IBM Honors Partners At Beacon Awards

The IBM Beacon award ceremonies held Monday evening during the company's annual PartnerWorld conference was an outgrowth of the Lotus Beacon Awards which started several years ago to honor the contributions of application development and integration firms. Today, the awards recognize a much broader spectrum of solutions and business partners including those integrating and building solutions on all of IBM's software offerings, including WebSphere, Tivoli, Lotus and the company's database and middleware products. IBM's Lotus group honored several partners at its own annual conference a month ago.

During his opening remarks, Massimo Bonciani, vice president of worldwide distribution channels management, stunned the audience with news he would be leaving his post to return to Europe, taking charge of the company's small business initiatives for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In his new role, the good-natured Bonciani will have responsibility for penetrating small business accounts not only with the company's software products but its entire product family.

His new role is similar to the one occupied by Greg Adams, who has responsibility for small business development in North America. French-born Gerald Karsenti will be assuming Bonciani's duties, playing a crucial role in developing IBM's software strategy, distribution policies and channel incentives.

The IBM Beacon Awards honored performance in the following categories: Excellence in Partnering; Solutions for Leveraging Information for Competitive Advantage, Best WebSphere e-Business Solution; Greatest Innovation in e-Business and Greatest Mid-market success, along with Distinguished Achievement Awards for three major geographies. IBM said it received more than 130 nominations in 23 countries. (Editors from VARBusiness and its sister publication CRN served as judges for the contest along with industry analysts and IBM executives.)

Among the winners were: Key Information Systems, Tech Frameworks Inc., Andersen, Datatrend, NetSetGo, Digital Union, Sysinct, Mesiniaga Berhad, Tectrade, Grupo Pissa and Silicon Plains Technologies.

IBM's top software brass attended the event to honor the software solution providers, including Robert LeBlanc, head of Tivoli, and Al Zollar, head of Lotus.