IBM Announces Initatives To Foster Innovation

IBM used its annual PartnerWorld conference, here in Las Vegas on Monday, to reaffirm its commitment to solution providers, telling 5,500 partners that it intends to work more collaboratively with them, as well as helping them work collaboratively among themselves, as a way to further drive innovation.

Putting its money where its mouth is, IBM executives said they will make a multibillion investment in building an "innovation ecosystem" among a variety of its business partners, including solution providers, independent software developers and systems integrators.

"Last year at this show, our theme was 'Working Without Boundaries.' This year, we are adding innovation and collaboration to that message," said Donn Atkins, general manager of IBM's Global Business Partners. "We believe those elements working together is the only way to lead to new growth."

IBM wlll not alter its plan of attack in the way it will wage this initiative, Atkins said, adding that the company will continue to rely heavily on partners to drive technical innovation, particularly among those partners that specialize in selling to small and midsize companies. Atkins said 35 percent of all IBM's revenue last year came through the channel, up 2 percent from the previous year.

IBM announced a number of initiatives it believes will help drive innovation through partners. One is the newly minted Express Advantage program, a suite of hardware, software, financing and services aimed at the SMB market. All of the managed and consulting services that are part of the program will be available only through partners.

Another new program, called Express Seller, is designed to better help those SMBs going after the server market, bringing together IBM's demand-generation resources with aggressive pricing and terms.

As part of the renewed initiative, IBM announced on Monday it is opening up its technical innovation centers to business partners that company officials claim will result in them collaborating with IBM on a deeper level.

To help with this undertaking, IBM also announced it has formed a new business unit, called the Technology Collaboration Solutions, that will work with a wide range of different partners to help bring more advanced solutions to market quicker.

IBM said it has increased its annual investment in its Innovation centers and Business Partner Innovation centers to some $250 million, and plans to open up 40 innovations centers around the world by the end of this year. \The company announced it recently opened its 100th Innovation and Business Center.