IBM Global Services Aims To Forge Better Partnerships

Business partners have long had a tenuous relationship with IBM Global Services, occasionally bumping into the services goliath in competitive situations. But more importantly, IBM Global Services often fails to tap the IBM business partner community and use partners as a resource in deals it is brokering, solution providers said.

"Co-opetition has always been a challenge at IBM based on the breadth of our portfolio," said Patricia Meacham, vice president marketing for IBM PartnerWorld. "[IBM Global Services has been doing a much better job at identifying opportunities that we can bring partners in on, but I don't think we'll ever achieve complete euphoria."

She said, however, that better partnering is necessary for selling solutions, and IBM plans to stress that at the PartnerWorld Conference, scheduled for Feb. 17--20 at San Francisco's Moscone Center.

"We will be greatly focused on solution selling that includes not only multiple partners, but multiple partners working with IBM," she said. "The message we want to get across is IBM's ability to integrate a total solution using partners."

For their part, business partners said IBM Global Services is reaching out to strike alliances. MatrixOne, a collaborative product commerce solution provider in Westford, Mass., for example, just signed a global strategic alliance with IBM after IBM Global Services brought the company to the attention of IBM corporate, said Paul Gilmartin, vice president of product marketing at MatrixOne.

"The way you become an alliance partner with IBM is someone needs to sponsor you," Gilmartin said. "We had worked with IBM in business opportunities where IBM had a direct experience with MatrixOne's products through [IBM Global Services."

MatrixOne develops product life-cycle management tools that enable customers to reduce time to market and solve other cost issues involved in product innovation and development.

"We'll be developing solutions jointly that focus on specific industries and specific business problems," Gilmartin said. "Our engineers and business-process experts are working side by side with IBM engineers and business-process experts."

Murray Mitchell, vice president of the buy and supply chain consulting practice at IBM Global Services, said the company's partner strategy centers around the quality of the solutions that business partners bring to the market. "Is it a leading product, and does it have strength and capabilities in certain segments?" he said.

Mitchell said IBM Global Services is on a mission to broaden partnerships with ISV solution providers that need its integration capabilities. "We're trying to broaden our partnership portfolio to reach as many segments as we can," Mitchell said. "We listen to our customers who say, 'These guys have a good product, we're using it, and you should have some services built around it.' "

In the case of MatrixOne, IBM Global Services first encountered the solution provider when both were working in the same customer accounts. Mitchell said the benefits of partnering with solution providers is they can bring IBM Global Services into new accounts and, conversely, solution providers can look to IBM to expand their reach.

Meacham said more successful partnering engagements with IBM Global Services will be showcased at PartnerWorld.

"We will focus on a lot of success stories showing how we can bring partners together with disparate skills and how we can go to market with them," she said. "One of the tools that we will bring forward at the show is a search tool that allows our partners to go in and identify opportunities with IBM and also allows [IBM Global Services to go in and identify partners," she said.

Bob Timpson, IBM's general manager of developer relations, said the vendor has signed 184 partnership agreements with ISVs. "We intend to sign about 100 more this year," he said.

Key criteria for ISV partners is that they hold a leadership position in their particular application and that they port their application to the IBM platform. "In return, we'll help them expand their business," Timpson said.