IBM Tivoli Looks To PartnerWorld To Expand Channel Storage Business

The 2003 Race To Win sales incentive program is offering $1 million in incentives throughout the year to solution providers that sell Tivoli storage management software as well as other Tivoli software products, said Mike Gerentine, director of channel strategy and development at Tivoli.

Over 150 prizes are expected to be given away in 2003, including race car driving experiences at top raceways, Gerentine said.

For 2003, IBM Tivoli is taking a three-pronged approach towards increasing its channel business, Gerentine said.

First, IBM Tivoli plans to focus its efforts on growing the business of existing solution providers, said Gerentine. The company has identified about 250 solution providers worldwide with which it will cooperate on developing customized business plans, and on other ways to help them double their IBM Tivoli business, he said.

Second, the company plans to select 800 to 1,000 solution providers worldwide that currently sell IBM's Tivoli storage products, but for which these sales total less than $50,000 per year. The company will offer such solution providers co-marketing materials and funding through value-added distributors like Ingram Micro, Tech Data and KeyLink, Gerentine said.

Third, IBM Tivoli will target current IBM hardware and software solution providers as well as elite partners of Veritas and Legato that don't sell Tivoli storage management software, said Gerentine.

"We want to grow a few hundred new partners, not thousands," Gerentine said. "We want to focus on quality, not quantity."

On the product side, the company unveiled its IBM Tivoli Storage Resource Manager Express Edition, the first of a new line of software aimed at the midmarket, company executives said.

The new application helps automate the management of storage resources in heterogeneous storage networking environments, the executives said. It also gives charge-back capabilities to track storage usage by departments or large users and defines actions to be taken automatically in response to events, they said.