IBM invests $1 billion globally in its partner ecosystem, to benefit its partner success as ecosystem momentum accelerates.
At IBM, we know that when our partners succeed, our customers do and so do we. That’s why, over the past year, as we have honed our corporate strategy around two major forces driving change for business—open hybrid cloud and AI—we have evolved our relationship with the ecosystem to enable more opportunities for our partners to deliver shared value to customers.
IBM’s business partners’ ecosystem is central to our growth strategy, so we’re investing $1 billion to help partners and their customers capture the estimated $1 trillion hybrid cloud market opportunity.
We’re simplifying engagements, streamlining go-to-market strategies, and have designed specialized Build, Service and Selltracks with tailored offers to help speed time to value. We also recently unveiled new competencies, training to learn market-leading skills, and benefits to cultivate partner success in an increasingly competitive market.
In the Middle East, we’re very proud of our longstanding partnerships with SBM in Saudi Arabia and GBM in the UAE. We’re also excited about the acceleration we’re seeing in our ecosystem, as evidenced by new and expanded partnerships with companies like Ingram Micro and Idea to Life.
The Middle East Virtual Business Partner Ecosystem Media Roundtable aims to bring together experts from IBM and key regional partners to showcase how we work together to solve complex problems for clients and fuel hybrid cloud adoption across the region.
Hossam Seif El-Din, GM, IBM Middle East and Pakistan
“Now digital transformation is more critical than ever, and we have seen there has been a tremendous increase in client demand for our capabilities and expertise. Harnessing the strength of our partner ecosystem in the region and vast technology portfolio with Red Hat OpenShift, IBM can help drive transformative change for our customers in the Middle East. Customers can modernize, predict, automate, and secure their critical technology infrastructures and platforms. Fostering a growing ecosystem of partners in the region reasserts our customers’ thirst for strong digital foundations.”
Andy Parkinson, VP, Partner Ecosystem, IBM Middle East and Africa
“IBM’s ecosystem is central to our growth strategy. IBM is investing $1 billion to help partners and their customers capture the $1 trillion hybrid cloud market opportunity. Our push to deliver value for our partners includes significant investments and program enhancements geared at driving growth and enabling innovation in the region.”
Business Partners
IBM made bold moves to sharpen its focus and transform into a leading open hybrid cloud and AI company.
In 2018, IBM identified ‘hybrid cloud’ as the dominant force in the industry and since then built a market with large client projects, introduced new technologies, and in 2019, acquired Red Hat in a landmark $34 billion deal.
IBM Cloud Paks with Red Hat OpenShift supercharged the company’s open and secure hybrid cloud platformand helps customers operate in any cloud environment, including on-prem, private, and public cloud environments.
Partners are at the center of IBM’s growth strategy. The company is committed to providing the resources and expertise to help partners get to market faster and grow their businesses. Together, we are creating shared value for clients and a shared vision for the future of hybrid cloud and AI.
Through investing $1 billion globally, IBM aims to increase technical support, expand the toolkit of competencies by creating added value, and help partners benefit from funding tools:
IBM shifted over 300 resources into Technical Partner Architect roles available in every market. These architects are specialized in different elements of the portfolio, analytics, security, automation, power systems and storage, among others. IBM’s Hybrid Cloud Build Team is also available for workload migration, building PoCs and solutions on IBM’s Hybrid Cloud Platform. There are currently over 100 active engagements across the world today with different partners.
IBM Competency Framework is based on market demand and designed to differentiate each partner’s specialization. This framework offers a unified design across build, service, and sell, allowing partners to benefit from a guided skills development.
IBM is expanding its competency portfolio with 10 new competencies and launching new role-based, guided learning journeys. A key new skill of the IBM Competency Framework is a training API that enables IBM courseware to be integrated into IBM partners’ firms’ learning system thus increasing the consumption of IBM education.
IBM continues to invest in financial incentives, maintaining the current offerings and adding new incentives for partners engaging in the build and service tracks, including a service engagement incentive and a PoC incentive.
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