The UK is contributing to the iSeries’ recently reported worldwide 25 per cent sales leap, according to the man who heads up the newly reorganised UK iSeries division.

“I would say that we have had a phenomenal result around the world typified around the 25 per cent growth,” says Guy England who is now IBM’s iSeries business unit executive for what is now referred to within IBM as UKISA, meaning the UK, Eire and South Africa. “I can’t give figures for the UK, but what I can say is we have very similar figures, very similar.”

England says that IBM’s iSeries supremo, Mark Shearer, gathered all of the worldwide iSeries leaders to Rochester a couple of weeks ago where he and marketing boss Peter Bingaman and the new sales leader Bill Donohue ran through their plans to maintain this momentum. “You do it once, but you want to keeping hitting the net and they are very clear about their plans to do that,” says England. “And the key drivers on that are continuing to enhance skills and investment in the channel and continued acceleration of the iSeries Initiative for Innovation programme.”

England says that as part of this continuing push we will see iSeries-specific press advertising in the UK this month, although he wouldn’t be drawn on whether that will stretch to the kinds of TV advertising that has been aired recently in the States. He also says that IBM’s infamous iSeries marketing veteran, Malcolm Haines “has been given a freer rein from an advertising point of view”.

England also reveals that the Innovation programmes, aimed at rejuvenating iSeries-based ISVs, has led to some notable names aiming for the UK market. For instance, US firm BlueWare, a successful medical records company, is now coming over here to implement systems in the National Health trusts in the UK.

Such organisations typically run on Unix-based systems. But England says: “The point is that they are not making an architectural decision, they are making an application decision and by making that application decision -- and BlueWare is one of the best records management applications in the world -- obviously iSeries comes along with it.”

Such application-led sales have always been the bread and butter of the iSeries base and another company aiming its sights on the UK market is Malaysia’s Silverlake with an Islamic banking solution. “And that’s all part of the cross fertilisation of ISV projects around the world,” he says.

England says that the recent shake up of IBM’s EMEA operations has, in fact, strengthened his team, with a number of EMEA personnel coming under his wing. Significantly, he says that his team of people working specifically with iSeries ISVs has risen from one to five, a move that was backed by Mark Shearer himself.

“Their job is to forge relationships with the ISVs, to ensure that they have the development requirement that they need, that they have the go-to-market requirement that they need and also, eventually, the sales that go with them,” he says.

Interestingly, England’s unit is also responsible for English-speaking central African counties and the Portuguese-speaking African nations such as Mozambique and Angola.

“South Africa has a number of the traditional iSeries ISVs -- SSA, JD Edwards, Intentia and so on,” explains England. In other parts of Africa the iSeries is very strong in the banking sector. “The South African economy is doing very well, so consequently we are seeing significant growth there. It is certainly helping to grow the whole of the region’s iSeries market,” he says.