NEW YORK – IBM is beefing up its service offerings for mid-sized businesses with new security and productivity solutions along with new tools and incentives to support partner growth in the mid-market space.
“The latest Express Advantage offerings address some of the biggest pain points that our customers face and IBM’s continued expansion of its portfolio, particularly in security and productivity solutions, is extremely valuable to our business,” said Greg Faust, CEO of Valid Technologies. “Express Advantage makes it easy to find and implement solutions that are proven, reliable, and backed by the best of breed support teams. Now more than ever IBM makes it easy to leverage the technical innovations that deliver business differentiation and spur growth.”
IBM expanded its Express Advantage portfolio with new data and email management solutions, and new security offerings including Penetration Testing Services to uncover vulnerabilities by simulating real network attacks, managed and do-it-yourself multi-function security bundles, and a managed monitoring solution for servers.
IBM’s Express Advantage portfolio also includes the recently announced POWER6 processor-based servers, the IBM BladeCenter HS12 Express and JS12 Express, the Power 520 / 550 Express, and SurePOS 100 Express, all designed to be cost-effective and energy-efficient.
“These latest Express Advantage offerings combined with the industry skills and local delivery capabilities of our worldwide business partner community are helping mid-market companies solve their toughest business challenges and innovate for success in today’s global marketplace,” said Steve Solazzo, general manager, IBM General Business.
IBM partners will be able to take advantage of IBM’s new incremental Business Partner incentives, designed to fuel growth in the mid-market category by offering a potential global payout totalling more than $50 million for selling IBM POWER6 and high-end storage solutions to mid-market clients.
IBM also introduced two new Solutions Builder Express Starting Points to help Business Partners speed the creation, delivery and implementation of their solutions, reducing implementation time by 50 per cent. These starting points include core assets, implementation guides, and support from IBM.
One of the new Starting Points, Assess and Protect for Server Security, provides instructions on how to deploy the most comprehensive, host-based, risk mitigation solutions. The second, Lotus Complete Collaboration Express Starter Guide, offers installation and configuration procedures for security rich, reliable collaboration solutions which include real-time unified messaging.
The addition of Express Advantage and other selected mid-market solutions to IBM’s Grow Your Business with IBM Software tool enables business partners to effectively sell new software offerings in the mid-market.
This tool now provides more than 50 recommended products and over 130 recommended cross-sell scenarios, as well as information on sales and technical resources, links to specific IBM sales and marketing materials and estimated return on investment. A new synchronized download capability delivers Grow Your Business with IBM Software to the desktop, giving business partners instant up-to-date access to new content and recommendations.
To support Business Partner growth in the mid-market space, IBM Global Financing, the lending and leasing business segment of IBM has recently expanded its online IBM Flexible Credit financing program, designed to provide mid-market resellers incremental lines of credit they can use to purchase technology products and services from their suppliers or distributors, including IBM.
This column was written by Erin Bell of ConnectIT
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