IBM India establishes competency center at Redington premises

IBM India announced the setting up of its Tivoli Competency Center at the
premises of Redington India, one of its distributors. The center will provide
Tivoli partners across the country a platform for showcasing Tivoli products
besides demonstrating the product capabilities.

The center, which is said to be the first of its kind amongst software
vendors, will be an integral point for IBM, its customers and partners to fully
explore new markets and offerings in a real-world environment. Tivoli, the
systems management software already has dedicated competency centers in several
IT services companies in India, comprising TCS and HCL.

Speaking on the occasion, Tapan Mehta, Country Manager-Channel, (Software
Group), IBM India, said, “It has been our resolve to leverage maximum value from
the IT supply chain so as to extend the best of benefits to our partners and
customers. Our association with Redington, one of our key players and an
essential link in India's IT supply chain, will enable us to effectively
demonstrate the power and business value of our products and solutions to a
broader audience.”

TAPAN MEHTA: The center is aimed at businesses that have wide market reach but run on slender technical staff

The competency center at Redington is aimed at business segments that have
wide market reach but run on slender technical staff as the center can be
efficiently utilized for demonstrating product capabilities. Mehta stated that
the IBM Software Group is planning more of such centers across the country with
business partners and distributors.

This initiative also marks IBM's innovative attempt at supporting a larger
community of business partners, VARs, ISVs, and regional system integrators via
value-added distributors.

Commenting on this initiative, Sasikanth R, GM and Head-Enterprise SBU,
Redington said, “The distributor community is undergoing a major transition with
an increasing number of them no longer in pure distribution business. They are
now proactively taking steps to understand the customer, partner and the parent
company to intelligently bridge the gap between customers and vendors.
Distributors like us are investing in high-end infrastructure and
state-of-the-art products, which will help in bringing customers closer to
technology.”

The initiative will enable IBM to reach a wider market space, particularly
the white space customers. The company will realize this by engaging smaller
partners, who have demonstrated excellent relationship in these mid-market
spaces. The competency center will help such partners, who are small time
entrepreneurs and who don't possess any technical knowledge or skills to engage
a distributor or IBM in a business transaction.