This award recognizes an IBM Business Partner that delivers the most innovative solution on IBM z Systems to support the Digital Economy. The solution will deliver an excellent client experience, enable digital business transformation, and drive business growth and competitive advantage.
The nominating IBM Business Partner should illustrate how their IBM z Systems solution delivers innovation with one or more of the following characteristics.
- Demonstrates significant business growth based on innovation enabled by the IBM z solution implemented.
- Utilizes Open source and Linux solutions to tap into the potential of the open ecosystem, optimize infrastructure and improve economics.
- Supports large scale mobile transactions with reliability, speed, security and flexibility to deliver integrated, innovative and differentiated mobile services that improve client experience and optimize performance.
- Delivers efficiency with a trusted private, public and hybrid cloud solution to improve economics, quality of service and speed to market.
- Utilizes right-time analysis of mission-critical data to gain competitive advantage, improve efficiency and/or improve client experience with analytics.
- Presents higher quality enterprise applications faster by utilizing IBM z with its modernizing development tools and processes to drive business transformation – recognizing excellence dev ops.
Additional Criteria:
- Minimum of 1 (maximum of 3) client references is required.
- Open to System Integrators, Resellers, Solution Providers, ISVs and MSPs who have participated in solution development and deployment at a client site.
- Solutions leveraging Cloud, Analytics, Mobile, DevOps and/or Linux with specific client benefits and measurable returns on investment will be key in judging.
- Examples of client benefits may include increased speed to market, measurable financial benefits and growth in client reach/client landscape, improved ability to deliver services, improvements in response times, and a new ability to deliver continuous service.
This award recognizes an IBM Business Partner solution that leverages the latest Middleware offerings around application platform, integration, service management, smarter process and digital experience. The Business Partner should demonstrate how they help clients maximize their business performance by providing solutions that enable dynamic, interconnected business processes and deliver highly effective application infrastructures for all business environments.
The ideal candidate for this award will articulate how the use of IBM Middleware solutions enabled or enhanced the value of their service or solution, delivered new or increased benefit to their clients and drove demonstrable business outcomes. Special consideration will be given for solutions leveraging more than two IBM Middleware offerings.
The winning solution will have the following characteristics:
- Must contain at least two of the products within the IBM Middleware offerings portfolio.
- Must contain a Business Partner application or high-value service (integration, implementation, customization, consulting or hosting services).
- Must demonstrate client ROI and drive tangible business value for IBM.
- Special consideration will be given to clients new to IBM Middleware products.
Additional criteria:
- Minimum of 1 (maximum of 3) client references required describing how the client’s organization has benefitted from the Business Partner’s solution – the reference(s) should demonstrate how the solution transformed the client’s value chain, client experience, growth, revenue, productivity and ROI boost including quantifiable metrics.
This award recognizes the Business Partner that has achieved outstanding results in deploying a Power Systems solution which helped their client transform their IT infrastructure to resolve business challenges and gain a competitive edge.
The winner of this award will have implemented an innovative Power Systems solution with the following characteristics:
- Demonstrated capability to support open source solutions, infrastructures and architecture.
- Aligned to the direction and overall strategy of the Power brand to grow in big data and analytics, cloud and open innovation.
- Designed to deliver business value against specific clients’ needs while improving overall end-client experience.
- Delivered measurable value to the client's business while overcoming market and competitive challenges.
- Inclusion of Power Systems software. (i.e.PowerVM, PowerVP, PowerHA, PowerSC, PowerVC, PowerKVM, etc).
- Demonstrated capability for repeatable implementation.
- The following solutions will be given special consideration:
- Solutions developed with LAMP stack and teaming with strategic Power ISV Ecosystem like Redis, Maria DB, Zend, etc.
- Optimized Power Systems' unique capabilities in analytics, cloud or open innovation
- Innovative solutions (beyond analytics, cloud or mobile) that optimized Power Systems in new areas and ways never before possible.
- Eligible servers: POWER8 processor-based servers
- Eligible operating environments: AIX, IBM i, and Linux on Power.
Additional Criteria:
- Minimum of 1 (maximum of 3) client references is required.
This award recognizes the IBM Business Partner that has achieved the greatest results in deploying a Systems Storage Solution which helped their client manage, protect and leverage their data to stay ahead of their competition.
The winning solution will have the following characteristics:
- Demonstrate how their clients used IBM Storage solutions to help gain insights from their data to improve business results.
- Provides data efficiency and reduction in operational costs through placing the right data in the right place at the right time, by industry-leading simplicity and software defined storage (SVC, Spectrum, Easy-Tier etc.).
- Includes demonstrable, proven, pre-built components or assets which can be applied to deliver repeatable business value where success is evidenced by their clients’ adoption of one or more leading-edge IBM Storage offerings: IBM Storwize, IBM FlashSystem family, IBM Spectrum Family, IBM XIV storage, IBM DS8000 and/or IBM Tape Solutions.
- Provides a proven track record of driving significant IBM Storage revenue.
Additional criteria:
- Minimum of 1 (maximum of 3) client references required.
- Special consideration will be given for solutions that demonstrate a high degree of cross-IBM integration.