IBM has confirmed that its global PartnerWorld event will not be taking place this year, although the vendor has hinted that smaller, more localised events will be taking place.

Last year the vendor overhauled its partner summit, which charged partners up to $1,800 to attend, to be invitation only. It also changed the name from PartnerWorld to the Business Partner Leadership Conference (Channelweb, 15 February 2008). This caused attendance numbers to drop from 5,000 to 2,000, but was welcomed by some resellers that relished the greater focus on selected partners.

In a statement, IBM said: “Based on feedback from partners, rather than one global event, IBM will be hosting a series of local events to reach all of our global partners this year.

"We continue to be heavily focused on helping our partners develop the skills they need to help clients transform their infrastructures to be more efficient and reduce costs - a major priority in today's economic environment. We'll announce more detailed plans shortly.”

One partner, who asked to remain anonymous said: “It is no surprise that this has happened. The death knoll for PartnerWorld really sounded when it was held in St Louis two years ago. It might well be better than IBM has decided to go down the localised, more focused event route.”