Arrow's IBM Group Looks To Weave Solution Provider, ISV Ties

Next week, the distributor plans to launch an ISV portal that would enable solution providers to search for applications. In addition, Arrow’s IBM Group, formerly Support Net, is working with an ISV on an end-user marketing campaign, the first time the distributor has embarked on a program targeted toward VARs’ customers.

Arrow still won’t sell products to end users, but it plans to leverage any generated leads to solution providers, said Eric Williams, executive vice president of the IBM Group at Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions.

Arrow’s IBM Group has signed a distribution agreement with SCImage, as opposed to playing matchmaker between the ISV and solution providers, as it had done in the past. It’s the first vertical-focused ISV that Arrow’s IBM Group has signed, but others could follow if the SCImage deal is successful, Williams said at the distributor’s annual May Days conference last week in Indianapolis.

“We don’t do a lot of application software. We do horizontal--with IBM software, Legato, Symantec, Veritas--but we see a combination of [horizontal and vertical developers] going forward, depending on the goals and objectives of the ISV,” Williams said.

The initiative likely will lead to future ISV marketing campaigns as Arrow looks to drive more hardware revenue by promoting vertical market solutions, Williams said. The ISV portal has about 12 companies listed, but Arrow hopes to increase that number to more than 50, he said.

Solution providers at May Days said Arrow’s ISV initiatives will fuel growth for the distributor, IBM and themselves. Jeff Acton, vice president of sales at Alternative Technology Solutions, Orion, Mich., said generating demand at the end-user level makes sense.

“They’re not going after our existing customers. They’re only going after what we call prospects, where we have a limited touch space,” Acton said. “We’re a small organization. It’s a matter of trust. If you trust them, there’s only upside for us.”

Arrow’s ISV initiative has helped introduce developers such as SCImage to solution providers, Acton said.

“We have a health-care focus. We have customers in that space, but not necessarily in the same pillar of SCImage. SCImage is sold more at the clinical level. We could introduce them to a [larger] health-care organization,” Acton said.

About 10 percent of SCImage’s revenue comes from resellers, and the company wants to drive that to at least 25 percent, said Richard Taylor, national sales director at the Los Altos, Calif.-based ISV. SCImage chose Arrow because it had minimal success working with solution providers itself, he said.

“It was disappointing for them and disappointing for us. We just don’t have enough manpower to support them,” Taylor said.

SCImage wants to leverage solution providers’ relationships with health care customers at the corporate level, he added. “We don’t expect IT resellers to sell to a radiologist. But they have built solutions on a single, shared infrastructure, where [SCImage] can be,” he said.

Arrow’s IBM Group has rolled out several programs to increase solution providers’ business with IBM ISVs, including a Smart Shuffle program launched last December that offers financial incentives to IBM System i solution providers.

Seventeen resellers are participating in that program and have moved past the introduction phase into a demand-generation phase, said Mike Nowlan, director of marketing for Arrow’s IBM Group. “We had good response, and we expect to launch Smart Shuffle 2 in the second half of the year with a narrower list of ISVs in the [System i] team,” he said.