Information Builders Announces Major Initiatives with IBM Systems Resellers to Promote Business Intelligence (BI) on Linux

NEW YORK, Nov. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Information Builders, the enterprise business intelligence (BI) standard of choice for organizations around the world, today announced a new "Platform Solution Provider" alliance program targeted at IBM systems resellers. The program is designed to promote BI on the new IBM System z9, as well as IBM eServer zSeries, iSeries, BladeCenter, and pSeries running Linux. Information Builders has inked new relationships with CMA, Cornerstone Systems, Jeskell, Mainline Information Systems, MSI, NoviPro, Sirius Systems, Vicom Infinity, and Yorel.

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http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020904/IWAYLOGO ) "The BI market is growing at exceptional rates," says Dan Nassif, Vice President of zSeries Solutions at MSI. "BI on Linux is an important segment for IBM resellers like us. We are very excited to establish a formal relationship with Information Builders."

Given the program's initial success in reaching out to the zSeries market, Information Builders is now pursuing resellers that target iSeries and pSeries customers. Many of the zSeries resellers already partner with Information Builders on other IBM platforms and representation in those markets is quickly growing with each additional partnership.

Information Builders' business partner program will focus on bringing enterprise BI to Linux on all of IBM's platforms in conjunction with the hardware, systems support, and service that IBM's systems resellers provide. The combination of hardware, software and services provided by the partnerships will allow the creation of a BI platform solution package for each of the hardware platforms supported.

"Server consolidation savings, reduced management costs and attractive hardware and software pricing give Linux a total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) advantage in many scenarios," says Gerald Cohen, CEO of Information Builders. "This reduced TCO is driving continued interest in Linux as an operating system. We recognize the value that Linux represents to our IBM customers. To aid their efforts, we have made WebFOCUS the only BI product to natively support Linux on all IBM server platforms - iSeries, pSeries, xSeries, the mainframe, and BladeCenter."

"We are excited that such a key workload area as business intelligence has a viable, proven solution under Linux on the IBM mainframe," said Santa M. Kraft, System z9 and zSeries brand manager at Mainline Information Systems, Inc. "We look forward to combining Mainline's expertise in Linux on all IBM brands with the strength of Information Builders' WebFOCUS products as we market this solution to our vast install base of IBM customers."

"We experience substantial benefits using WebFOCUS on IBM zSeries running Linux," says Burt Allen, who works within the Technical Systems group at Harris County Texas. "Mainframe computing has always provided reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS). The ability to run virtual Linux servers under z/VM on the mainframe provides us the opportunity to perform server consolidation and get servers on a stable platform. This also provides a better means of performing backup and recovery." About Information Builders

Information Builders, a $300 million company, is the leader in enterprise business intelligence and real-time operational reporting. The company's WebFOCUS product - the industry's most scalable, secure, and flexible - is able to meet all the reporting needs of the extended enterprise, ranging from analysts to power users to the widest deployments for hundreds of thousands of users. Additionally, WebFOCUS' empowerment of organizations seeking to leverage all their data - by accessing it all from legacy to data warehouse - is unmatched.

Information Builders' award-winning technology has successfully provided quality software and superior services for 30 years to more than 12,000 customers, including most of the Fortune 100 and U.S. federal government agencies. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,750 people and has over 350 business partners.