IBM targets users through partner network

NEW ORLEANS - IBM  is putting more weight behind two key objectives: delivering "on-demand" products and services so users can adopt more flexible, utility-like infrastructures; and developing products tailored for small and midsize businesses.

To bring its partners up to speed with this agenda, IBM last week unveiled a slew of products and services at its annual PartnerWorld conference.

IBM depends heavily on its 90,000 business partners - a prolific group responsible for producing 31% of Big Blue's annual revenue. By embedding, installing and customizing IBM wares, independent software vendors and resellers bring in customers IBM can't get to, because many are too small for IBM to reach through direct sales.

Partners are critical to taking e-business to the next phase, said Mike Borman, IBM's general manager of global business partners. Businesses need to be able to respond quickly when customer demand shifts or a potential competitor emerges, Borman said. The challenge for IBM and its partners is to help businesses integrate IT systems and processes internally as well as with customer and supplier systems.

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NEW ORLEANS - IBM  is putting more weight behind two key objectives: delivering "on-demand" products and services so users can adopt more flexible, utility-like infrastructures; and developing products tailored for small and midsize businesses.

To bring its partners up to speed with this agenda, IBM last week unveiled a slew of products and services at its annual PartnerWorld conference.

IBM depends heavily on its 90,000 business partners - a prolific group responsible for producing 31% of Big Blue's annual revenue. By embedding, installing and customizing IBM wares, independent software vendors and resellers bring in customers IBM can't get to, because many are too small for IBM to reach through direct sales.

Partners are critical to taking e-business to the next phase, said Mike Borman, IBM's general manager of global business partners. Businesses need to be able to respond quickly when customer demand shifts or a potential competitor emerges, Borman said. The challenge for IBM and its partners is to help businesses integrate IT systems and processes internally as well as with customer and supplier systems.

"There's plenty of on-demand opportunity for all of us," Borman said. "New services opportunities for consultants and integrators, new application opportunities for software companies, and new hardware and middleware opportunities for resellers, solution providers and distributors - all of which will help make our customers more competitive, productive and cost-efficient."

IBM is investing $100 million in on-demand resources for its business partners, Borman told attendees. The company announced new training resources; assessment tools for analyzing customers' on-demand requirements; sales tools such as customer presentations and references; and the availability of 26 on-demand product offerings for partners to sell, including IBM's Express line of infrastructure software for small and midsize businesses, its eServer BladeCenter family and Linux clustering gear.

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On the small and midsize business front, Big Blue unveiled the IBM Small and Medium Business Advantage - a $500 million campaign aimed at helping IBM partners penetrate the small and midsize (SMB) market.

"SMB is the fastest-growing customer segment in the industry, with no dominant market-share leader," Borman said.

Other announcements at PartnerWorld:

• Additions to IBM's Express line of infrastructure software, designed for small and midsize companies with between 100 and 1,000 employees. DB2 Express, which runs on Linux and Windows, features self-tuning and self-configuring characteristics to reduce database management complexity. IBM Tivoli Storage Resource Manager Express installs in as few as 15 minutes and is designed for deployment on single-processor desktops, the company said. Two Lotus Domino Express products tackle e-mail and collaborative applications.
  
  
• IBM Community Tools is Big Blue's new suite of peer-to-peer applications for connecting IBM eServer iSeries users with each other and with IBM business partners via one-to-many instant messaging. IBM's goal is to make it easier to exchange technical information and resources. The suite includes a messaging client that combines IBM MQ Event Broker for broadcast messaging, IBM Lotus Sametime for enterprise instant messaging, and Web services running on WebSphere and DB2.
  
  
• IBM Solutions Grid for Business Partners provides a grid-computing environment in which vendors can run their applications in a simulated distributed computing environment. Giving its partners access to IBM testing infrastructure will help vendors deliver grid products more quickly because they won't have to build test setups, IBM said.
  
  
• IBM announced that Nortel is building advanced LAN switches for IBM's eServer BladeCenter line. The Nortel switch modules will enable traffic management among the server blades and let users consolidate dedicated switches, routers and appliances that provide traffic management, IBM said.
  
  
• New storage products, including the TotalStorage FAStT 900 midrange disk storage array; and TotalStorage Linear Tape-Open Ultrium 2 drive, designed for archiving and disaster recovery, which doubles the capacity and speed of previous models, according to IBM.
  
  
• IBM's software group unveiled "Web services on-demand" programs for developers, customers and business partners. The goal is to improve Web services skills and speed up Web services adoption in the financial services, insurance and manufacturing industries, IBM said.

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