IBM Puts Meat On Solutions' Bones

So what does this mean for IBM partners? Many are already on the solutions bandwagon, well aware that customers aren't looking to buy WebSphere or Tivoli products simply because they are cool. Savvy VARs are already playing a consultative role, first figuring out how to help a customer best tune his business, then manipulating and augmenting their IT systems underneath to reach that goal.

At IBM, the solutions-based approach, first unveiled in December, is in practical terms meaning a shift from leading sales deals with software brands. Internally, IBM has placed laser-like focus on retraining their sales forces as well as crafting technology solutions that address repeatable pain points in specific vertical industries, such as banks and hospitals. So far, IBM has rolled out 62 such solutions--three new categories this week, and each with a level of granularity that is somewhat astounding. For example, under the heading IBM Middleware for Energy and Utilities, you can find process solutions called Contact Center Optimizer, Asset Operations and Mobile Workforce Management. For IBM Middleware for Government Solutions, you've got something called eForms and Record Management or Public Safety.

These solutions sound like applications to many folks, but don't say that to IBM. It will tell you, to a person, that it is not in the applications business. For some time, it's been part and parcel of an IBM marketing messaging that also brands Microsoft a bad ISV partner for pushing its own stable of competing applications. As IBM explains it, these industry solutions are extensions of their core middleware that represent processes common to each vertical, such as claims processing in the insurance industry. The idea is for IBM partners to build on and extend these prebuilt components, which will theoretically cut down on ISV development time and free integrators to focus on value higher up the stack.

"[These solutions] are not business-logic. They are not supply chain or logistics applications," Mills told VARBusiness during an interview Monday, April 19. "This is the integration infrastructure. We are building things that ISVs can use and can stop building themselves." In days past, ISVs used to write their own file systems into an application, he explained, and that has over time ceased to occur.

These prebuilt solutions also take the place of lower-level plumbing that systems integrators are often called upon to build, Mills says.

"Our desire is to bring the labor cost down," he says. "There will be no lack of work left for the integrators."