Big Blue roadshow talks up sales rise

On the road: IBM's roadshow helped the firm reach 400 partners.

IBM highlighted the recent growth of its Power Systems Platform business and a tripling in its overall virtualisation sales during its recent partner roadshow across Europe.

The attach rate for IBM’s Power 520 leapt more than three-fold on an annual comparison to 70 per cent in the second quarter. Attach rates for the Power 550 boomed four-fold to 47 per cent while the attach rate for the 570 rose from 50 to 66 per cent.

Big Blue recently hailed an outstanding Q2 performance, as worldwide turnover increased 13 per cent year on year to $26.8bn (£13.4bn) and net profits hiked 22 per cent to $2.8bn. EMEA more than pulled its weight as turnover from the region rose 20 per cent to $9.8bn.

Reaching 400 partners throughout July, the one-day roadshows visited Madrid, Paris, Milan, Brussels, Vienna, Stuttgart, Bracknell and Amsterdam.

Scott Handy, vice president of worldwide marketing and strategy for Power Systems Platform at IBM, said: “IBM was excited about its Q2 results and wanted to hold several events with partners across Europe to focus on extra education and to remind them of where the opportunities are.”

Handy said many partners sell the same things over and over again and are carrying out customer refreshes successfully, but that there is always room for improvement.
“Despite selling well, partners can still add extras to enable them to grow twice as fast.
“Each show had a three-hour event in the morning for partners and a three-hour event in the afternoon for customers. The partner events enable them to share skills and the customer events helped to create leads for IBM partners.”

Greg Carlow, managing director of IBM reseller Repton, said: “Lots of vendors do roadshows after results. IBM is selling lots of software, services and big boxes.”
“Virtualisation is on the increase with all of the vendors. The market is patiently waiting to see what Microsoft has planned next.”