IBM Gives Its Seal of Approval to Key Information Systems’ Innovation Center

Key Information Systems, one of the dominant resellers of System i products in the Western half of the United States, has received Big Blue’s blessing for its Business Partner Innovation Center, which is located at Key’s new headquarters in the Los Angeles suburb of Woodland Hills.

Key is downstream from Avnet‘s Partner Solutions unit, which is part of that company’s Technology Solutions distribution business. Key has been an IBM business partner since 2000 and an Avnet reseller since 1999, and has won IBM’s Beacon Award for being the top business partner in its region. And like IBM, Key understands that having a data center facility crammed with all of IBM’s goodies is the key to winning business from independent software vendors and their customers as well as System i shops that grow their own code. And, because System i shops use a mix of platforms, Key’s innovation center has a mix of those as well.

Specifically, the center has an i5 520 running i5/OS V5R4 with four logical partitions; it also has one AS/400 Model 170 running OS/400 V5R2 and another running V5R1 so ISVs and users can test their code on older iron and software releases. The machines can be tested running Vision Solutions‘s Orion Suite and OS Director clustering tools. On the Unix side, the center has a System p5 520 running AIX 5.3 with two partitions, and an RS/6000 Model 610 running the earlier AIX V5.2 release. On the Windows front, Key has set up a System x445 Xeon server with three partitions (created using VMware ESX Server) and another x445 cluster that is set up using Marathon Technologies‘ everRun HA and FT clustering tools. The machines can use a variety of IBM disk arrays and Brocade switches. This site is also being used to host a set of managed continuity services, by the way.

Key has also announced that Avnet Technology Solutions has given the company the top partner award for the western United States sales region, thanks in large part to its 54 percent increase in reseller sales through Avnet. “Our relationship with Avnet has been a long and productive one,” explains Pete Elliot, Key’s director of marketing. “Key shares a fundamental commitment with Avnet to bringing innovative technology solutions to our clients that enable them to run their businesses more efficiently and profitably.”