Applications:
IBM TO HELP PARTNERS QUICKLY BUILD, DEPLOY VERTICAL SOLUTIONS
IBM announced new virtual resources to help business partners more quickly
build and deploy on demand business applications tailored to meet customer
requirements across all vertical industries.
The new Virtual Innovation Center for Hardware resources, which are offered as
part of IBM's PartnerWorld Industry Networks initiatives, provides business
partners with an online knowledge and enablement portal that helps them gain
access to real-time technical resources. As a result, business partners can
more easily enable and go to market with customized solutions based on IBM
technology that meet customer requirements, industry by industry.
The technical resources are based on Grid and IBM Virtualization Engine
technologies through the Virtual Innovation Center for Hardware, which enables
business partners to access a "virtual" pool of IBM resources -- including the
entire eServer and TotalStorage family of products -- 24 hours, seven days a
week over the Internet.
"IBM continues to make strategic investments to ensure the success of our
business partners by arming them with new technical resources as part of our
broader PartnerWorld Industry Networks initiative," said Scott Hebner, vice
president of strategy and marketing for ISV and developer relations at IBM.
"By expanding the Virtual Innovation Center for Hardware, IBM is providing our
business partners with the widest range of technology offerings to help them
better serve their customers across all industries."
Highlights of the new online technical resources include:
- 18 New "How-to" Guides for Business Partners -- The new guides provide
business partners with step-by-step instructions on how to develop, enable and
implement their applications based on IBM technology. These guides are
tailored to the technical requirements of each hardware platform and take
business partners through the application planning, porting, developing, and
testing stages. For example, the new guides can help business partners with
the following technical support features:
- Port Windows, Linux or Unix applications to Linux on POWER systems.
- Tune AIX-based applications for IBM eServer p5 systems.
- Market iSeries solutions on i5/05 and help ISVs improve the user
experience for i5/OS solutions.
- New Solution Sizing Toolkit Designed to Help Users Identify Hardware
Requirements -- The new solution sizing toolkit is comprised of an
interactive, Web-based questionnaire that enables end users to determine the
optimal system configuration for their applications based on their specific
workload. For example, users fill out a questionnaire that details specific
information, such as the size of their organization and level of application
usage. As a result, the solution sizing tool produces a tailored assessment of
the system requirements that are based upon the presented criteria. This
Web-based tool can be hosted by IBM, the business partner, or both and
supports IBM eServer xSeries, iSeries, pSeries and Linux on POWER. Virtual
Loaner Program Expands to Support AIX, Linux and POWER5
The IBM Virtual Loaner Program, based on IBM Virtualization Engine, IBM
Tivoli and IBM WebSphere middleware and Grid technologies, has expanded to
offer application porting, testing and validation support for AIX 5L™ Version
5.3 and SuSE Linux (SLES9) on POWER5™ processor technologies. Business
partners can now access a wider pool of IBM hardware resources, 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week, over the Internet.
The IBM Virtual Loaner Program provides business partners and developers with
a full range of on-demand technologies through a powerful software enablement
grid. More than 200 hardware enablement projects have been completed through
this initiative since the Virtual Loaner Program's inception six months ago.
"The Virtual Loaner Program provides us with 'easy access' to develop, deploy,
and support our AIX-based applications, without requiring hefty, upfront
investments in hardware, operating system, and maintenance costs," said Leigh
Purdie, director of InterSect Alliance Pty Ltd. "The benefit is that we are
able to test out different application scenarios, accessing multiple system
images across a variety of different platforms, without leaving our office
parameters." - New Education Resources -- Online courses and tutorials on various IBM
technologies are now available, such as Linux on POWER, DB2 Universal
Database, Lotus Domino, eServer portfolio, Java, WebSphere, WebSphere Portal
and more. The online courses tutorials are designed to help business partners
with application development and porting so that they have the skills needed
to deliver vertical industry solutions to their customers.
Continued Software Enablement Success at the Virtual Innovation Center
Since its inception in 2003, the IBM Virtual Innovation Center has helped
business partners build more than 1,700 new applications on IBM Express
middleware and enabled 3,800 Business Partner firms to sell these joint
solutions. This resource continues to drive business partner adoption and
deployment of IBM Express offerings.
The announcement builds upon IBM's PartnerWorld Industry Networks, an
initiative that is aimed to help ISVs develop on demand applications and go to
market with IBM across the widest variety of industries. Business partners can
take advantage of IBM's industry leading technical resources, and sales and
marketing support benefits.
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