"Almost every time I introduce myself, I say the same thing: I have the best job at Arrow. Look at what I get to work on. But the real reason I love it isn't the technology — it's that I get to take the platforms every enterprise already depends on and show exactly how they unlock the four outcomes every business cares about: make money, save money, improve customer experience, and run more efficiently."
— Frank Welder, IBM Domain Architect · Arrow ECSHow I Work
Every enterprise already uses the technologies I work with — they just don't always know what those technologies make possible beyond their original purchase justification. My approach starts with strategy — business objectives first — and works backward through IBM's portfolio of Data & AI, Automation, and Security software and IBM Systems (Fusion HCI, Storage) to define the right use cases, plan the execution, and build it live.
I work closely with my Arrow ECS teammates to develop and refine these programs together. The work below reflects both individual projects and collaborative efforts across the team — because the best demonstrations of IBM technology are built by people who've actually deployed it.
What I Focus On
Strategy-First Technology Alignment
I start with the four strategic outcomes every organization is measured on — make money, save money, customer experience, operational efficiency — then map IBM's portfolio to the specific use cases that move those numbers. Technology follows strategy, not the other way around.
Quantum-Safe Readiness
From cryptographic inventory and risk assessment to full deployment of IBM Guardium Cryptographic Manager, Quantum Safe Explorer, and Quantum Safe Remediator — helping enterprises get ahead of the post-quantum transition before "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later" makes it urgent.
Data Protection & Compliance Automation
IBM Guardium Data Protection for real-time data activity monitoring, AI-driven insider threat detection, dynamic masking and blocking, and automated compliance workflows — moving enterprises from periodic audits to always-on governance posture.
AI Governance & Security
Using watsonx.governance as the central compass for enterprise AI oversight — fed by vendor-neutral AI security tooling to surface shadow AI, model vulnerabilities, and runtime risks. Full AI model lifecycle governance, guardrails, and regulatory alignment to NIST AI RMF and OWASP LLM Top 10.
Observability & Vulnerability Management
IBM Instana for full-stack observability — automatic discovery, distributed tracing, and AI-powered anomaly detection across every service. IBM Concert for vulnerability management and intelligent remediation prioritization, ensuring teams fix what matters most, first.
FinOps — Cloud Cost Intelligence
IBM Turbonomic for AI-powered resource optimization and workload placement — ensuring cloud and hybrid environments run at right-sized cost without sacrificing performance. IBM Apptio and Cloudability for financial visibility, showback, and chargeback across multi-cloud environments.
Infrastructure Modernization
IBM Fusion HCI as the platform for both containerized workloads and virtualization modernization — including Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV) for moving VMware workloads to Red Hat OpenShift. The infrastructure foundation that makes everything else possible.
Agentic Identity & Secrets Management
Vaulted ID combines IBM Verify and IBM (HashiCorp) Vault to give AI agents, workloads, and automation pipelines governed identities and dynamic secrets — eliminating the credential sprawl and ungoverned access that agentic AI creates. Zero long-lived secrets, policy-aligned issuance.
Agentic AI in Practice
Using IBM Bob as a genuine engineering partner across the full delivery chain — not code autocomplete, but architectural decisions, infrastructure automation, and live deployment. The Bob Showcase documents real use cases demonstrating Bob as both planning and execution partner.
IBM TechXchange 2026 — Submitted Sessions
Three session proposals submitted to IBM TechXchange 2026 — all built directly from live AEC work. Acceptance notifications begin June 30.
Proposal TEC-2060
Crypto Assessments That Matter: Discovery and Remediation with IBM Guardium Cryptographic Manager
A live AEC walkthrough of how IBM Guardium Cryptographic Manager discovers, assesses, and remediates cryptographic assets at scale — including real integrations with ServiceNow, Jira, and on-premises watsonx services. Making cryptographic discovery a repeatable operational security process, not a one-time exercise.
IBM GCM
Q-Forge
Quantum-Safe
ServiceNow
Pending Acceptance
Proposal TEC-2057
Securing Agentic AI: Guardium and Non-Human Identities in Action
As AI agents proliferate across enterprise environments, they introduce a new class of ungoverned identity and data access risk. This session demonstrates how IBM Guardium and IBM Verify work together to govern non-human identities, enforce data access policy, and make agentic AI as auditable as any human user in the enterprise.
Agentic AI
IBM Guardium
IBM Verify
Sanctum
Pending Acceptance
Proposal TEC-2083
How Much Does GenAI Really Cost? Observability, Health, and Value with IBM Instana
GenAI is no longer experimental — but most organizations can't answer the question: is it delivering value, or just consuming budget? This session demonstrates how IBM Instana delivers deep observability into GenAI workloads across on-prem and cloud, correlating AI performance, infrastructure health, and real compute cost in a live AEC walkthrough.
IBM Instana
GenAI Observability
watsonx
FinOps
Pending Acceptance
Live Work at the Arrow Experience Center
The Arrow Experience Center is where I build and run live demonstrations of IBM technology solving real business problems. Every program below is deployed, in active development, or being designed collaboratively with my Arrow ECS teammates — none of it is a slide deck.
Active
Q-Forge — Quantum-Safe Readiness
Full IBM Guardium Cryptographic Manager 2.0.1 deployment: installation guide, architecture runbooks, 23-minute automated POC provisioning vs 6–8 weeks external delivery. Partner enablement program for GCM, QSE, and QSR.
Program page
Active
IBM Bob — Agentic AI in Practice
IBM Bob as a planning and execution partner across infrastructure automation, multi-cloud deployment, quantum-safe POC setup, and organizational restructure — demonstrating the full agentic SDLC in real enterprise scenarios.
bob.rcoace.com
Active
Atlas — Platform Foundation
The integrated operational layer: HashiCorp Vault (zero static secrets), Terraform (declarative IaC), Ansible (idempotent configuration), IBM Instana (full-stack observability). The infrastructure every other AEC program sits on top of.
Program page
Active
Watson Experience — AI Intelligence
IBM watsonx.ai, watsonx Orchestrate, and watsonx.data as R Co's AI and analytics layer — automated business workflows, enterprise data intelligence, custom model development, and AI governance via watsonx.governance.
Program page
Active
Hawkeye — Data Protection
IBM Guardium Data Protection (GDP v12.2.2): real-time data activity monitoring, AI-driven insider threat detection, dynamic masking and blocking, and automated compliance workflows across hybrid multi-cloud environments.
Program page
Active
NorthStar — AI Governance & Compliance
watsonx.governance as the central compass for enterprise AI oversight. Aggregates AI security signals from any platform into one governance layer — covering AI model risk, compliance automation, lifecycle governance, and alignment to NIST AI RMF and the EU AI Act.
Program page
Active
Vaulted ID — Identity & Secrets for the Agentic Era
IBM Verify + IBM Vault giving AI agents, workloads, and automation pipelines governed identities and dynamic, short-lived credentials. Zero long-lived secrets. Policy-aligned issuance for every service — human or machine.
Program page
In Progress
Infrastructure Modernization — IBM Fusion HCI
IBM Fusion HCI as the platform for containerized workloads on Red Hat OpenShift and virtualization modernization via Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV) — moving legacy VMware workloads forward without the complexity of a full rearchitecture.
rcoace.com
In Progress
Observability with IBM Instana
Full-stack observability across every AEC workload — automatic discovery and instrumentation, distributed tracing, real-time metrics, and AI-powered anomaly detection. From hypervisor to application, every service visible in a single pane.
Trish Browning, TSA · Arrow ECS
Part of Atlas
In Progress
Vulnerability Management — IBM Concert
IBM Concert for intelligent vulnerability management and remediation prioritization — correlating CVEs, configuration risks, and exposure context across the environment so teams fix what matters most, in the right order.
Bobby Reddy, TSA · Arrow ECS
rcoace.com
In Progress
FinOps — IBM Turbonomic, Apptio & Cloudability
IBM Turbonomic for AI-driven workload optimization and right-sizing across hybrid cloud. IBM Apptio and Cloudability for financial visibility, showback, and chargeback — turning cloud spend from a mystery into a managed asset.
Trish Browning, TSA · Arrow ECS
rcoace.com
In Progress
Sanctum — Governed Data Access for AI Agents
Sanctum extends the Vaulted ID model into the data layer: AI agents get not just governed identities and dynamic secrets, but explicit, policy-enforced guardrails on which enterprise data they can access, under what conditions, and with full auditability. Powered by IBM Verify, IBM Vault, and IBM Guardium Data Protection — making agentic data access as governed as any human user in the enterprise.
rcoace.com
Technology Stack
The IBM and hybrid-cloud technologies I design, deploy, and demonstrate at the AEC — spanning Data & AI, Automation, Security, and Systems.
IBM watsonx.ai
watsonx Orchestrate
watsonx.governance
IBM Bob Agentic AI
IBM Guardium Crypto Manager
IBM Guardium Data Protection
AI Security Signal Layer
IBM Quantum Safe Explorer
IBM Quantum Safe Remediator
IBM Instana
IBM Concert
IBM OpenPages
IBM QRadar SIEM
IBM Verify
IBM (HashiCorp) Vault
IBM Turbonomic
IBM Apptio
IBM Cloudability
Terraform
Red Hat OpenShift
Ansible
Migration Toolkit for Virtualization
IBM Fusion HCI
IBM Storage
VMware vSphere
GitHub Actions CI/CD
Azure Static Web Apps