Welcoming The New IBM i Chief Architect And Other New Top Brass
August 3, 2026 Alex Woodie
As you have likely already heard, IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will retired last week after a 41-year IBM career, and was succeeded in that role by Kris Whitney, who previously was the IBM i platform’s chief engineer. But this is just one change among several in IBM i leadership in recent months.
For the past four years, Will officially had three roles at IBM, including chief architect for IBM i, IBM i chief technology officer, and IBM Distinguished Engineer. The last two titles, which Will gained in 2022, were significant at the time as they denoted Will’s position as a technical executive within IBM and (hopefully) gave the IBM i platform more sway within Big Blue’s sprawling corporate bureaucracy. Becoming an IBM DE, in particular, is a big deal at IBM, and is the highest position one can reach short of becoming an IBM Fellow (which both Will and former IBM i chief scientist Frank Soltis failed to reach).
Kris Whitney starts today as the chief architect for IBM i.
Will became the chief architect for the IBM i platform in 2007, marking 19 years in the position. He has overseen a tremendous amount of change in the platform over those years, including the consolidation of System i and System p onto a single Power platform back in 2008, the launch of the bi-annual Technology Refresh cycle with the introduction of IBM i 7.1 in 2010, and the outsourcing of development of IBM products (RDi, PowerHA, BRMS, and so on) to third parties like Fortra, among others. Will has also overseen a few duds, such as RPG Open Access, Merlin, and Watson Code Assist, which was subsumed into the Bob code assistant that spans all of Big Blue.
Will’s tenure at the helm also saw the introduction of one of the more popular IBM i products in recent memory: Db2 Mirror, the active-active clustering product that launched with IBM i 7.4 back in 2019. IBM initially developed the high availability product as a way for larger customers to eliminate downtime. But the market reception to the product was so strong that IBM shifted strategies and tweaked its licensing to make it easier for smaller IBM i shops to buy it.
As it so happens, the IBM i engineer who led the development of Db2 Mirror is Kris Whitney, who takes his former boss’s job starting today. As Will explained in a recent Fortra webinar, he leaned on Whitney to actually build the products that he and others at IBM envisioned.
“Our roles have been the chief architect and the chief engineer,” Will said of Whitney. “I get to think about pretty big things, and then Kris has had to worry about how do we get that stuff done.”
Whitney spoke about the transition during the webinar with Will and Fortra’s executive vice president of technical solutions Tom Huntington.
“I’ve been around IBM for my whole career, 26 plus years now, in various roles throughout, sometimes at the very low levels of the platform and sometimes throughout the platform,” Whitney said. “But as Steve mentioned, in the last few years, we have a broader role helping Steve and then working with, obviously, the other great architects that are well known in our community. So it’s been a really fun journey. I publicly want to thank Steve again for his mentorship and leadership and all that’s coming in his great career. And hopefully, as you’ll see, we’re going to change drastically with this transition.”
Keri Olson (right) hosts a 70th anniversary celebration of the IBM Rochester lab with three former IBM executives (from left to right) Tory Johnson, Walt Ling, and Dave Nelson.
But Will’s retirement and Whitney’s promotion are only two of the recent changes in the IBM i organization. There have been some other significant promotions that are worth noting.
In May, Keri Olson was promoted to the position of director of IBM i development, and she was also given the title of senior location executive at the IBM Rochester campus. Olson, who has been with IBM for 25 years, previously was a senior partner and a vice president in the IBM Consulting group. She was also a product manager and director for various other products, including WebSphere and IBM Cloud. She spearheaded the IBM i Watsonx Code Assistant product before it was cancelled in favor of Bob.
Olson is taking the role that used to be held by Dave Nelson, who also retired after a long career at IBM. Nelson was the director of IBM i development in 2022 when he was assigned the position of senior location executive at the IBM Rochester campus following the retirement of Tory Johnson, who previously held that role, after a 40-year career at Big Blue.
Brandon Pederson is the new senior IBM i product manager.
Last month, Brandon Pederson announced that he has been promoted to the position of senior IBM i product manager. Previously, he was the worldwide IBM i and Power product marketing manager. In his new role, the Rochester resident looks to have a more active role in guiding development of IBM i under Whitney. For instance, he acted as the emcee and host for the recent Technology Refresh for IBM i 7.6 and 7.5, introducing Whitney and the other architects during the webinar.
In March, Amy Blea was promoted to the position of chief of staff for IBM Power. Previously, the Austin, Texas resident held the position of senior product manager for IBM i modernization for just under a year. As chief of staff for IBM Power, she will “work with executive leadership to turn strategic priorities into coordinated action across the business.”
Another name whom IBM i professionals will likely hear more in the future is Yan Zhuo, who has the role of product management leader for IBM i. Based out of Chicago, Zhuo has been in her current job since early 2025, and she has taken a more visible role with IBM i product management in recent months.
Dan Sundt has been an IBM i product manager in Rochester since 2021, and his role hasn’t changed. Sundt is primarily responsible for managing the Power Virtual Server product line. Sundt used to work alongside Douglas Gibbs, who took over as IBM i product manager when Alison Butterill retired at the end of 2023. Previously, Gibbs, who works out of Markham, Ontario, was the offering manager for IBM Power Systems I/O, but today his LinkedIn account lists him as a delivery practice leader for IBM Technology Labs.
Meanwhile, IBM has tweaked the titles of some other folks. Specifically, IBM gave the title of senior technical systems member (STSM) to Tim Rowe and Scott Forstie, who previously were considered the business architects for development/systems management tools and the database, respectfully.
By the way, if you want to follow Will as he executes his next project, dubbed planning for retirement (P4R), you can read all about it on his new substack.
RELATED STORIES
IBM i at 35: A Walk Down Memory Lane
