Power Systems Has A New Vice President Of Product Management

January 13, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Throughout the history of IBM systems, there are executives who steer the development of hardware and those that steer the development of microcode, operating systems, and other software. Still others at Big Blue manage the processor roadmaps as well as the evolution of the systems that make use of them, including all of the peripherals that go into turning central processing units into systems.

We have always liked these software and hardware people, as well as the multitudes who work with them and for them. They have given us valuable time and insight over the many decades that The Four Hundred has been published. We wanted to give the hardware product managers that we have known a shoutout and credit for making excellent systems over the decades. They are:

Glenn Van Benschoten: At least July 1993 to June 1996
Drew Flaada: June 1996 to January 1999
???: January 1999 to October 1999, forgive me, I can’t find any notes or stories from here.
Drew Flaada: October 1999 to May 2002
John Reed: May 2002 to September 2004
Jim Herring: September 2004 to July 2007
Steve Sibley: July 2007 to October 2024

You will note an ending date for Sibley in October 2024. That’s because the Power Systems line has a new executive who is taking over the hardware line from Steve Sibley, who has been in charge of Power iron for the longest term as far as we know and who was technically given the title of vice president of product management for Power Systems for the more than fourteen years he has been in this role.

To be specific, Bargav Balakrishnan, who a few months ago was identified as vice president of banking and industry modernization infrastructure at the Power Systems division in IBM’s THINK conference promotions, started taking over some of the product management duties of Sibley starting back in August 2022 and the transition was completed as 2024 was coming to an end. Now he is the hardware guy that we are all going to get to know.

Balakrishnan got his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2002, and followed up with his master’s degree in electrical engineering two years later from the University of Michigan.

Like many executives at IBM, Balakrishnan got his start in the System z mainframe division, and after getting out of graduate school was hired to be an SRAM memory designer for IBM mainframes. He held several different roles in the System z organization starting in 2011, including security plan manager and product development manager (akin to what Sibley did for Power Systems), and in December 2013 became offering manager for System z (akin to the role Allison Butterill had for many years until she was replaced after retiring in December 2023 by Douglas Gibbs, assisted by Dan Sundt).

In July 2017, Balakrishnan was tapped to be the chief of staff to Ross Mauri, the general manager of the System z product line and also the person who steered the Power7 chip into being when he was general manager of the Power Systems division from January 2006 through August 2010. In his role as chief of staff, Balakrishnan was involved in all aspects of the mainframe business, including sales, finance, hardware and software development, offering management, and marketing.

After that, in January 2019, Balakrishnan was named director of the ISV ecosystem for the mainframe and in August 2022 started ramping up his work at Power Systems to eventually replace Sibley, who is continuing at Big Blue and who is involved in initiatives to help grow the Power Systems business.

We have some time on the books to talk to Balakrishnan and will publish an interview in next week’s issue.

In the meantime, while we are thinking of it, welcome to 2025 and may we all have a happy and prosperous New Year, despite what seems like an endless series of regional disasters.

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