Tivoli reaches out to service partners

IBM arm redefines partner relationships

Software vendor Tivoli is increasing support for its service partners to prepare for the predicted growth in the 'Net Generation' ebusiness software marketplace.

Last week, Tivoli officially launched an initiative to help its service partners create a technology infrastructure that will enable companies to launch or further develop ebusiness capabilities. The company will be providing increased support, training and advice to its partners.

The initiative is aimed at partners in the application service provider, management service provision (MSP) and security service provider arenas. Over the past year, Tivoli claimed to have more than doubled its ebusiness software sales.

Larry Orecklin, senior vice president of Net Generation management solutions at Tivoli, said: "Our service provider solutions enable companies to focus on core competencies rather than individual technology elements. This initiative will give our partners the tools necessary to protect their IT infrastructures and manage the entire life cycle of services to their customers."

Tivoli, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM, supplies software that manages the foundations of ebusiness such as security, storage and mobile devices.

The company believes that the packaged software delivery market will grow from $300m (£209m) in 1999 to $1.3bn in 2001 and $7.8bn in 2004, representing a 92 per cent growth rate.

Malcolm Money, business partners manager at Tivoli, maintained that the company will continue to concentrate on resellers. "This announcement clearly illustrates that we are focusing on the channel as a growth area," he said.

"Our four main areas of growth in the channel are security, e-zone services, storage and enterprise systems management, all in the middle marketplace, which will provide a lot of potential for existing partners," he added.

Beth Rogers, solutions marketing manager at Logical, a Tivoli MSP partner, said: "There are many reasons why we chose Tivoli as a partner, but the main one is because of its service development strategy. As we grow, Tivoli has the necessary infrastructure to help us expand our services and get closer to our customers."