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Q. What is IBM announcing today?
A. "IBM Destination z" is a community of companies and educational institutions that work together forming an alliance to deliver strong business value to their customers by enabling them with technologies to centralize and optimize control and expense of their IT infrastructure. The community adds value by providing a comprehensive ecosystem that enables companies to develop or move computing workloads to IBM's System z platform to realize improved IT value including superior TCO, energy efficiency and security.
Q. What is the purpose of "IBM Destination z"?
A. IBM Destination z is designed to promote the strategic and economical value of traditional mainframe assets that may be distorted by portals from other vendors, promote migration of workload TO the System z with offerings and messages on value of the System z, such as Infrastructure Simplification, TCO, SOA, On Demand, Data Serving, and Security.
In addition to promoting movement of workload to the System z, IBM Destination z will also promote maintenance and modernization of workload already existing on the Mainframe using modernization tools available from both IBM and its partners.
For IBM's partners, IBM Destination z will help to build and enhance alliance partnerships supporting traditional applications, and help to move UNIX and Wintel applications to the Mainframe.
It is also IBM Destination z's goal to help System z partners grow revenue and profits by enhancement of System z image and awareness supporting System z market momentum
and increased awareness of partner expert skills and solutions supporting the mainframe.
Q. Who can join IBM Destination z?
A. Membership in IBM Destination z is open to qualifying IBM business partners and qualifying academic institutions.
Business partners wishing to join should be current members of IBM PartnerWorld and
should have demonstrated competency in developing or moving new workloads to the mainframe and have identifiable offerings to assist customers in the implementation of Mainframe solutions. Business partner members are required to contribute at least one publicly usable customer reference per year and should be willing to be listed as partners on public web pages and collateral. Business partner members should emphasize their affiliation to IBM Destination z as a primary and critical relationship.
Academic members should be current participants in the IBM Academic Initiative and
should have implemented or plan to implement System z oriented curricula. Academic members should also be willing to be listed as participants in the Academic Initiative on IBM Destination z Web pages and collateral.
Q. What is the value of IBM Destination z to IBM Business Partners?
A. IBM Destination z will be a forum that can provide opportunities to collaborate with other appropriate business partners in order to receive and deliver strong business value to customers. The IBM Destination z web portal can assist business partners to be visible in the mainframe community and to put them in the best position to provide guidance to their clients on mainframe strategy.
IBM Destination z will assist in providing a framework for customers, ISVs, partners, academic institutions, to collaborate for the well being of the mainframe community by facilitating their access to the right skills, tools, and other assets to develop service offerings needed to support mainframe clients. In doing this, IBM Destination z can assist in opening up new business opportunities, and in providing increased awareness and ease of access to mainframe services initiatives, skilled resources, and tools leveraging the IBM Destination z framework and community of interest.
Q. What is the value of IBM Destination z to Academic Institutions?
A. IBM Destination z can help Academic Institutions by assisting them to gain access to information on practical application of the mainframe in the marketplace. IBM Destination z will allow Academic members to view educational Webcasts and Podcasts, identify student internship potential and to gain visibility to the mainframe community by post appropriate analysis and research of significance to the System z community.
Q. How do I join IBM Destination z?
To join IBM Destination z community, you must be a qualified member of PartnerWorld, or a participant in IBM's Academic Initiative. If you are a member of PartnerWorld, click here. IBM will determine your eligibility for IBM Destination z.
If you are not a member of PartnerWorld, contact IBM at: www.ibm.com/PartnerWorld, for IBM Business Partner candidates.
If you are interested in the IBM Academic Initiative for System z, please click here.
Q. What is the value of IBM Destination z for IBM customers?
A. IBM Destination z will provide a portal to a comprehensive ecosystem consisting of applications, solutions and providers that enables companies to leverage the mainframe so they can realize improved IT value including superior TCO, energy efficiency and security. The program will give strong evidence of successful migrations to the mainframe, lending support for those who face challenges from distributed solution advocates, and ideas on how to make migrations or new application implementations happen more effectively.
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