SEDONA Earns Advanced Business Partner Designation in the IBM PartnerWorld Program for Developers; Additional IBM Resources Now Available to Expand Business Opportunities
KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 19, 2001--SEDONA(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: SDNA) (www.sedonacorp.com) announced today that it is strengthening its relationship with IBM(R) Corporation (NYSE: IBM) (www.ibm.com) and has been designated an IBM Advanced Business Partner in IBM's PartnerWorld Program for Developers.
This program recognizes and rewards leading IBM Business Partners worldwide. IBM delivers comprehensive benefits to Advanced Business Partners, focused on a commitment to a prosperous business relationship. Advanced Business Partners are by IBM invitation only, requiring annual re-qualification.
With this new designation, SEDONA will be invited to IBM events, participate in joint co-marketing and sales efforts, and receive support from IBM's technical staff.
SEDONA and IBM's Midmarket Banking, Finance, and Securities Group (BFS) have an agreement under which IBM will market SEDONA's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution - Intarsia(TM) - to its customers to run on IBM systems. Intarsia is designed and priced affordably for community financial institutions. Intarsia allows financial institutions to uncover and track sales opportunities, analyze customer, household and product profitability, and develop and assess marketing campaigns over a wireline or wireless network.
While available for the past year on NT and Unix platforms, Intarsia is currently in beta testing on the IBM iSeries platform. Financial service institutions that already experience the superior scalability, manageability, and performance of the IBM iSeries can install Intarsia knowing it will be compatible with their existing IT environment.
"We are privileged to be selected as an IBM Advanced Business Partner," said Marco Emrich, president and CEO, SEDONA Corporation. "This expanded relationship will allow us to do even more joint marketing into our target market and key accounts and grow our IBM distribution channel."
"SEDONA brings tremendous technology and domain expertise to IBM and our customers," said Brian Lewis, executive for IBM's Americas Community Midmarket Banking, Finance and Securities Group. "Intarsia is a product designed and priced specifically for the small and mid-sized financial institutions and addresses their critical needs including profitability management and improved customer retention." |
