IBM Tivoli Accreditation: Matchmaking Business Partners and Clients

Special expertise may be required to optimize IT

Tivoli Beat - A weekly IBM service management perspective. Getting forward momentum in a cloudy economic environment is a complex proposition. For many organizations, a logical strategy lies in optimizing the IT infrastructure; if IT is the central nervous system, as is usually the case, an improved IT infrastructure will translate into a faster, more effective and more cost-effective response to changing business conditions.

Naturally, obtaining and deploying best-in-class solutions is a key element of IT optimization. However, given an infrastructure of even moderate complexity, the solutions alone won't be enough. Equally important is the question of how to leverage them for best business value.

A software provisioning tool, for example, may be able to provision servers with remarkable speed and consistency, but how should the organization utilize that tool for best business value? How can the organization ensure that the tool's features are best leveraged to enhance virtualization, for instance, in order to enhance IT, in order to enhance the organization's business agility generally? Similar questions apply to other solution groups—asset management, for instance, or service assurance or storage optimization. And often they are difficult questions to answer, requiring substantial expertise in both the technology and the business possibilities the technology implies.

In particular, these questions will often come up in the context of mid-market, growing organizations. Such organizations are often large enough to have a complex IT infrastructure, yet small enough that they may not have comprehensive expertise on different solutions, strategies, business processes or the right best practices frameworks, such as ITIL 3, that could be used to orchestrate IT solutions for an optimal outcome. For these organizations, assistance in the form of skilled, focused consulting may be of enormous practical value.

The IBM Tivoli Deployment Accreditation Program drives business growth for both IBM Tivoli clients and IBM Business Partners

Fortunately, IBM is aware of their needs and has delivered a compelling response.

The Tivoli Deployment Accreditation program, launched in 2008, is designed to make it as easy as possible for organizations to find the business partners they need to achieve target business goals via IBM Tivoli solutions. It accomplishes this goal by classifying those business partners in accordance with their demonstrated expertise, and giving them incentives to develop new skill sets known to be in demand. The outcome for the business partners: extra promotion and a competitive distinction. The outcome for their clients: proven expertise in the IBM offerings they require to achieve business goals, bolstered by a deep knowledge of local conditions, competitors and other factors that may apply—a combination unlikely to be available outside that geographic area.

Three levels of ascending expertise are included in the program. These give potential clients an easy benchmark to assess IBM Business Partners by proven knowledge: A, AA and AAA. Each level is determined by the number of certified solution advisors and certified deployment professionals a partner offers. What do these terms mean? A certified solution advisor is a consultant focusing on business complexities of different types, such as green energy management or cost reduction possibilities and how they may or may not apply to a given client. A certified deployment professional, on the other hand, focuses on specific Tivoli offerings or logical clusters of them, such as IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager, Tivoli Storage Manager, or IBM Tivoli Monitoring and the different aspects of deployment, configuring, or integrating them with each other or the preexisting infrastructure generally for unique business value. Accreditations in product areas are obtained via predefined certifications in that product or solution family.

At the A, or introductory level, one certified solution advisor and one certified deployment professional will be available. Going up the ladder of accreditation expertise, the AA level translates into a business partner with at least two certified solution advisers, one certified deployment professional and one advanced deployment certification or equivalent (to demonstrate unusual expertise). And at the highest, AAA level, organizations can expect to find two certified solution advisors, three certified deployment professionals and one advanced deployment certificate.

Zeroing in on specific expertise for specific purposes

Furthermore, IBM gives its Business Partners many incentives to encourage them to move up the ladder as much as possible.

For instance, IBM Tivoli publicizes partner certifications and accreditation levels of different partners via direct sales, the partner ecosystem and via customer communications. Consultants who go the extra mile to achieve AAA accreditation, therefore, will tend to stand out—becoming the gold standard for technical and business consultation in a given region, and receiving more business as a result. And their customers, too, will benefit from an exceptional level of expertise across both the business and technological dimensions via the best possible utilization of the IBM Tivoli solutions that map most directly to their needs.

There are also cross-over benefits involved; they too apply to both the Business Partners and their clients. IBM Business Partners that obtain certifications to participate in the Tivoli Deployment Accreditation program can also, in some cases, receive credit for those certifications in the IBM Business Partner Dynamic Infrastructure Specialty program, which directly addresses some of the most immediate concerns facing organizations today. Specifically, by moving to a more dynamic infrastructure, organizations can reduce their costs, mitigate their business risks and enhance their service levels by developing more agile, intelligent and responsive infrastructures via superior visibility, control and automation.

In this respect, IBM's deep commitment to achieving win-win scenarios that benefit all players in the business ecosystem is illustrated. The more informed and up-to-date IBM Business Partners become, as demonstrated by their accreditation level, the more they are promoted, and the more benefit they will generate to their clients and customers. Tivoli accreditation, in other words, helps both IBM business partners and IBM Tivoli customers to grow by aligning them with each other appropriately.

Given such an orchestration of consulting talent, one might expect the Tivoli Deployment Accreditation program to have been a success—and it has. As of the time of this writing, a year from program launch, IBM can cite well over a hundred different Business Partners in over twenty-five countries who collectively hold more than two hundred seventy different accreditations. Furthermore, in some cases, IBM Business partners have invested even more deeply than expected in the program by achieving multiple AAA accreditation levels—multiplying the value they offer their customers.

For organizations interested in finding an IBM Business Partner accredited by the program, IBM has made things exceptionally easy via a public, online list. The search process begins with selection of the appropriate geographical region, and subsequently Business Partners can be sorted by solution areas (automation, security or storage), specific products (Tivoli Storage Manager, TotalStorage Productivity Center, Tivoli Monitoring, Tivoli Netcool Proviso and Maximo Enterprise Asset Management, among others), accreditation level, name or country.