IBM Offering Channel Partners Stimulus Funding Guidance

IBM is holding education and networking events for solution providers about opportunities created by the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, part of the vendor's efforts to help channel partners snag a piece of the stimulus spending.

Last week, the presentations were held at IBM facilities in Austin, Texas and Dallas. Similar events are planned for Chicago, Boston, New York and San Mateo, Calif., as well as a Webcast version of the presentations.

"We're a small channel reseller. The challenge is trying to understand what's out there, how to go after the [stimulus] projects and try to research the opportunities," said John Alday, president of Cima Solutions Group, a Dallas-based solution provider and systems integrator that focuses on the public sector.

Alday attended the Austin presentation. "It was great," he said. "These are things we could never get on our own."

IBM has actively worked to help partners take advantage of the stimulus funding. Earlier this year, for example, IBM offered $2 billion in financing for business and government customers in the U.S. to cover IT purchases that might be covered by the stimulus spending.

"IBM has made a real effort to provide resources to help us position IBM-based solutions toward stimulus-funded projects," said Meg Ayers, an account executive with Titan Solutions Group, an Austin-based solution provider and systems integrator. Ayers handles the solution provider's state government business.

The seminars generally cover three areas, said Connie Shoemake, vice president of economic stimulus for North America, who led the Dallas and Austin presentations. They outline where the money is being spent, such as for transportation, education and broadband communications projects; how channel partners can develop solutions around that spending; and the mechanics of obtaining funding through grants and other mechanisms.

One goal of the presentations is to help channel partners understand how IT can be a component of stimulus-funded projects that are not IT-specific, such as projects in utilities and transportation. "That's where I'm trying to connect the dots right now," Ayers said after attending the Austin event.

The seminars also illustrate how the main spending targets for the stimulus bill, formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), dovetail with IBM's "Smarter Planet" initiative to develop IT for leading-edge applications in health care, transportation, energy, utilities and other areas. IBM executives have been touting the opportunities the Smarter Planet initiative provides channel partners.

Shoemake said another opportunity for channel partners is selling IBM asset management and business intelligence software to help their customers track ARRA spending.

IBM is helping Cima Solutions put together a plan to go after project management and data center consolidation "green IT" opportunities. "That's a huge value for us," said Alday.

IBM also offered attendees research identifying the 14 states that are likely to receive the biggest shares of the ARRA funding, said Trevoris Morgan, market and sales vice president at Database-Brothers Inc., an Austin-based ISV that develops analysis software that runs on IBM's DB2 database.

Morgan, who attended the Austin presentation, said IBM was even able to pinpoint specific companies within certain vertical industries that are likely to receive ARRA funds. "And we made several contacts within IBM that will be very valuable going forward," she said.