Pushing for selling more solutions instead of products, IBM has announced Channel Yatra, a new initiative to strengthen its engagement with partners.

Channel Yatra has been rolled out in cities like Delhi, Mumbai and six other cities that cover 70 key reseller companies. The six other cities are Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Kolkata.

With this, IBM is addressing the concerns of partners in these cities by providing assistance in technical sales skills, lead generation, sales transaction progression, training and certification to facilitate growth.

As a part of this initiative, IBM will include technology solutions like Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, VDI-In-a-Box, High Capacity CCTV solution, AIX scholar programme, datacentre-in-a-box and compiler server for developers.

This initiative also highlighted the solution-in-a-box approach to enable Business Partners on value sale and customised solutions, IBM said in a statement.

Further, IBM’s offering for business partners in the areas of cloud computing, business analytics and Smarter Planet solutions were also among the key focus areas.

This platform helped business partners to discover collaborative ways to work with IBM, tap into IBM’s technology resources for better product positioning as well as benefit from various incentives that are in store, according to Alok Ohrie, Vice-President, Systems & Technology Group, IBM India South Asia.

“With a competitive marketplace and an ever-demanding clientèle, it is important that our Business Partners are well equipped to handle these requirements,’’ he added.

With this, IBM reiterated its commitment to the partner ecosystem, focus on strategic programmes to increase partner profitability as well as highlight the concept of solution bundles that help channel partners sell and position their products better.