IBM has unveiled new incentives for business partners to aid them in driving growth in key sectors such as smarter cities, smarter commerce and social business.
The company notes advances such as analytics and cloud computing are changing the way businesses operate, consumers interact with companies, and cities deliver services. These changes are providing key opportunities for IBM and its business partners, the company adds.
“Commerce, social business, cloud computing and analytics are all multibillion-dollar industries and we want to ensure that our business partners have the resources, skills and support they need to succeed in these markets,” said Mark Register, VP of software business partners.
The IBM Solution Accelerator incentive, announced at the company's PartnerWorld Summit in New Orleans, is a channel incentive for partners selling combined software and systems and/or business solutions.
It has two components: the Software and Systems Reward is a 5% incremental rebate for selling eligible IBM systems and a 15% incremental rebate for selling eligible software together to a single client. The Business Solutions Reward is an additional 10% rebate for selling a solution aimed at a particular IT challenge on the eligible software content of the solution.
The eligible solutions cover client needs such as turning information into insights, managing risk, security and compliance and social business. In addition, approximately 1% in fees can be earned when clients finance their solution through IBM Global Financing.
Steve Mills, senior VP of Software and Systems, described it as a 'blue-on-blue' incentive programme for selling eligible hardware and software products together, with an additional incentive for adding solution bundles.
Spurring smarter cities
According to IBM, helping cities solve challenges in urban planning, environmental compliance, energy and water, transportation, education, social welfare and health, public safety, and government and agency administration represents a $57 billion market opportunity.
The company said it is looking to its business partner community to help make integrated solutions accessible to cities worldwide, and in this vein is rolling out three related incentives.
They include a software as a service (SaaS) referral incentive for the Intelligent Operations Centre cloud offering, which sees business partners receive 15% of the annual contract value of the sale (the intelligent operations centre solution provides a unified view of city agencies to help better manage citizen services).
Second is the Global Financing incentive for business partners working on smarter cities projects that are part of IBM's Software Value Plus programme, which can access 12-month, interest-free financing. Third is the Government and Industry Expertise incentive, whereby business partners can access additional earning opportunities through IBM's Industry and Capability authorisation incentives for on-premise use of the Intelligent Operations Centre.
Social business benefits
The final incentives fall under smarter commerce and social business initiatives, comprising an estimated $20 billion opportunity for software alone. One new incentive will see business partners selling SaaS solutions for smarter commerce to their clients, with IBM obtaining 15% of the annual contract value.
“The goal of the Smarter Commerce SaaS Incentive Programme is to accelerate cloud adoption by encouraging new business models, such as cloud services solution providers, to incorporate SaaS capabilities for smarter commerce into their solutions,” said IBM in a statement.
Other new incentives are aimed at helping business partners capitalise on the growing social business market opportunity. Qualified business partners selling SaaS offerings to small or mid-sized companies can earn a 28% rebate when they sell IBM SmartCloud for Social Business.
The IBM Solution Accelerator incentive and Social Business incentives are available now, while the Smarter Commerce and Smarter Cities incentives are expected to be available in the second quarter of 2012.
(Lezette Engelbrecht is hosted in New Orleans by IBM SA.)
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