Lotus, one of the forgotten names inside IBM’s software division, is getting a face-lift with new technical and marketing programs through the ISV Advantage partner program.
The initiative is in support of increased adoption of Lotus Workplace solutions across IBM’s 65,000 independent software
vendors (ISVs) and business partners worldwide.
IBM announced that 200 ISVs have signed on to its ISV Advantage program, started in April of last year.
Leslie Givens, program director of developer relations at IBM, that with the mid-market growing the company tried to adapt its partnership strategy to take advantage of the opportunity.
“”Our goal, we thought, was aggressive to get 100 partners and we surpassed it at 200 signings,”” Givens said.
The ISV Advantage program will advocate Lotus Workplace technical enablement and go-to-market activities among its partners.
The program also helps promote Lotus Workplace as one of the core offerings for ISVs to develop collaboration solutions tailored to SMBs and vertical industries such as consumer online selling in retail and automotive dealer portals.
There are more than 75 North American members in the ISV Advantage Program. Partners in Canada include Interchange Solutions, Geac, Insystems, Loki Systems, Plastisoft, Triversity and Tecsys.
One-third of IBM’s revenue comes from partners. Partnering accounts for three-quarters of IBM’s revenue in the SMB market, Givens said.
Two of Lotus’ signature products, Notes and Domino, will now have a traditional Lotus Workplace-like interface. With it, partners and ISVs do not have to make any significant changes to a customer’s collaboration infrastructure.
Notes/Domino will include Lotus Instant Messaging and an enhanced connection to help Microsoft users with Domino collaboration without having to replace Outlook.
According to Givens, in the next 18 to 24 months customers will be forced to make a strategic platform decision — either go with Microsoft .Net or the IBM’s On Demand e-business route with J2EE or Linux.
“”We want them to understand the growth opportunity for On Demand. If you look at the On Demand market, it is on a growth trajectory. We have to help partners help their customers make the decision on open standards and make the move to On Demand,”” she added.
IBM has released a bundle with Web-based collaboration and a portal environment called the IBM Software Solution for On Demand Workplace.
Priced at US$400 per user, it includes Lotus Workplace Messaging, Team Collaboration, Collaborative Learning, Web Content Management and WebSphere Portal.