IBM has announced new storage incentives for partners, designed to increase channel momentum in the competitive storage marketplace.
The incentives are available for IBM business partners who sell IBM's storage systems and storage software services, stacking them up so that each eligible partner and systems engineer can potentially earn up to $100,000 in storage incentives annually.
John Teltsch, general manager of IBM's global business partners, laid out the company's plan to be the biggest player in the storage market.
"We want to show that we are in the market to win the market from a storage perspective," he told Channel Pro.
"As all of our clients are looking at cloud options, such as hybrid versus public versus a strictly private cloud environment, there is a huge and insatiable demand for storage solutions. That is what IBM is very focused on ... a combination of our software stack and our industry award-winning hardware stack."
The Europe-wide incentive structure is 'stackable', meaning the more software partners sell on IBM hardware, the more money they can earn.
Partners that bring in new clients can earn 3% of the deal size, capped at $30,000 per rep, per deal. Those that sell all-flash arrays can earn 1% of the deal size, capped at $10,000 per deal. For those selling IBM's storage hardware and Spectrum software, they can potentially earn $20,000 per deal.
All three incentives can be achieved together - hence being stackable - and can be customised to ramp up potential earnings, while a fourth incentive is available for initial deals where $500 is rewarded with each new registered deal.
"One key element of the incentive stack we are announcing today is we are really going after our partner sellers, so it is a very individual and personalised incentive," IBM's VP system channel for Europe, Patrick Bauer, said.
"Each partner seller or system engineer can earn up to $100,000 in incentives on an annual basis. The capping of one single deal is at $60,000, so you can already tell we are talking big amounts.
"All four incentive pieces we are announcing are stackable; the first three have a logical correlation, they belong together, and at the end the fourth one is slightly more independent but also could be stacked on top of the first three."
