IBM ‘Blue Carnival’ cheers partners

BANGALORE: IBM has introduced a reward-based partner program specially designed for its range of notebooks, servers and desktops. According to IBM, the ‘Blue Carnival’ campaign is designed to reward top performers in the tier-two business partners and VARs in the country. This program will offer over 150 prizes, including eight luxury cars, which will be awarded to top performers during the 90 days period between October 1st and December 31, 2002.

IBM sees this campaign as an important step to project itself as more of a channel-based company over its traditional image of a direct selling company. "This campaign is important for IBM’s history and we have also roped in our national distributors Ingram Micro, Iris Computers, Redington and Tech Pacific to help us reach out this campaign to smaller cities." said Jyothi Satyanathan, Country Business Manager, IBM eServer xSeries, IBM India Ltd.

IBM claims to have received 600 registrations for this campaign through its website and e-mail. "The program consists of three levels and qualification for each level will be based on performance," says Jyothi. According to him, the business partner can accumulate coupons by selling a Server, Desktop or a ThinkPad notebook and redeem the same for a ticket for the lucky draw.

According to IBM, the announcement of the winners is tentatively slated for 31st Jan 2003 and would be published on their website