Armonk, New York, and Bangalore, India -- March 31, 2010 – [@PR2WEB] - In today's challenging economic environment, technology startups say they struggle to bring new ideas to market. In response, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today opened its resources to these companies in a new initiative designed to help this next generation of entrepreneurs capture emerging business opportunities in fast-growing industries such as energy and utilities, health care, telecommunications and government.

The IBM Global Entrepreneur initiative provides start-ups with no-charge access to industry-specific technologies in a cloud environment. In addition, IBM will provide access to its Research community as well as sales, marketing and technical skills. IBM invests more than $6 billion per year in Research with more than 3,000 people in 8 labs around the world.  With more than 4,914 new patents in 2009, IBM has experience bringing inventive technologies to market.
IBM is uniquely positioned to help start-ups because of the depth of resources, expertise, and experience with the most forward-thinking institutions, governments, and businesses around the world. With its Smarter Planet strategy and its years of investments in research, IBM is skilled in building business and product offerings based on new ideas. Its Industry Frameworks, for example, are software platforms targeted to industry specific challenges such as Smarter Water, Smarter Buildings and Smarter Health Care.

  "A large number of venture capital investments in the technology industry will be targeted at entrepreneurs in the US, China, Israel, UK, Germany, France and India this year," said Promod Haque, managing partner, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP). "To make these investments count, start-ups must have the right skills in place to bring new technologies to market more quickly. Venture capitalists, businesses, government and academia must all collaborate to ensure today's entrepreneurs are prepared to succeed."
Under the new initiative, start-ups can for the first time:
     o  access IBM's software portfolio through a cloud computing environment including IBM industry frameworks to accelerate software development;
     o  work side-by-side with scientists and technology experts from IBM Research to develop new technologies;
     o  take advantage of dedicated IBM project managers to assist in product development;  
     o  attend new SmartCamp mentoring and networking workshops with industry experts at IBM's global network of 40-plus Innovation Centers to build go-to-market plans;
     o  tap a new social networking community on IBM developerWorks to connect with other entrepreneurs and over 8 million IT professionals from around the world. 

IBM announced the initiative to 300 venture capital, business, government and academic leaders at an IBM venture capital forum in Bangalore, India. IBM's Claudia Fan Munce, vice president of corporate strategy and managing director of the IBM Venture Capital Group, explained why the company is opening its resources more widely to start-ups: "Businesses around the world are increasingly applying new technologies to address industry-specific needs, and technology start-ups are looking for new ways to capitalize on this trend," she said.  "IBM's goal is to help entrepreneurs gain the skills they need to bring new ideas to market faster using IBM technology to accelerate industry transformation and fuel innovation." 

As part of this program, IBM is collaborating with 22 global industry and technology associations to help identify and connect local start-ups to the initiative through IBM SmartCamps and forums at IBM Innovation Centers throughout 2010.  The associations include:
     o  SD Forum, TiE Silicon Valley, Mass Tech Leadership Council, TiE Austin, MassInno, and Dogpatch in the United States.
     o  National Consortium of University Entrepreneurs, Cmypitch.com, and SE Business Innovation & Growth in the United Kingdom as well as Enterprise Ireland, the Irish Software Association in Ireland and SeedCamp.
     o  Israeli Venture Association, SvoiBiz, Garage Geeks, Office of the Chief Scientist, StartUpmania, and High-Tech Lobby in Israel.
     o  TiE, and India Angel Network in India.
     o  Journées de l'entrepreneur and ADEN in France. 

The criteria for start-ups to participate in the IBM Global Entrepreneur Initiative are; 1) the company must be privately-held; 2) in business less than three years; and 3) actively developing software aligned to IBM's Smarter Planet focus areas.  

For more information on the IBM Venture Capital Group, please visit http://www.ibm.com/venturecapitalgroup.

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