IBM Business Partners will play a critical role in the company's plans to help customers integrate business processes with technology to become on demand businesses -- more responsive to customer needs, resilient to marketplace demands, and flexible to competitive threats.

"IBM's vision for the on demand era represents a significant business opportunity for all of our Business Partners -- ISVs, resellers and consultants and integrators," said Michael Borman, general manager of Global Business Partners, IBM. "Only IBM and its Business Partners can deliver the open hardware and software solutions and the consulting and implementation services needed to help customers thrive in an on demand world."

A natural extension of what IBM and its Business Partners provide today, the on demand opportunity for Business Partners is focused on helping companies establish a roadmap for business transformation, and then build and design the processes and open IT environment to support it.

"Over the past several years, our customers have continued to demand that we, as solution providers, become better at managing and delivering end-to-end solutions. Customers want business partners that have the ability to marry several different technology areas such as hardware, database, middleware and e-enablement, to deliver a total solution," said Vince DeRose, president of Denver, CO-based Peak Resources. "As an IBM Premier Business Partner, we believe that IBM's leadership in the on demand era is one more step toward delivering on this total solution, and we see tremendous potential for revenue and profit opportunities."

New Sales Enablement and Education
To help Business Partners devise new and more flexible ways to deliver IT and help their customers understand the bottom-line benefits of e-business on demand, IBM is launching several important initiatives:

• Training -- via the PartnerWorld programs Business Partners can now get training in on demand solutions and learn how to effectively sell and deliver on this important strategy.

• Customer Assessment Tools -- three new tools are now available to help Business Partners assess their customers' requirements for on demand: Competitive Advisor Tool, Profiler for e-business and e-business Collaboration.

• 26 e-business on demand Offerings -- these offerings include WebSphere Software, e-business Hosting, eServer Platforms, Storage and Financing.

• Demand Generation -- IBM will roll out new campaigns designed to help partners market their skills in delivering e-business on demand. These efforts will expand upon IBM's own marketing investments and allow Business Partners to highlight the value that they provide in delivering on demand solutions.

• Interactive Sales Pack -- an interactive sales pack specifically designed for Business Partners to use as they sell e-business on demand. The pack includes sales tools, white papers, presentations and details on all 26 offerings Business Partners can deliver today to customers.

• IBM Small and Medium Business Advantage -- a new initiative from IBM which provides Business Partners with incentives and tools which helps them sell on demand solutions into the Small and Medium Business marketplace.

Solution Enablement
Teaming and product enablement are also vital parts of Business Partners ability to deliver on demand solutions to their customers. To promote the sharing of knowledge and to help applications and services deliver value in the on demand model IBM has launched:

• IBM Community Tools -- a new suite of peer-to-peer applications for community based problem solving that transforms the way customers and business partners interact, collaborate and respond to changing business needs. Developed by IBM technologists exclusively for the active IBM eServer iSeries community, the one-to-many instant messaging technology allows business partners and customers around the world to draw upon their combined knowledge and technical expertise to work smarter and faster and further their transformation into on demand businesses.

• IBM eServer xSeries Systems Management Business Partner Program -- allows Business Partners to better monitor and fix their customers' computer systems as they focus on transforming into on demand businesses. Having a resilient infrastructure is a key attribute of an on demand business. The program includes training and marketing materials for Business Partners on IBM Director software, a breakthrough technology that automates tasks such as inventory, monitoring and alerting, event actions and system health checks.

• IBM Solutions Grid for Business Partners -- a North American grid-computing environment that will allow Business Partners to run their grid applications in a simulated real world distributed computing environment. This core e-business on demand technology offering for business partners allows them to deliver their grid solutions to customers quicker and without the upfront costs of building their own testing infrastructure.

• Web Services on demand -- from IBM Software comes new programs, resources and communities that make it easier for developers, customers and business partners to improve their Web services skills and speed up Web services adoption in the financial services, insurance and manufacturing industries. These offerings are coupled with the launch of WebSphere software that strengthens the ability of companies to build, integrate and manage business applications across their organizations and with partners, suppliers and customers.

• IBM Business Partner ROI Tool for Linux -- a web-based tool, part of IBM's Leadership Edge for Linux initiative, is tailored to Business Partners' specific business environments and addresses the individual needs of different types of partners, helping Solution Providers evaluate the process for building a Linux practice, while helping ISVs evaluate the porting of their applications to Linux. IBM's ROI Tool walks the Business Partner through a number of questions to collect information about their business such as size, revenue, average selling price of their solution, and average sales cycles, allowing the tool to determine what the investment needs are for the Business Partner and the potential return on investment over a specified time.

About IBM
With 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate, IBM is the world's largest information technology company. IBM is a leading provider of e-business solutions and is dedicated to helping companies, Business Partners and developers leverage the potential of the Internet and network computing across a wide range of businesses and industries. The company offers a host of cross-industry and industry specific solutions designed to meet the needs of companies of all sizes. For more information on partnering with IBM, please visit: www.ibm.com/partnerworld.