IBM Rational establishes partner network; to focus on Jazz platform, Telelogic
The application development and life cycle management player IBM Rational plans to take consolidated efforts to increase its channel-sales in India. The vendor will focus on expanding its market footprint and share by focusing on its business partners and ISVs in the country. As the first step of its partner- engagement strategy, IBM Rational will give its partners the newly acquired products and technologies. As the next step, it will introduce new partner programs and certifications. Mike Rhoads, Director, Asia Pacific, IBM Rational Software says: ‘Our focus is on white-box IT space. The computing services and enterprise modernization space in the India are growing significantly.” Currently 80 per cent of IBM Rational’s revenue comes from the computing services, primarily the IT industry, and the remaining from enterprise space across various industry verticals.
Acquired technologies
IBM acquired Telelogic, a provider of complex software solutions, in April 2008. Following the integration of the two organizations all the Telelogic products and services became part of the IBM Rational software portfolio. Rhoads intends to leverage Telelogic acquisition to increase its partners’ footprint in the defense, telecommunications, and automotive sectors across various geographies. Telelogic products help organizations to define, model, build, test, deliver and govern the development of software used in complex systems such as aircraft radar or a car’s anti-lock breaking system. IBM claims that it controls 33.4 per cent share by volumes in the application development software market in India. In revenue terms its share is 27.3 per cent. The vendor of its partners. Rhoads says that IBM Rational through Telelogic solutions will help its business partners to accelerate a customer’s ability to develop high-quality complex systems.
Separate channel
At present, IBM Rational has partnered with top systems integrators in India. It has tied up with 270 commercial application providers out of which 160 are independent software vendors. In addition, it has a combined strength of 70 resellers and service partners driving its solutions. “We have exclusive programs designed for Rational’s partners. For example, we have a controlled distribution model and Software Value Incentive Program for these partners to help them identify genuine opportunities,” informs Rhoads.
Jazz platform
From a technology perspective, IBM Rational is laying thrust on training and certification to enable its partners to sell its new Jazz technology platform for collaborative software delivery effectively. “Jazz is designed to transform how people work together to build software, making software delivery collaborative, productive, and transparent. The extensible framework of Jazz integrates and synchronizes people, processes, and assets associated with software development projects,” informs Rhoads adding that IBM Rational’s Team Concert family, Quality manager and Requirement Composer are the first offerings built on the Jazz platform.
As part of its growth strategy, IBM Rational intends to tap 500 developers to bundle Jazz-based offerings to reach out to various more of its solutions, Rhoads is encouraging them to combine them with its RAD offerings (Rational Application Developer). For example, the vendor has launched a variant of Application Development for WebSphere V7.5 which helps Java developers rapidly develop, assemble, test, profile and deploy high end Java/JEE, portal-apps, Web 2.0-apps, web services, and SOA-based applications.
Opportunities for channels
These solutions start from Rs 1 lakh and are priced up to Rs 35 lakh. “We provide a wide choice to our customers. It also helps the partners to earn extra revenues by selling to more number of customers,” Rhoads says. Rhoads sees partners making money not only by driving these solutions but also through services such as consultancy, installation, and support. As a measure to boost partner profitability, the vendor has also introduced incentive programs. According to Rhoads, the addressable market for such solutions stands at $250 million today and is expected to grow at 25 per cent CAGR till 2011.
Other areas where Rhoads sees opportunities for resellers are application scanning, the systems space (where huge amount of testing tools are deployed), web applications space (which is vulnerable to testing), software configuration management, etc. The vendor plans to ready its partners on the audit certification side which is a booming market. To help its partners leverage these opportunities effectively, the vendor has set up Innovation Center equipped with RFID, pervasive computing, and SOA. “The center will have a SaaS lab which will support the partners’ business models besides aiding them in design and architecture,” Rhoads informs.