Participant Overview
Guido Bartels
Chairman
GridWise Alliance
Guido Bartels, General Manager of IBM's Global Energy and Utilities industry, is responsible for managing IBM's business and strategic initiatives with the energy industry, including regulated energy utilities, and the unregulated companies providing generation, energy wholesaling, and energy services. In addition, Bartels and his worldwide team work closely with customers to bring IBM’s innovative technology, services and solutions to the energy industry.
Bartels is also the Chairman of the GridWise™ Alliance, a consortium of public and private stakeholders who are collaborating to provide technology solutions to support the US Department of Energy (DOE) vision to modernize the electric grid. The scope of the GridWise™ Alliance is directly aligned with an IBM corporate initiative with Bartels is leading around building an Intelligent Utility Network.
Prior to assuming his current position at IBM in January 2005, Bartels was the EMEA (Europe, Middle-East & Africa) Vice President for Pervasive Wireless Solutions in IBM. Under his leadership a new business was developed for IBM, which successfully capitalized on the market opportunities associated with the emergence of wireless technologies. As a result of Bartels’ efforts spearheading IBM’s early focus on wireless and pervasive computing, IBM is now widely recognised as a leader in providing end to end wireless solutions to enterprises and operators.
Previous to his Pervasive Wireless Solutions role, Bartels led global operations for IBM’s Industrial Sector, a business unit that focuses on serving the largest companies in manufacturing and process industry segments. During his early years at IBM, Bartels held various international executive positions in sales and marketing, mainly in the manufacturing and process industry segments.
Prior to joining IBM late 1988, Bartels was one of the leaders of a start-up company which pioneered with a new business model in the then emerging Personal Computer market. The unique business model bypassed various existing distribution channels via an advanced and early EDI implementation, and as such, enabled the start-up to act as a direct intermediary between the PC manufacturers and its end customers in both the private and public sector.
Guido Bartels is a Dutch citizen and holds a MBA degree in business economics from the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. He is married, has two young children and currently lives with his family in Connecticut, USA.