IBM Turns Inside-Out to Usher in the Innovation Age; Opens Core
Intellectual Assets; Collaborates with Partners to Drive Growth,
Deliver ''Innovation that Matters'' to Clients

ARMONK, N.Y. & LAS VEGAS, NV--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 13, 2006--From
the PartnerWorld 2006 conference, IBM is accelerating its mission to
transform businesses into flexible, adaptive market opportunists by
extending to Business Partners the power to help clients innovate,
collaborate and grow. Business Partners contribute to 35 percent of
IBM revenue, an all-time high.


Fueled by a growing multi-billion dollar investment, IBM is building
an "innovation ecosystem" of market collaborators including solution
providers, independent software developers, systems integrators,
consultants, venture capitalists, academics and industry thought
leaders to push the front line of discovery to the keypads of business
executives in their specific industries and market segments.

Recent IBM global surveys show a 360-degree view of business
innovation. For example, one survey found that 76 percent of the
world's top 750 CEOs said collaboration and partnering is critical for
driving innovation, and that external partners, rather than internal
R&D, account for nearly a third of the companies' total quantity of
ideas. In another survey, executives from Small and Medium Businesses
(SMB) stated that keeping a business innovative takes more than
product innovation. It lists customer service (66 percent),
partner/supplier collaboration (41 percent) and access to global
markets (34 percent) as the most instrumental areas of focus to
keeping a business innovative.

Business Partners Tap Into IBM's Intellectual Capital

At the heart of this drive to enable innovation is an unprecedented
opening to Business Partners of IBM's core intellectual and technology
assets. In doing so, Partners will be able to collaborate with IBM and
each other at a deeper level, even at the point of development.
Virtually turning itself inside-out to share some of its most prized
possessions, IBM is launching a wide of range of initiatives at
PartnerWorld to enable the innovation age.

-- With the announcement of Express Advantage, a comprehensive suite
of hardware, software, financing and services designed to spur
innovation and growth for SMB customers, IBM has become the first
major consulting company to deliver consulting services through
Business Partners. The SMB marketplace, which spent an estimated $475
billion on IT in 2005 according to market research firm IDC, is the
fastest growing sector in IBM and accounts for 20 percent of IBM's
total revenue.

-- IBM has formed a new business unit--Technology Collaboration
Solutions--which is designed to enable deeper collaboration with
partners and clients at the center of this fast-growing, multi-billion
dollar "collaborative innovation" market opportunity. The new unit
aims to enable deeper IBM collaboration with partners and clients to
help them more aggressively integrate advanced digital technology into
what they bring to market, creating new revenue opportunities and
expanding channels across multiple industries.

-- For the first time, IBM is opening access for its Business Partners
to one of its most valuable assets--intellectual capital represented
by the scientists and engineers in its world-class $6 billion Research
division. Starting mid-year, through PartnerWorld Industry Networks
(PWIN), qualified Business Partners will now have an opportunity to
collaborate with IBM's leading researchers and industry experts to
develop, market and sell more innovative solutions to a broader range
of clients, in both the large enterprise as well as mid-market
segment.

-- IBM has expanded the annual investment of its Innovation Centers
and Business Partner Innovation Centers (BPIC) to $250 million,
targeting up to 40 new Innovation centers worldwide in 2006. With the
launch of the newest Business Partner Innovation Centers in Rochelle
Park and Denville, NJ; New York City, NY; Toronto, Canada; and Depere,
WA; these openings brings the total to nearly 100 collaborative
innovation facilities worldwide owned and operated by IBM Business
Partners. As part of the BPIC initiative IBM will provide a Technology
Advocate who is an executive or technical leader from their community
with extensive product knowledge and commitment to customers. They
will help establish long term, one-on-one relationships with selected
accounts to provide customers a window into IBM's development
community and accelerate the production of customer-generated
solutions.

"Business partners have specialized expertise, understanding the needs
of a wide range of clients, including small and medium-sized
businesses. Access to open infrastructures and communities where
partners can collaborate with each other and share intellectual
capital is a great way to drive innovation for clients," said Donn
Atkins, general manager, IBM Global Business Partners. "We are
building an innovation ecosystem that will make businesses more
creative, dynamic and competitive in an increasingly ambitious world."

Providing Business Partners with the Incentives and Tools to Grow

In a recognition that further validates IBM's commitment to Business
Partners, just last week IDC named IBM #1 in delivering the best
programs for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and developers to
help them be successful in the marketplace, some of which will be
announced at PartnerWorld.

-- IBM's Partner ValueNet is a networking tool that contributes to
ecosystem building and helps niche partners to create new connections
at the geography level. It is similar to PWIN, but rather than
focusing on industries, ValueNet complements PWIN by enabling
matchmaking based on different variables, the most important being
geography. The idea is that cross-teaming will help Business Partners
extend their reach into key markets (sales) and work together to build
solutions (solution development).

-- Providing a personalized, common Web experience, IBM's eMarketing
Dashboard is a single marketing guide for all IBM brands and routes to
market that is based on IBM Software Group's Web tool and Single
Customer Reference process.

-- IBM is also announcing a new and expanded channel program-Express
Seller--aimed at better serving the SMB server market. Express Seller
pairs IBM's demand generation resources with attractive pricing and
conditions, helping to enable sales and reach into the SMB market.
Just as the Express portfolio of products is specifically designed to
meet the needs of SMBs, the Express Seller program is specifically
designed to help Business Partners sell servers to SMB customers.

-- IBM is also announcing new initiatives related to an emerging
computing trend called service oriented architecture (SOA), which
allows businesses to streamline their business processes and match
them to specific, componentized elements in the IT infrastructure.
Specifically, IBM is announcing expanded programs, new tools and
software to help businesses partners and their small- and mid-sized
business (SMB) customers use technology to innovate and compete on a
global scale.

-- In another effort to help Business Partners grow, IBM is announcing
a new initiative for financially rewarding Partners who are leading
with IBM's middleware portfolio of offerings. The new Software Value
Incentive (SVI) program, which was created with input from hundreds of
business partners around the world, is the first program in the
industry to reward partners for their expertise in all the three
stages of the sales cycle--opportunity identification; selling, or
negotiating, the sale of IBM middleware to customers; and fulfillment,
or delivery, of the software to customers. As a result, prtners can
receive as money back as much as 40 percent of the IBM software sold
in the customer sale.

Finally, through a series of discussions led by Donn Atkins, Bruce
Harreld and other IBM senior executives, IBM will demonstrate how it
is applying its investments and resources to broader issues that
impact society as a whole, such as collaborative innovation, the
growth of small and medium businesses, disaster prevention and
recovery, new developments in Internet security and digital media
convergence.

About IBM PartnerWorld:

IBM is the world's largest information technology company, offering a
host of cross-industry and industry-specific solutions designed to
help companies of all sizes become on demand businesses. Together with
our Business Partners, we are transforming the way companies operate
and innovate. PartnerWorld is a worldwide program for IBM Business
Partners that offers sales and marketing tools, skills building
courses and technical support to create new opportunities designed to
help you grow your business and drive increased profit. It encompasses
the entire portfolio of industry-leading IBM technologies, products,
services and financing. For more information on teaming with IBM
please visit: http://www.ibm.com/partnerworld.