IBM Upgrading Channel Partners With Consulting Services

IBM has launched an initiative to help channel partners upgrade their business and technical skills, moving them beyond selling and implementing IT products to providing more consulting services. And the company is rewarding solution providers that make the grade with as much as $100,000 in business development funds.

The effort is part of a larger program IBM unveiled Monday called the "Dynamic Infrastructure" initiative. IBM executives say the program offers IT products and services for next-generation data centers and information technology outside data centers in everything from company supply chains to energy grids to city traffic management systems.

The market opportunity for servers, software, other technologies and services to manage what IBM calls the convergence of IT and physical infrastructure will be $122 billion by 2012, according to market researcher IDC.

The Dynamic Infrastructure Specialty Program offers training and certification for solution providers in such areas as virtualization, information management and energy efficiency, areas IBM has identified as key for channel partners that want to expand their range of consulting services. The first group of channel partners, including Agilysis, Mainline Information Systems and Sirius, is just now completing the first round of certifications.

"We jumped on this, big time, because we think it's going to be huge for us," said Bob Verola, CEO of solution provider Vicom. The company was just certified as an "elite" provider of business resiliency services after completing a four-day case study test, and is working on certifications for virtualization and green technology.

"It's really having the skills to understand an organization's business objectives and then transform their environment," said Bruce Maule, director of business partner programs at IBM. "That requires deep consulting skills, deep services skills, and you have to have deep architectural skills," he said. "That's the opposite extreme of selling a box."

The new program expands on an initiative IBM announced in October called the "New Enterprise Data Center Specialty" that provides training and certification for channel partners that provide data center transformation services.

Under the new program, IBM provides education, sales, marketing and technical guidance in such areas as virtualization, information management and energy efficiency. "The requirements for this are pretty high," Maule said. Solution providers with two technical employees with enhanced architectural skills and two sales representatives with requisite consulting skills qualify for $25,000 in business development funds. Those with four such technicians and four such sales personnel qualify as "elite" level and receive $100,000. Solution provider Micro Strategies was just certified as an elite partner in "business resiliency" after 11 employees underwent training in data storage, disaster recovery and IBM Tivoli software.

"This allows us to continue on the path of becoming more solutions-focused on the infrastructure side," said CEO Anthony Bongiovanni. "It gives us the ability to be much more consultative with our customers. And it gives us tools, resources and materials to have conversations with C-level executives."

"I think this fits into the business requirements and value proposition solution providers have to deliver today," agreed Dave Lasseter, VP of power systems at Mainline, which is close to being certified at the elite level for assessing clients' business requirements.

Mainline's Lasseter and Micro Strategies' Bongiovanni each anticipate using the $100,000 to expand their marketing efforts, while Vicom's Verola plans to hire another consultant with business resiliency and virtualization experience.

About 125 IBM partners have expressed interest in the program, Maule said, and the company expects to enlist about 150 this year and another 100 to 150 in 2010.

Monday's news also included a number of new products, including the IBM Service Management Industry Solutions suite of service management software and services tailored for seven industries, the IBM System Director software for managing physical and virtual data center assets, and the IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management software for automating and reporting on energy consumption by non-IT systems such as a building's air conditioning system.