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Interview With IBM's Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano: Page 9 of 12

So this is why it's so important. So if you're the partner, and I gave you a long-winded answer, but I know you can't...and you can't write it this simply; I'll try to say it at PartnerWorld.

But if you're the partner, you've got to think about where you are. That's why it's hard to give a specific, because they're all different. And by the way, we like that, because there's so many areas to address the opportunity, we don't want them all the same.

Other companies want them all the same. And they want them all the same because that's easy to deal with.

So is this an opportunity that can drive both services and product?

Palmisano: Product side, because it's spending. Because on the services side or the applications side, re-integration has a fast ROI.

If you can connect, if you can do what Moffat did, we saved $11.4 billion in two years. And you say, well, how do you know that's real? Well, we took all this share and our margins went up. Something happened. How do you take all this share, pricing in an industry with over capacity, get share gain and margin expansion?