Behind the neatly combed hair, round-rimmed glasses and the still-boyish face lies a fighter. Not that you'd notice it in the handful of public appearances he's made over the past year, but behind closed doors, that competitive spirit has earned IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano the title of the IT industry's heavyweight champ.

Take one morning about four months ago when Palmisano stepped into an IBM conference room, faced the company's top 300 managers, threw off the gloves and came down hard. IBM's e-business on-demand srategy, Palmisano's brainchild and IBM's cornerstone initiative in which hardware and software run at optimization through self-monitoring and automation,had stalled. Few partners and, even worse, few customers really knew what it meant outside of a marketing assault that did little but create mystery. Every executive in the room, he mandated in an increasingly loud voice, was now responsible for driving e-business on demand into two customer accounts within several months.

"He got really irate about it," recalls Jocelyne Attal, the former vice president of IBM's on-demand operating environment, who left the company on good terms in September for a position at Gateway. "He was jumping all over."

While Palmisano was jumping, the managers must have been listening %85 very closely. Shortly after that a funny thing began to happen in the channel. IBM's solution provider partners say they were inundated with e-mails, marketing campaigns and Webinars that brought clarity to a previously murky message. The company set ordering processes and pricing structures around e-business on-demand integrated products. And IBM finally began shipping the software, such as Tivoli integrated with WebSphere, to provide intelligence to the system and tie the whole strategy together.

"That speaks well to Palmisano's commitment to push through an initiative he feels is critically important to partners and IBM overall," says Leif Morin, president of Key Information Systems, a solution provider in Woodland Hills, Calif. "I understand what he's talking about. I couldn't say that 12 months ago."

Dave Traxler, president and CEO of Venture SystemSource, a $60 million IBM solution provider partner in Ridgeland, Miss., also credits Palmisano's push with moving the plan forward.

"During the course of the year we were wondering where the beef was; we really couldn't get into it," Traxler says. "But now that they put some software around it, I really think we're going to make hay with the on-demand strategy. Every marketing campaign we run tries to play into that strategy."

While Palmisano's predecessor, Lou Gerstner,with his penchant for stretch limos, finely tailored suits, bodyguards and do-or-die attitude toward employee performance,seemed cold and aloof, Palmisano is not afraid to doff his jacket and roll up his sleeves. He willingly jumps into the trenches to articulate IBM's and its customers' needs, exposes his passion to a broad range of employees and inspires them to execute.

"He can scream and jump. It's in his body, in his voice and in his brain," Attal says. "I've never seen anyone at his level, in such a large company, with his passion. The guy has the passion of someone driving his own entrepreneurship."

IBM is as much Palmisano's as anyone's. At 52, he has spent more than half his life and his entire career not just working at IBM, but turning around numerous divisions, including the server enterprise and data-storage business. He helped build Global Services into IBM's most profitable unit. For all of Gerstner's brilliance in turning around a dying company, hiring Palmisano as his successor was his masterstroke. During a relentlessly sluggish economy, Palmisano has pushed the company to continue creating innovative products, maintain sales, focus on a wide range of solution providers and lead more than 300,000 employees into the next chapter of IBM's storied history.

"He has taken Gerstner's strategy to the next level," says Harvey Najim, president and CEO of Sirius Computer Solutions, one of IBM's largest midrange partners. "You had a guy in Lou who could pitch a no-hitter and you have a guy like Sam who can hit 78 home runs. You really can't say one is better than the other. I loved Lou, but you don't hear anyone saying, 'I wish Lou was back' or 'Who is Sam?' "

After nearly two years on the job, no one is asking who Sam Palmisano is or questioning his ability. Despite the demands he faces, including the monumental task of tying IBM's varied product line into e-business on demand, Palmisano has not lost the traits that have helped him scale the ranks. Those who work with him say he continues to check sales reports weekly, maintains his sense of humor, descends the ranks to work with employees who need a boost reaching goals, and steps in to convince customers that IBM is their best vendor and partner. He rarely asks anybody to do anything he hasn't already done.

"When I need him to make a CEO call on a customer, he says 'Sure,' " says Mike Borman, general manager of IBM's Global Business Partners, stopping abruptly after the last word to emphasize Palmisano's trust in his employees' decisions. And that trust, Borman says, scales down to the channel. "He views IBM's sales team and the solution provider partners as part of the same team. He wants solution providers to deliver as well as the IBM sales team."