Doug Fulmer to Leave IBM for Clear Technologies

The word on the street at COMMON last week is that Doug Fulmer, who headed up the iSeries Tools Network for years and who is now the head of worldwide sales for e-business infrastructure at IBM, is going to retire from IBM.

Fulmer is a vocal and ardent supporter of the AS/400, iSeries, and System i platform, and has been instrumental in opening up the iSeries Tool Network so other companies that provide tools for creating, extending, and modernizing applications on the System i platform can get help from IBM to sell their products and help IBM push the System i. Apparently, Fulmer has turned 58 and is eligible for retirement from Big Blue, and he is going to take his pension and then go work for former IBMer Van Symons over at Clear Technologies, a supplier of customer relationship management software that runs on the iSeries. Symons left IBM after 25 years, most recently running the business intelligence practice within the iSeries division, to become vice president of sales at Clear Technologies in October 2002, and was named president and chief operating officer the following February.

What Fulmer will be doing at Clear Technologies is unclear, but he will probably let us know when he starts work in a few weeks. As far as we know, IBM has not picked a replacement yet for Fulmer, who will be tough to replace. Evangelizing for the System i and its tools is a tiring job.