IBM Chases Power Customers In EMEA With Partner Incentives
January 9, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
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As you know from listening to the news, the European economy is not exactly roaring at the moment, so Big Blue is kicking off 2012 by trying to scare up a little Power Systems business in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa with a new cash incentive program that is over and above the deals the company currently has in place. Under the 2012 Power ISV Solution Connection Program, in announcement letter ZA12-1004, business partners that work with ISVs to find and close Power Systems deals involving the IBM i, AIX, or Linux operating systems will get an additional rebate as part of the deal, and the good news is that the rebates are larger on machines configured with IBM i than they are when set up with AIX or Linux. On the BladeCenter JS12 and PS7XX blade servers, IBM is offering $1,200 (or the equivalent set at an exchange rate as specified in the announcement letter) per blade configured with IBM i and $750 per blade configured with AIX or Linux. On Power 710, 720, 730, and 740 rack and tower servers, a machine sold by a business partner in conjunction with a certified Power Systems ISV can get that business partner a $2,000 rebate for IBM i machinery and $1,500 for AIX or Linux setups. On the Power 750, the rebate is $4,500 for an IBM i box and $3,000 for an AIX or Linux box. The rebate in the deal is restricted to a maximum of three servers per customer. The deal can be applied to machines sitting in the reseller’s inventory and any backlogged orders not yet fulfilled and any special-bid deals a reseller might be cooking up. It cannot be applied to upgrades or to machines that the reseller plans to use for itself, such as using it to run managed services that are in turn sold to customers to host ISV software. Used machines sold by the reseller do not qualify for this special rebate, either. This Power Systems rebate deal runs from January 1 through December 31 this year. Knowing that IBM is giving EMEA Power Systems resellers some deal sweeteners means that customers can compel the reseller to go Dutch and give them a piece of the action. As far as I know, this deal is only available in EMEA, but if you are in the Americas or Asia/Pacific region, you might want to ask your reseller to argue for similar treatment and for a similar piece of the action.
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