TheCUBE hits Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas to extract signal from the noise at the recently IBM Edge 2013 event. In one of our live broadcast interviews, we caught up with Karey Keiley, Marketing Director at Arrow. Though Arrow was a huge presence at the event, Keiley admitted being a little nervous at Edge because there were a lot of people, the event was very big, and feared her team could get lost in the mix. Nevertheless, she and her team had a lot of fun.

Arrow is a premier distributor for IBM, focused primarily on five different solution areas; business analytics, security, cloud computing, risk management, and business social networks. They capture the growing market trends in datacenter convergence, security, mobility etc. to help their clients expand their reach and depth in the market through enablement, lead generation, sales support, and financing support.

Right now, Arrow is driving datacenter convergence. It is a result-oriented initiative that really gives heft to what customers have to say, what they need, and what they’re looking for, instead of just looking at the product. They work backwards in terms of technologies and solutions to allow their enablement strategies reach their channel partners, keeping in mind what consumers want and allowing them to approach consumers more effectively.

Keiley also shared how the cloud is less mysterious this year than it was last year as people are embracing it more and more. People no longer think it’s new; rather, they see it as a “route to market.” Their partners and customers are learning how to deploy solutions and methodologies and business practices through the cloud not only to save money but to make money, as well as become more competitive in the marketplace. Arrow’s partners are really transforming themselves to take advantage of cloud.

Marketing has also immensely changed in the last five years, thanks to the emergence of social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn. It doesn’t mean outbound telephone calls and mails are going away but social media has really transformed the way businesses shape relationships with customers. People today make decisions on the web without mails and telemarketers and people around them, so it’s important for Arrow to help their partners to have a presence online. And not only does social media help Arrow market products, it’s also a way for them to reach talented people to work for them.

Watch the interview with Karey Keiley below.