Ken Akren—VP Business Development
Ken manages daily business development and communications functions for Group8 in conjunction with consulting activities, business partners, and the industry trade press in North America and the reseller channel.
A leader and top level executive in the IBM midrange industry for over 20 years, Ken has been a long-trusted partner for business. As president of his own consulting firm, Catharsys, Inc., he provided marketing services to several European IBM midrange organizations, assisting them with entry and expansion into the U.S. IBM midrange market. These business development activities included channel development/management, brand management/refinement, strategic marketing and trade press exposure, as well as lead generation and sales pipeline management.
Prior to starting his own business, Ken was the original VP Business Development at Vision Solutions, taking the company from a start-up to a multi-million dollar success. The company eventually grew to $20 million annual revenue, 120 employees, 40 resellers and one of the leaders in High Availability software for the IBM midrange market. There, Ken was instrumental in nurturing the relationship with IBM that eventually resulted in Vision Solutions becoming a Premier Business Partner in 1993.
Ken has been a speaker on market positioning and other sales and marketing topics at the annual COMMON User Group conference for IBM midrange users in North America. He also served as a Subject Matter Expert for COMMON where he contributed his experience to a variety of courses of study for Business Development and Global Marketplace. Ken’s professional areas of expertise lie in management organization, marketing, high availability, server consolidation, document generation, channel development, and brand positioning.
Learn more about our team: Pat Botz, Lennie Broich