IBM’s Blue Program

Partner Plus also includes a blue program for IBM’s strategic partners and most elite ISV partners – including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, SAP, Samsung and Salesforce.

In North America, IBM partners can resell IBM products through other cloud marketplaces, with partner sales in non-IBM marketplaces going toward IBM Partner Plus progression, according to the company.

Earlier this year, IBM and AWS formed a strategic collaboration agreement to eventually make available dozens of IBM’s bestselling software products on AWS, including IBM API Connect, IBM Db2, IBM Maximo Application Suite, IBM Security Verify, and IBM Watson Orchestrate.

At AWS re:Invent 2022, IBM added IBM Envizi ESG Suite, IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, IBM Content Services and IBM App Connect Enterprise running as-a-service on AWS that both IBM and AWS partners can sell on the AWS Marketplace.

Earlier this year, IBM announced two updates to its partnership with SAP – the tech giant is now a premium supplier for the Rise with SAP collection of subscription software and services designed for cloud migration and IBM has unveiled its “Breakthrough with IBM for Rise with SAP” portfolio of consulting services meant to help accelerate customers’ move to SAP S/4Hana Cloud.

IBM and Samsung are working together on 5G-enabled edge devices and private networks, with examples including improved weather forecasts on Samsung Galaxy phones and a security platform with Samsung Knox and IBM MaaS360.

The two companies have a Growth Factory that works on worker safety products with Samsung smartwatches and a visual verification service on Samsung phones to combat counterfeits, for example.

An example of IBM and Microsoft’s collaboration is enterprisewide threat management services, which brings together IBM X-Force Threat Management (XFTM) for 24-hour security of Microsoft Azure using Azure Sentinel detection and other products.

In March, IBM and Adobe announced an expanded collaboration bringing weather data from IBM subsidiary The Weather Co. to Adobe Experience Cloud.

For Salesforce, IBM offers integrations with Watson to bring AI to services and sales, for example. And IBM App Connect software helps businesses integrate Salesforce data through applications, messages, events and other techniques for more insights, according to IBM.