Certification

Certification/Qualification (Skills/Product) - Certification/Qualification is required for the Cross Industry Technology VAEs and for maintaining a sales location for Coverage VAEs. The Business Partner is to ensure that its personnel meet the certification/qualification requirements to maintain approval for VAEs including those VAEs they will jointly market.

Customer Establishment - A customer establishment is defined as the physical location, including contiguous buildings, within a customer's enterprise in which the qualifying system is installed and operational with the Business Partner's VAE.

Eligible Products - Power servers, System i, and System p servers; MES model/processor upgrades.

Face-to-face Meeting - Is required for the initital system or processor upgrade sold with a VAE. The face-to-face meeting must be by a full-time Business Partner sales or technical representative. Contractors or agents are not included. The face-to-face meeting must occur prior to or when presenting pricing or discount information (other than IBM list prices) for IBM products to the customer. For VAEs specifically defined in the Public Sector Category, the face-to-face meeting requirement does not apply until final proposal when the the Business Partner is responding to a Public Sector bid over the Internet. One or more Business Partner full-time employees must meet with the customer's key personnel involved in the decision. A face-to-face meeting is required for all sales with VAE unless otherwise specified.

Sales Location - Business Partners are required to maintain a sales location with current product certified personnel within a specified distance from the customer location for those VAEs that have a sales location requirement.

Solution Providers - Solution Providers offer complete business solutions and substantial value-added services to their customers. They typically offer industry application solutions, networked solutions or solutions involving the integration of emerging technologies. Depending on business circumstances, and with appropriate approval, Solution Providers may work on a remarketer basis, acquiring IBM products and remarketing them at prices and terms they set, or work on a fee basis, assisting IBM in marketing at prices and terms set by IBM. Solution Providers acquire products either directly from IBM or from Distributors. Solution Providers are also known in the industry as value-added resellers.

Value Added Enhancement (VAE) - A VAE is the Solution Provider's incremental contribution to the sale of the approved IBM products, which together provide a total solution to the customer. The VAE is the reason a customer buys the IBM product from a Solution Provider and forms the basis for selecting a Solution Provider to market IBM products and services to customers. Sales with a VAE are for the initial system or model/processor upgrade installation at an end-user customer establishment.