Strategic alliance to promote IBM solutions.
Moscow, November 20, 2012 MERLION and Digital Machines announced a strategic alliance to promote IBM products in the Russian market. As part of the alliance Digital Machines retains its legal status and the status of the IBM distributor and confirms its contractual obligations to suppliers as well as to partners.
MERLION takes over the alliance management whereas the Digital Machines whole team continues to work with partners on the basis of the new advanced service capabilities provided by MERLION. These are advanced financial services for the project delivery, financing, logistics capabilities, including the supply of equipment for the projects from a warehouse and a regular supply from regional warehouses, large-scale marketing for the partners business support and development, service training center for training and development of partners skills, access to own procurement management through the B2B-portal, partners support with the vendor, assistance in obtaining status and certification.
The alliance consolidates all statuses, resources and capabilities of the two companies that enables the delivery of all IBM equipment range to partners and Digital Machines, and MERLION. It is all the server range (Power, System x and others), as well as data storage systems.
Within the framework of the alliance, partners of both companies have new advanced features for IBM solutions service and installation. Digital Machines engineering team has successfully merged with the MERLION Engineering Technical Centre having strengthened the center competence towards IBM products. Building on the significant technical and resource capabilities of the center, MERLION Engineering experts can provide partners with services such as: pre-sales preparation of equipment, installation and configuration of servers, installation of equipment and provision of additional technical support, as well as installation and configuration of software. In addition, a demonstration equipment fund is being formed within the MERLION Engineering Technical Center. Both MERLION’s and Digital Machines’ partners will have access to the fund. Engineers of the center also work to create display stands on which partners can test and demonstrate ready solutions to their customers (both in reality and remotely via the Internet) using IBM hardware and software.
Financial and logistical resources of MERLION enabled the alliance to form for the partners a large IBM products distribution warehouse with the range of more than 500 products. This will enable partners to quickly procure off-the-shelf for standard orders and for projects.
Head of IBM Distribution in the created alliance Alex Ladygin highly appreciated the cooperation perspectives. “We believe - he said, - that the signing on of Digital Machines to the alliance with MERLION will enable us to bring relations with IBM partners to a qualitatively new level. Financial and logistical capacity and geographic coverage of the created alliance will make this area of IT business even more attractive for many of our partners”.
General Director of MERLION Vyacheslav Simonenko is equally optimistic: “The strategic alliance with Digital Machines enables us to complement our product portfolio offered to our partners with products of one of the key vendors in the IT market. But, more importantly, Digital Machines is a reliable partner for us with a team of staff of the highest competence in the field of IBM solutions. This means that we can not just supply equipment, but also provide a complete and highly qualified support to our partners”.
“One of the key priorities of IBM in the work with business partners in the Russian market is the development of business in the regions and increasing competence in the this chain in parallel with the expansion of opportunities for suppliers. I am absolutely positive that the alliance between Digital Machines and MERLION will strengthen the capacity of a distribution level and will contribute to the promotion of products and services in Russia”, - said Evgeny Maximov, Business Partner Relations Director, IBM Russia and CIS.
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