IBM Corp in the UK has announced its first third party business partners for S/390 Multiprise 2000 mainframes, previously the sole domain of IBM’s own direct sales force. It’s a strategy that has already been carried out to a limited extent in the US and Europe, but also partly reflects IBM’s new positioning of its low-end mainframes as something more akin to the packaged servers in its AS/400 line, as evident in the recent Multiprise e- commerce announcement (CI No 3,264). The three partners are CoteC Computing Services Ltd, a Gloucestershire-based RS/6000 dealer which operates mostly in the North East of England; Parity Ltd, a systems integration and services company from Wimbledon, South London; and Thesaurus Ltd, a services and programming resources form that’s been most active in the VM and VSE marketplace. IBM says it’s not currently looking for further partners. The three will sell on Multiprise systems with either IBM’s or their own services offerings, and link up with IBM or third parties on software. Multiprise systems now run Lotus Domino and electronic commerce applications as well as enterprise resource planning software from the likes of SAP AG, Baan NV, J D Edwards and Co and Peoplesoft Inc. Cotec says it’s already made a first sale, to food flavoring and fragrance company Qwest International Ltd. IBM says the new partners will provide a broader range of customers with more tailored and business focused sales and services than it could do by itself. But IBM will keep its lucrative high-end business to itself, though it says if its partners win any upgrade business it will work something out.
