IBM will pay a 10 percent referral fee to partners who send sales to select Web services vendors.

The offer, announced Thursday, is open to any solution provider who signs up as an IBM Global Services Channel Partner, said Dave Mitchell, director of strategy for software as services at IBM, which is headquartered in Armonk, NY. Enrollment as a Global Services Channel Partner is free, requires no minimum annual sales quota, no particular certification, can be done online at IBM's Web site, and is open to even the smallest solution provider with the fewest sales resources, he said.

Partners who refer their customers to any one of about 25 Web services partners of IBM - a group which includes vendors such as Exchange hosting vendor Apptix, HR management software vendor Success Factors, and security and performance monitoring vendor Corente - get paid 10 percent of the booked revenue from the first year of the closed deal, said Mitchell.

The typical deal size with any of the 25 or so IBM Web services partners can range from $50,000 to $100,000 and up, said Mitchell.

IBM hosts the offerings of each of the 25 Web services partners.