Recent Articles
-
IBM Offers Services that Sell Like Hardware
IBM Global Services has created a set of productized managed services designed for small and midsize businesses that are available through its channel partners. The Armonk, N.Y.-based technology giant said it was reaffirming its commitment to the channel by making these packaged services, called “Service Products,” available to be sold the same way partners sell…
-
Palmisano: SMB Will Be IBM’s Largest Market in Five Years
In a wide ranging keynote speech at the company’s PartnerWorld conference, IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano predicted that the small to medium business market will become IBM’s largest customer segment within five years. IBM defines the SMB market as customers with 250 to 1,000 employees, which is an area that is expanding its IT…
-
IBM Starts to Walk Its Talk in the Channel
ST. LOUIS—IBM anchored its 2007 PartnerWorld event with the announcement of a new communications strategy to the channel that seeks to unify the company’s current patchwork portals and Web sites for channel partners. Dubbed the IBM PartnerWorld Value Net Connections program, this latest IBM effort to rein in its channel communication is described as a…
-
Direct Is Not Religion, Says Dell
It’s a pretty amazing thing when Michael Dell begins circulating an internal company memo that encourages employees to rethink the company’s strategy to the point where Dell may even embrace the channel. For those of you who didn’t get the memo, Michael Dell told his company’s employees that the direct sales model is not a…
-
Whither Microsoft’s ‘Big Bang’?
The April 25 release of a feature-complete Windows Server “Longhorn” beta is a monumental milestone for Microsoft, perhaps more important than the launch of Windows Vista. As the nucleus of Microsoft’s enterprise product strategy, Longhorn will likely pull deployments of other products, including Vista. However, uncertainty about the release of the first Vista service pack…
-
6 Habits of Top I.T. Groups: A Consultant’s List
Advanced I.T. organizations make “aggressive” use of technologies that support a service-oriented mindset and are devoting more time to implementing industry best practices, according to research from Ovum Summit. The Boston-based consulting firm interviewed 300 technology managers and identified six things that the most effective technology departments do, starting with making sure their I.T. projects…
