IBM wants 5000 partners

IBM wants 5000 new partners worldwide, in an initiative that marks its largest partner recruitment program in years, said Donn Atkins, the company’s general manager of Global Business Partners.

The program - which touches all IBM product groups, including servers, storage, software and services - especially targets SMB solution providers selling rival products, Atkins said.

He declined to say if IBM was taking aim at specific competitors in the recruitment.

“This is going to impact a lot of competitors. There are a lot of partners doing business with other companies, but I am not going to focus on [names],” Atkins said.

“I have not said word one to our people on targeting a specific company. I am really targeting the partners, the opportunity, the synergy with what we have in place. There will be people hopefully not doing as much [business] with other [competitors], but my focus is not about that.”

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