The spirit of St Louis hits IBM partners

Sara Driscoll speaks speaks on the prevalent message of collaboration at IDM PartnerWorld

When IBM announced that it was holding its annual partner conference – PartnerWorld – in St Louis, it was hardly an incentive to rush out and book your flight.

Moving from the bright lights, big city feeling of Las Vegas to the shady, small town of St Louis came as a shock to most partners. Nevertheless, the conference itself, and the content of the conference, was not only worth the long journey, but also worth the handsome fee that IBM charges its partners to attend.

The spirit of PartnerWorld for this year was about collaboration; collaboration of partners together and the collaboration of partners with Big Blue.

While not a new strategy and certainly not a unique idea (after all, most vendors working in the channel have to understand the value of joint collaboration), it is at least inspiring to see IBM be consistent with its programmes and, although one IBM executive even called their strategy boring, this is what is required.

The schemes that IBM unveiled – Value Net Connections and its foray into the social networking world in particular – were the cornerstones of its collaboration strategy. IBM, it seems, has finally understood – where most of its rivals haven’t – that making it as easy as possible for partners to work together is the key to the utopia that is incremental revenues for all involved.

IBM is providing tools and resources for channel partners to quickly and easily create and access profiles of other partners, and helping them to design and implement joint offerings to market. One partner that presented its strategy at the conference is already working with 16 ISVs – no mean feat when you consider the amount of paperwork that would have previously been involved.

As one partner put it, Big Blue realises that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; that connecting resellers with ISVs and integrators can create the solution to most end-users’ technology problems and therefore provide a gateway to growth and profitability for all concerned.