These two partner case studies – on Icom Solutions and Elyzium – demonstrate the value that TD SYNNEX’s unique OpenShift sandbox environment is providing for IBM partners.
Building confidence and capability to fuel business growth
Icom Solutions is a technical consulting services firm, established for over two decades. Around five years ago, it entered into a strategic partnership with Sorint.lab, a Milan-based professional services company with more than 800 consultants.
As part of this alliance, Icom developed expertise in Red Hat. It is now one of only a handful of Red Hat Premier Partners in the UK. It works with partners that have complementary skills, and even lists Red Hat itself as one of its partners/customers. TD SYNNEX is another long-standing partner and when Red Hat was acquired by IBM, Icom was keen to explore the potential of building a relationship with the vendor.
A lot of IBM partners don’t have skills in technologies like OpenShift and in areas such as automation, where we have real strengths
Complementary skills
Jay Patel, Red Hat Sales Specialist at Icom Solutions, said: ‘As soon as we got introduced, we started to see enquiries coming in from IBM partners for help with Red Hat support. A lot of IBM partners don’t have skills in technologies like OpenShift and in areas such as automation, where we have real strengths.’
Another useful aspect of the partnership is having access to TD SYNNEX’s OpenShift sandbox. ‘It allows our engineers to develop their skills and get competent with the technology. We can load solutions onto the sandbox very quickly. Without that I am not sure if we would have been able to have come as far with IBM as we have.’
It gives us a really good reference platform that we can build on
Unbounded confidence
The environment is entirely open and vendor-agnostic, and this is also very appealing, said Jay Patel. ‘What we like about it is that we are not bound into any particular cloud platform. If a customer wants to use Azure, or AWS, or IBM, or take a hybrid approach, we can offer that. We have the skills in Red Hat technologies, and with TD SYNNEX we can also offer the containerisation, and that will give us the potential to drive additional service revenue. It gives us a really good reference platform that we can build on.’
TD SYNNEX is also helping Icom to make important contacts within IBM itself. ‘When you pull that all together it gives us a lot of confidence. We can work with the TD SYNNEX IBM team to build our skills and contacts, just as we have with Red Hat over the last few years, and ultimately, that will enable us to grow our business.’
Shortening time to value
Elyzium is a well-established Gold IBM Business Partner renowned for its expertise in IBM Tivoli. Over two decades, it has established a base of customers across the UK and globally. Probal Sil, Managing Director of Elyzium, and his colleagues have been working to help customers maximise their investment in IBM and Red Hat. When he heard that TD SYNNEX had created a containerised testing environment for OpenShift, he took an immediate interest.
We can show them a real environment that’s closer to what they will need to implement
‘All of our customers have been looking at containerisation and utilising serverless infrastructure to develop new applications. They are moving away from the virtualised approach to PaaS. Most are still in the early stages of adoption and TD SYNNEX’s platform is such a good opportunity. Rather than just talking about it and using slideware, we can show them a real environment that’s closer to what they will need to implement.
Moving projects forward
‘It short-cuts the installation and development lifecycle and reduces time to value for the customer. Just as importantly, because people know what they are doing and what they have to do, they buy into it, and that gives the project a much better chance of moving forward much sooner.’
By making use of the sandbox, Elyzium has been able to advance a number of projects successfully. It has stimulated additional application licence sales and triggered conversations around cloud-based options. This is key as Elyzium sees driving Red Hat subscription revenues as one of its biggest opportunities.
Helping us build a value proposition and getting to know the Red Hat community
Delivering business value
Another huge benefit of using the TD SYNNEX OpenShift multicloud environment is demonstrating the synergy between IBM apps and Red Hat. ‘That is what delivers business value – and that’s much more likely to get traction than simply saying that we can do subscriptions.’
TD SYNNEX is also connecting Elyzium with Red Hat contacts. Probal Sil said: ‘They have introduced us to a lot of people in Red Hat who can supplement what we are doing - people in the channel, direct sales, and the marketing teams - through TD SYNNEX. That’s helping us build a value proposition and getting to know the Red Hat community. We are now being introduced to businesses that have complementary skills to our own. We are jointly working on one opportunity already.’
