IBM Helps Partners Learn New Data Center Skills

Published: October 20, 2008

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

For as long as I have been watching the IBM midrange, the company has been trying to push more and more gear through its reseller channel and put the burden of training for sales, configuration, and support onto the partner channel. Business partners grouse about ever-lowering margins, and the pressure that comes from Moore's Law, which makes all aspects of computing that have to do with electronics cheaper as people costs go up every year.

The spread between the two is where the growth in the IT market has come from.

But, if you are a business partner or an IT vendor, you can only chase the revenue opportunity by investing in training so the sales and marketing teams can walk the walk and talk the talk to peddle the latest tech. To that end, IBM has announced a new "enterprise data center specialty" focus area for business partners, and is giving them the chance to get the skills they need to help companies transform their data centers to be more efficient and to cram more gear and applications in the same or a smaller power envelope. In short, this is not about simply selling a server any more.

Backing up this data center specialty for business partners, IBM is offering a business development fund that helps partners market the services they gain expertise in as well as helping them acquire market intelligence, certification and training, and even cover the payroll for specialists. IBM has not said how large this pool of funds is or how many partners will be able to access it, but does say that partners can get anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000 in business development and training funds.

IBM is also offering what it calls lab services, which lets partners get mentoring from IBM researchers on new technologies; these lab services are being offered in North America, Western Europe, and China. (IBM is in love with China, in case you haven't noticed.) IBM has also created a set of assessment tools to help partners go into the data centers of their customers and figure out how they can rejigger their data centers. And, the ultimate in gravy for partners: Those who get the highest levels of certification in the enterprise data center area will be allowed to use the super-secret IBM Deal Hub, a presales system that can speed up the deal flow and therefore sales.

As for i shops, these services are probably only relevant for the largest iSeries, System i, and Power Systems i customers--and these are often supported directly by Big Blue themselves. It is hard to imagine IBM turning these accounts over to partners, but IBM might be willing to let partners in on the deal if, by working together, more deals can be made.

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