Guest of this month : Anoop Nambiar

Anoop Nambiar Country Manager – Business Partners, IBM ISA   How do you position IBM in India? IBM continues to invest billions of dollars to develop smarter systems that enable clients to meet their differentiated workload requirements. Encompassing enterprise computing – server, storage and microelectronics products, IBM's smarter systems are designed to help clients store and move massive amounts of data, analyze it to provide business insight, as well as scale it to meet the growing needs and support new ways to deliver the services. STG is the worldwide leader in Server (System x/x86, Power Systems/non x86 UNIX and System Z/mainframes) and Storage (disk- and tape-based data storage systems). It also leads in the development and sale of Linux-based products. Its Microelectronics unit makes microprocessors and memory devices. As a corporation, we have constantly redefined ourselves to become one of the world's strongest brands driven by innovations that extend way beyond technologies. Today, we run a business model that delivers long-term value and high performance. These changes also reflect the transformation we have made in our business partner strategy. Throw light on the initiatives  taken in the interest of the IBM channel community? Over the years, Business Partners have played a key role in helping drive many of the innovations that led us to the IBM's centennial year in 2011. We have always been offering the best value to our partners. We have launched a new enablement framework, through which partners can scale up their skills under Boot Camp, Fighter Pilot and Top Gun levels. This has been appreciated very well. In 2011, we had over 900 business partners and over 1,500 representatives trained on our products and technologies. We have put in place a Reseller Growth Fund for our top resellers to support them on demand generation activities in their respective locations and among their existing customers. We also have the Distributor Growth Fund, which could be utilized by the rest of the resellers. A new financing programme, including buyback of used equipment, attractive lease terms and delayed payment terms to help current credit-qualified competitive customers in India migrate to upgradeable systems of IBM's new Power family of workload optimized servers and storage offerings. Launched in January 2011, IBM's “Blue Thunder” programme has been one of the most successful programmes. How are you empowering the channel partners? We believe we can succeed only when our partners are successful. Partners are an important community when it comes to doing business. Thus, we constantly reach out to them with various IBM partner enablement initiatives that not only help them understand our vision, but also make them better businessmen running highly efficient organizations. Of course, we also have recognition events both in India and abroad to reward partners on their performance and solutions capability.