IBM invites partners to be more intimate
IBM invites partners to be more intimate
Mar 17, 2005: Despite the continued success of IBM's hardware, with its DS8000, DS6000 and TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller reporting good levels of sales, IBM is now looking towards changing the mindset of its partners to provide more intimate services for the customers.
Denis Yip, the vice president of TotalStorage for IBM in the Asia Pacific, said that he wants the biggest challenge for the company this year involves persuading the partners to stop selling the products as just a box of technology, but to instead help the customers to fully understand how to use devices.
"We have over 100 partners selling our products, and we are looking to train them in how to use the technology that they sell. This is so they know the products inside out, so that when they come to selling the technology to the users, they will be able to explain completely how each device will help provide a solution to their problem.
"None of our competitors have this mentality so far either. They still continue to sell items just as a product in a box, but we want to educate our partners on how to provide a service to each company from the beginning of the implementation to the end, when the problem is fixed."
Yip said that IBM is allocating funding for educational initiatives that will benefit the partners because it believes the world is changing and customers need more support with streamlined solution.
Yip claims that the integration of the TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller product, which was launched last year, showed how this theory has already worked in practice. He said that the partners showed customers how to virtualise their software whilst still technology from other vendors, such as Hitachi and EMC.
He also hopes that the change in mentality for the partners is one of the best ways for IBM to eventually increase its market share in time.
Related Article: