Analyst Firm Names IBM Industry Leader in Partner Programs for Second Straight Year

Analyst Firm Names IBM Industry Leader in Partner Programs for Second Straight Year

Analyst firm IDC has named IBM (NYSE: IBM) an industry leader for independent software vendor (ISV) programs across the areas of marketing, technical, and sales support. The independent report acknowledges IBM’s efforts to build a strong partner community and its ongoing investment to develop these programs.

IDC’s “Worldwide Top 10 ISV Partner Programs 2006 Vendor Analysis: Enabling ISV Partners for Success” (#204272, Nov 2006) analyzed the offerings of the industry’s leading ISV partner programs across three areas that are most important to ISVs — marketing, technical, and sales support. From this analysis, the report found that IBM achieved the highest overall score, followed by Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and HP. According to the report, “This is a reflection of the breadth of IBM’s offerings for ISVs across the categories and subcategories that are most important to ISVs.” IBM also received a high score in three subcategories: marketing tools, technical tools, and product certification.

IBM, with its worldwide network of business partners, venture capital firms, developers, universities, sales experts, research labs and innovation centers, provides partners with a foundation it can tap into as they look to increase revenue by embracing open standards and expanding beyond their existing geographic and vertical markets. One major differentiator is IBM’s unique ability to use its existing global network of business partners and sales experts to enable ISVs to jointly identify and close.

Read the complete Press Release