IBM Launches Partner Plus ‘Service’ Track
‘We want to create more opportunities for IBM partners to grow their business with IBM. And this is a recognition of the influence that our service partners have in terms of how they drive the adoption of IBM’s technology in the market and how we make them even more successful,’ Kate Woolley, IBM’s channel chief, tells CRN.
IBM has launched a “service” track in its Partner Plus program with the goal of providing more resources for co-creation, demand generation, skilling and more for MSPs, consultancies, systems integrators and other similar business models.
Kate Woolley, IBM’s channel chief, told CRN that the compay created the track—the third available partner track alongside “sell” and “build”—because of how important service-led partners are to IBM customers and to better align with the unique needs of service partners as compared with ISVs and other partner types.
“We want to create more opportunities for IBM partners to grow their business with IBM,” Woolley said. “And this is a recognition of the influence that our service partners have in terms of how they drive the adoption of IBM’s technology in the market and how we make them even more successful.”
IBM Enhances Partner Plus Program
Jason Eichenholz, senior vice president and global head of ecosystems and partnerships at Wipro—an India-based IBM partner and No. 15 on CRN’s 2023 Solution Provider 500—told CRN that IBM is one of the top three partners within the company’s ecosystem.
The companies’ partnership goes back 20 years, Eichenholz said. He applauded recent IBM efforts to grow closer to the channel, better track partner-influenced revenue and provide partners more access to the IBM knowledge base.
“For us, in terms of what we look for from a partner, in terms of technical enablement, financial incentives and co-creation and resource availability, they are best of breed right now,” he said. “IBM is really putting their money and their resources where their mouth is.”
Every $1 of hybrid cloud platform revenue has a multiplier effect of $6 to $8 in services revenue, according to IBM. Since the launch of Partner Plus in January 2023, IBM has added thousands of new registered partners.
In addition, with the availability of new education and skilling capabilities at the end of 2022 IBM has logged more than 130,000 enrollments in one or more badges and about 60,000 completed badges, according to the Armonk, N.Y.-based vendor.
IBM Partner Plus partners can participate in multiple tracks if they want, Woolley said. THey have three tiers they can reach—Platinum, Gold and Silver—and once they reach a tier, they are in that tier across IBM. If a build partner makes revenue and earns badges within the service track, that helps the partner reach a higher tier.
IBM’s investment in partners comes amid Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna’s mandate for the vendor to reach 50 percent total revenue from customers coming from the channel, up from about 30 percent currently.
Woolley told CRN she is up to the challenge. “My goal is to make a very big dent in that this year,” she said.
IBM has about 55,000 worldwide channel partners, 12,000 of them in North America, according to CRN’s 2023 Channel Chiefs.
The service track aims to help relevant solution providers access demand generation, co-creation resources for service offerings and resources for IBM technology advocacy in the market, Woolley said.
The goal is deeper collaboration with service partners, assisting with success and better alignment between IBM sellers and service partners. IBM also wants to provide more specialized courses and badges for partners to prove technical skills.
“Many of our service partners today, they resell IBM technology as well, but they also play a critical role in terms of influencing decision points at our clients,” Woolley said. “And we wanted to make sure we were recognizing that and also putting the right support and benefits around that. So we weren’t saying to our partners, ‘This is how we want you to engage with your clients.’ We're actually saying to them, ‘We want to engage with the way that makes most sense for your business.’”
The investment in a service track also reflects customer buying behavior, she said, with customers looking to solution providers for help on decision-making around cutting-edge technology such as artificial intelligence. IBM has also established centers of excellence around generative AI with large services providers.
“Our collective clients with our service partners are turning to their trusted advisers—which are often their service partners—to help them make decisions across the board in all different spaces,” she said.
The service track also aims to recognize more areas where these solution providers achieve, including customer decision points that influence revenue and badging for expertise delivered to customers, Woolley said.
When asked if service partners should worry about sharing resources with ISVs, Woolley said that resources for service partners and resources for build partners are not trade-offs.
“It's an investment in a lot of different ways based on feedback from our partners in terms of what they need,” she said.