Microsoft Azure, or just Azure, is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It has management, access and development of applications and services to individuals, companies, and governments through its global infrastructure. It also provides capabilities that are usually not included within other cloud platforms, including software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Microsoft Azure supports many programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems.
HP IT Management Software is a family of Enterprise software products by OpenText as a result of the spin-merge of Hewlett Packard Enterprise's software assets with Micro Focus in 2017 and acquisition of Micro Focus by OpenText in 2023. The division was formerly owned by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, following the separation of Hewlett-Packard into HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in 2015. IT management software is a family of technology that helps companies manage their IT infrastructures, the people and the processes required to reap the greatest amount of responsiveness and effectiveness from today's multi-layered and highly complex data centers. Beginning in September 2005, HP purchased several software companies as part of a publicized, deliberate strategy to augment its catalog of IT management software offerings for large business customers. According to ZDNet and IDC, HP is the world's sixth largest software company.
Rocket Software is a privately held software development firm founded in 1990. Using the IBM Z, IBM Power, and embedded database platforms, Rocket provides predictive analytics with deep data, develops AI and machine learning capabilities, and designs mobile and browser applications. Its software runs on multiple platforms and operating systems, including mainframe, IBM z/OS, IBM i, UNIX, Windows and other platforms and offers tools to access non-SQL data with standard SQL queries. Rocket operates in markets including the financial, banking, health care, government, insurance, aerospace, auto manufacturing, and retail industries.
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a suite of cloud computing services offered by Google that provides a series of modular cloud services including computing, data storage, data analytics, and machine learning, alongside a set of management tools. It runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for its end-user products, such as Google Search, Gmail, and Google Docs, according to Verma et al. Registration requires a credit card or bank account details.
Jean-Georges Perrin is an IT serial-entrepreneur from Alsace, France. He was the longest standing elected board member of IIUG after Stuart Litel, the first non-US citizen elected to this board, and the first French IBM Champion, first French citizen to become an IBM Champion in 2009, along with Jean-Marc Blaise., and one of the 30 Lifetime IBM Champion.
Dynatrace, Inc. is a global technology company that provides a software observability platform based on artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. Dynatrace technologies are used to monitor, analyze, and optimize application performance, software development and security practices, IT infrastructure, and user experience for businesses and government agencies throughout the world.
Oracle Cloud is a cloud computing service offered by Oracle Corporation providing servers, storage, network, applications and services through a global network of Oracle Corporation managed data centers. The company allows these services to be provisioned on demand over the Internet.
Sierra Ventures is an American venture capital firm based in San Mateo, California. It targets startups in sectors including enterprise tech, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and healthcare.
Appian Corporation is an American cloud computing and enterprise software company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, part of the Dulles Technology Corridor. The company sells a platform as a service (PaaS) for building enterprise software applications. It is focused on low-code development, process mining, business process management, and case management markets in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
IBM Cloud is a set of cloud computing services for business offered by the information technology company IBM.
ModelOps, as defined by Gartner, "is focused primarily on the governance and lifecycle management of a wide range of operationalized artificial intelligence (AI) and decision models, including machine learning, knowledge graphs, rules, optimization, linguistic and agent-based models" in Multi-Agent Systems. "ModelOps lies at the heart of any enterprise AI strategy". It orchestrates the model lifecycles of all models in production across the entire enterprise, from putting a model into production, then evaluating and updating the resulting application according to a set of governance rules, including both technical and business key performance indicators (KPI's). It grants business domain experts the capability to evaluate AI models in production, independent of data scientists.
Gennaro "Jerry" Cuomo is an American software engineer who has worked for IBM since 1987. Holding the title of IBM Fellow, Cuomo is known as one of the founding fathers of IBM WebSphere Software, a software framework and middleware that hosts Java-based web applications.
Microsoft Power Platform is a collection of low-code development tools that allows users to build custom business applications, automate workflows, and analyze data. It also offers integration with GitHub, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Teams, amongst other Microsoft and third-party applications.
IBM Think is an annual business conference organized by IBM. Before 2018, IBM held similar business conferences under different names. Think is seen as a successor to World of Watson that was held in 2017. The conference name is a reference the 'Think' slogan used by IBM.