A Tradition Of Excellence

Big Blue credits a large part of its success to the channel.

"Really key to IBM's success was that we knew we didn't have enough arms and legs that were skilled enough in different industry segments to execute an effective plan," says Cecelia Marrese, vice president of IBM iSeries at IBM in Somers, N.Y. "We knew we had to work closely with channel partners with specialized skills to provide for these sectors."

In the past year, IBM has created a number of programs aimed at the specialized needs of the midmarket. "We have created different channel programs to increase the profitability for partners when they sell to [SMBs]," Marrese says. In May, the company premiered its 520 Express program, which offers prepackaged servers with various commonly requested options at an affordable price point (starting at less than $10,000). The company also invested heavily in its ISV Advantage program. "This co-marketing program allows them to do demand generation with new and current customers, and to team up with resellers to provide solutions," Marrese says.

Finally, the SMB Advantage program was launched to focus the reseller community on the midmarket. "The iSeries has evolved from an application solution box, but with new, great capabilities comes a need to stretch to get resellers to work with customers to bring them up to speed and to bring their own skills up to date to help these customers," Marrese says. "We will have ongoing programs to bring partner skills up to date and to grow their capabilities."

ARC results bear out the success of these efforts. IBM's loyalty rating was vastly higher than any other vendor's--beating the trailing HP's Unix/RISC score by 23 points and its own pSeries by 10 points. IBM also took top marks for every criterion in the partnership subcategory, tying with HP in partner portal--as well as the vast majority of other criteria. The only exceptions were richness of features/ functionality in the product innovation subcategory and postsales and quality of technical support, taking a back seat to its own pSeries.

While the iSeries is a veteran product by any standard, IBM predicts that the servers will continue to rise in popularity--as the previously foundering business market starts to reverse itself.

"We are seeing customers really coming alive, and they are looking for new solutions and are willing to implement new IT capabilities, upgrade their systems and move technology forward, where in the past they were reluctant to," Marrese says. "Their own customers and suppliers are encouraging them to modernize, but they are more apt to do it as the economy starts to improve on their bottom line."