|
Lakeview Technology Adds Business Partners
by Dan Burger
Lakeview Technology, one of the dominant
vendors of managed availability, data replication, and clustering solutions for the midrange platforms, has
recently signed up three new business partners. The partners--Mainline Information Systems, of Tallahassee, Florida; Esource Consulting, of Indianapolis, Indiana;
and Kyrus, of Charlotte, North Carolina--bring a greater
localized coverage for companies exploring high availability solutions, and added expertise in specific
applications and vertical markets.
"Adding business partners gives customers another source to go to for high availability," says Lakeview's
vice president of North and South American sales, Bob Johnson. "All of our partners are certified partners.
They go through rigorous training to become certified on implementing our installation.
In 2001, over 85 percent of Lakeview's new business was generated through partners that have the expertise
to sell, market, and implement a high availability solution. Johnson refers to the business partner channel as
"our go-to-market strategy."
Lakeview has been developing its partner sales channel since 1998, and now lists 32 partners. Johnson says
many are "big-hitting IBM business partners" that are selling and implementing Lakeview products. "They
bring the technical expertise to the customers."
Partners have expertise built around offerings that the manufacturer may not possess. Mainline, for
instance, has expertise built around solutions from Infinium, J.D.
Edwards, JDA Software Group, and Lawson, among others. Availability is closely tied with the
applications that a business is running on the iSeries and any other server platform, for that matter.
"Managing availability is crucial," Johnson says. "Businesses worldwide are finding that application and
data availability is a requirement, not an option, in order to compete in today's information-dependent
economy."
Mainline is expected to help Lakeview on a national basis. It has offices and resources throughout the
country, and has been an IBM business partner for more than 10 years. It is a remarketer of enterprise
servers, storage systems, and printers, and also provides application software, tools, and consulting
expertise.
Esource Consulting has been working with the AS/400 and iSeries since it was announced as the AS/400,
in 1988, and has considerable experience implementing new technology and managing customers' growth
on the platform. It is one of the few IBM business partners that is IBM certified for e-business. Because of
its expertise in Citrix and Windows Terminal Server implementations, Esource is expected to play an
important role in the implementation of Lakeview's MIMIX for Windows product that will be rolled out
this spring at the COMMON user group conference.
Esource provides localized support in Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Kentucky.
Kyrus offers a wide range of solutions and services across five major market segments--supermarket, retail,
hospitality, education, and technology. Its strength lies in providing comprehensive products and solutions
that address nearly any retail need, including point-of-sale, store management, and enterprise-server
solutions. The company is IBM's largest provider of point-of-sale systems and is an IBM premier business
partner and solution provider. It has received the top honor awarded by IBM to its business partners for ten
consecutive years.
|
