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IBM: Partner Bonanza

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Sandhya
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IBM India, a subsidiary of IBM (International Business Machines Corporation), was set up in September 1999. Prior to that, IBM was present in India through a joint venture, since 1992. Today, the company has established itself as one of the leaders in the IT industry. Looking at the IBM's channel business, its channel sales is headed by Mukul Mathur, who is the director for business partner organization and CSI for IBM India South Asia (ISA). Anoop Nambiar is the country manager, business partner organization for IBM India/ South Asia, while Veera Dixit is the country manager for CSI, the systems and technology group (STG), which is an infrastructure business. The system sales division is headed by Ajay Mittal.

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"I have a dedicated team of people who individually support various functions like India sales, distribution, geo expansion, channel enablement, services channel, channel program, global independent solution vendor management In India as well as for Sri Lanka and Bangladesh markets," said Nambiar.

At IBM, channel head is responsible for the appointment, development and leveraging channel to drive coverage of the market through a well trained set of business partners to drive company route-to-market objectives. The team is structured around metro and geo expansion sales teams, with regional and national channel sales leader responsible for respective business. The company has dedicated team to manage the 20 large system integrators for solution/infrastructure projects.

DIFFERENT BUSINESS UNITS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS

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Systems and Technology Group (STG): Alok Ohrie, VP, STG, IBM ISA

STG delivers value to IBM's clients with its technology innovation and expertise throughout the stack - from material sciences, processors, servers, storage and operating systems.

Software Group (SWG): Pradeep Nair, director, software group, IBM ISA

IBM SWG is the largest provider of middleware and the second-largest software business in the world. Offering open, scalable, secure, industry focused - software products and solutions. The IBM software portfolio includes Information Management, Tivoli, Rational and WebSphere products.

Global Technology Services (GTS): Ashish Kumar, GM, global technology services, IBM ISA

GTS is a services division within IBM that helps clients integrate information technology with business value-from the business transformation and industry expertise of IBM global business services to hosting, infrastructure, technology design and training services. The focus of GTS today is to offer a standardized, market-driven portfolio.

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Global Delivery (GD): Suhas Bhide, GM, global delivery, India, IBM

IBM Global Delivery is a key element of IBM's globally integrated capability. GD enables IBM's core on-demand strategy by providing end-to-end IT infrastructure management services remotely, leveraging global processes and tools combined with world-class infrastructure, and highly skilled IT professionals.

Global Financing (GF): Sapan Jain, VP, IBM Global Financing (IGF), IBM ISA

IBM Global Financing provides flexible and attractive financing and leasing options to free up the capital necessary to fund other IT investments. It helps customers through greater access to the hardware, software, solutions and services essential to compete in the global marketplace.

General Business (GE): Ganesh Margabandhu, VP, general business, geographic expansion and inside sales, IBM ISA

General Business represents over two-third of the India/South Asia market potential.

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India Research Laboratory (IRL): Dr Manish Gupta, director, IBM Research, India; chief technologist, IBM ISA

IBM IRL has been driven by one mission-to advance state-of-the-art breakthroughs in IT through research in software and services, and to provide leadership by delivering innovations to IBM's clients globally. Co-located in New Delhi and Bengaluru, the IBM IRL is into a wide array of research areas. IRL focuses on areas critical to expanding the country's technology infrastructure.

India Software Lab (ISL): Dr P Gopalakrishnan, VP, India software lab at IBM

India Software Lab is one of the six largest software group development labs worldwide, that develops products across IBM Software Group brands: WebSphere, Lotus, Rational, Tivoli and Information Management. The Lab is also actively engaged in the development of system software-AIX, Linux and z/OS. ISL also advocates senior technical consultants for customer engagements, thus ensuring customer success and growth.

MODIFIED PARTNERS PROGRAM

IBM has been following a three pronged strategy in India. Being relevant in the Indian market, aligning the company to India's national agenda by becoming an essential part of key transformations taking place in the country and creating core competencies in the global delivery organization. All its billing is done through 5 national distributors. They cater to around 1200+ resellers across the country, who sells the products. Within the set of resellers, there are around 20 large system integrators pan India. Today the company is working with around 65 ISV partners too. It has also made some modifications into the existing model. The company has launched a new enablement framework, through which partners can scale up their skills under initiatives like Boot Camp, Fighter Pilot and Top Gun. Additionally, the company has put in place a Reseller Growth Fund for its top resellers to support them on demand generation activities in their respective locations and among their existing customers. Even for the distributors, it has Distributor Growth Fund, which could be utilized for similar objectives by rest of the resellers.

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It has a new financing program, including buyback of used equipment, attractive lease terms and delayed payment terms to help current credit-qualified competitive customers in India migrate to upgradeable systems of IBM's new Power family of workload optimized servers and storage offerings. This program also includes IBM cash-back for new or used equipment and attractive lease terms. It helped partners in closing many competitive deals.

In January 2011, IBM introduced a partner program called Blue Thunder. The Blue Thunder program is designed to recognize customer-facing business partners who identify and pursue sales to new customers or new workloads in existing IBM clients.

PARTNERS TRAINING PROGRAM

IBM has a huge partner network in India. It has close to about 1,200 partners. These partners are broadly classified into three categories-system integrators, independent software vendors (ISVs) and resellers. The first two partnerships are at the global and the regional levels. The resellers aim at offering a complete IBM solution which comprises hardware, software and services. IBM PartnerWorld is a premiere partnership program for application partners which is designed to offer industry specific resources and benefits that are critical to success in the market. IBM PartnerWorld also helps partners to succeed in the marketplace and strengthens the relationship with partners. Business partners who invest the most in IBM's technologies attain high level of benefits and resources. This investment is recognized through three PartnerWorld membership levels: Member Partners, Advanced Partners and Premier Partners.

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Nambiar says, "We plan to leverage our triple play of hardware, software and services to provide differentiated offerings that deliver business outcomes to our clients further strengthen our partner community by constantly training them through certification courses about our latest offerings. We want them to move up the ladder from selling boxes to solutions and be perceived as consultants rather than sales representatives."

IBM also offers Business Partner Education Opportunities by allowing business partners to purchase the IBM Education Pack online account at a discount. It also facilitates mainline purchases and helps in reselling the IBM Education Pack in bulk.

CERTIFICATION AND ACCREDITATION FOR PARTNERS

Business partners are IBM's primary route to the small and medium size market segment. IBM Solution Accelerator incentive is a new channel incentive for selling combined software and systems and/or business solutions. In addition, about 1% in fees can be earned when clients finance their solution through IBM Global Financing. The incentives are designed to help partners grow their businesses and continue to work with IBM to deliver simplified approaches to the complex challenges clients are facing.

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IBM offers Professional Certifications which helps validate whether the Business Partners have developed the sales, installation and support skills that are needed to cope within an increasingly complex marketplace. On the other hand, the IBM Business Partners that are selected should have a comprehensive portfolio with certified skills. "Our partner community has been a very integral part of our business as the mid market business is completely driven by them. We are constantly investing in our partner community by introducing several training programs and certification courses. Our plans are to strengthen our partner community as strong as we can by constantly training them through certification courses about our latest offerings. We want them to move up the ladder from selling boxes to solutions and should be perceived as consultants rather than sales representatives," mentioned Nambiar.

INCENTIVE PROGRAM FOR CHANNEL

Partners play a very important role at IBM. Over 45% of IBM's 1,000 smarter planet references have come through the partners. This in itself shows the powerful outreach that their partners have to offer. One of the incentive schemes for partners is the IBM Solution Accelerator incentive-a new channel incentive for selling combined software and systems and/or business solutions. The incentive has two elements:

Software and systems reward a 5% incremental rebate for selling eligible IBM systems and a 15% incremental rebate for selling eligible software together to a single client.

Business solutions reward an additional 10% rebate for selling a solution aimed at a particular IT challenge on the eligible software content for the solution. In addition, about 1% in fees can be earned when clients finance their solution through IBM Global Financing.

MOVING FORWARD

The company's Business Partner Organization in IBM will activate/enable 1,500 business partners that sell into the mid-market, establish dedicated mid-market segment focused BP resources, tailor mid-market partner incentives and simplify and integrate partner program.

It is planned to further expand their express offerings which consist of a range of hardware, software and service offerings that are designed, developed and priced to meet the IT needs of small and medium businesses. These offerings help to address the clients for business solutions, infrastructure solutions, point products and expand the partner ecosystem to include regional system integrators and solution providers. "We are looking at having local marketing demand generation that will include city-level 360 degree marketing in 53 cities, supported by city level advertising in select cities. An increased focus on channel co-marketing and scaled up mid-market program framework (MMPF) execution is also part of our ongoing efforts," concluded Nambiar.

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