Partner product policies

Program category

Products listed on the marketplace must be approved and meet the following program category, either Build with IBM or Red Hat OpenShift.

Build with IBM

If you are listing your product on the marketplace through the Build with IBM program, your Product must be a validated solution. Ongoing participation in the Build with IBM program is required or IBM may suspend or remove your Product from the marketplace. You may also sell one or more Products through the marketplace that are not part of a validated Build solution if they are configured as “hidden” Products and included only as part of a Private Offer made to a Customer together with the validated solution Product. Non-Build validated products cannot be sold separately.

Red Hat OpenShift

Technical certification may be required for certain types of products and may require you to be part of the Red Hat Technology Partners program. You will work directly with Red Hat to ensure your Product meets the technical certifications required for the product types described below. Red Hat will determine if your Product is successfully certified. Successful certification is required before your Product will be made available on the marketplace. You must maintain ongoing certification or IBM may suspend or remove your Product from the marketplace.

Container software — Containers must achieve the Red Hat OpenShift Operator Certification. The certification must be renewed yearly using the most current certification criteria
Software — Software Products must be certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Products can be certified for either RHEL 7 or RHEL 8.
Software as a Service (“SaaS”) — SaaS products must either “run on” (be hosted on) Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, or “run with” Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. A product is considered to “run with” Red Hat OpenShift if the product either enables management of OpenShift, provides essential APIs to applications, or business applications that indirectly drive OpenShift through well-documented integration with other applications that do drive OpenShift workloads.

Priced and trial editions of your product

Unless otherwise approved by IBM, each Product must be available as a no-charge Product Trial so that customers have the ability to validate that the Product will meet their needs in the overall environment the customer is targeting.

A Product Trial can be either: a trial edition (time bound), or a no-charge/community edition (not time bound),
Product Trials must be available to each Customer and will be limited to one Product Trial of each Product per marketplace user.
The Product Trial can be either a commercial/purchased level of the Product or a restricted level of the Product, or a community level of the Product. Customers must be able to convert to a paid edition without requiring Customers to remove any setup or configuration they have already done.
Customers may use the Product Trial in any public cloud or private cloud environment.

Each Product must have at least one priced edition using the charge metrics and subscription terms available from the marketplace.

Information about your Product pricing is publicly available for marketplace users, including anonymous users without a marketplace account.
If you have pricing requirements that are not currently available in marketplace, contact the marketplace support team to discuss your requirement.

Negotiated product fees and terms (Private Offers)

You may negotiate special pricing and terms with individual Customers, using the Private Offer feature to complete the order, which includes the custom price and terms with the Customer in the marketplace.
You may include additional support or services as part of the Private Offer.
Any negotiated terms between you and a Customer do not affect the terms of the Digital Listing Agreement between you and IBM, including support obligations and payment and tax terms.
Any custom EULA and other terms provided with a Private Offer must adhere to the terms of the “Standards and Best Practices for EULAs” as described below.

Bring Your Own License (BYOL) deployment

Customers that have purchased Red Hat marketplace Select may deploy, through the marketplace, your product that they have purchased outside the marketplace. For these BYOL Deployments, IBM will notify you of the request for BYOL deployment, and you must notify IBM if the customer’s entitlement is not valid. If you do not object within 2 days of the notification, the customer will be given access to the product. If you object within 2 days of the notification, IBM will notify the customer of the objection, so you and the customer can resolve the discrepancy.
The marketplace will not collect payment from a customer for BYOL deployments.

Other certifications or industry standards

IBM recognizes that you may want to highlight additional certifications or industry standards that your Product has achieved. Those additional certifications or industry standards will not be verified by the marketplace, but you can identify those items in your Product Listing, so that the information will be available and visible for Customers. Your Product listing can also include supporting evidence for achieving the certification or meeting the standard, such as a link to an auditor report.

Standards and best practices for EULAs

Target audience — the marketplace is targeting enterprise customers, who generally have internal policies for accepting EULAs and legal staff who will carefully review every EULA. Therefore, it is in your best interest to provide a EULA that will be acceptable to that audience and keep to a minimum the delay caused by negotiation of terms (which can delay a purchase by months).
Single document — The URL provided for the EULA should take the customer to a landing page or document that provides the specific terms for the product the customer is acquiring. If the URL directs the customer to a landing page with multiple EULAs for multiple products or product editions, the page must clearly and unambiguously state which EULA governs each product or product edition. The URL must not confuse the customer about the terms they are agreeing to.
Click to accept — The EULA will be presented to the customer as a click to accept agreement when they are acquiring the product. The EULA should not include signature pages, and attachments that are designed for a signature document. Simply reusing an agreement that has that extra material will confuse the customer about the terms they are agreeing to.
Subscription model — The customer will be acquiring the product under a subscription model. Therefore, the EULA must clearly cover the subscription model as one of the usage scenarios. Having both subscription and perpetual purchase terms (and trial terms) in the same EULA is acceptable, but not preferred since it is more confusing for the customer.
Support — Every priced product included in the marketplace must provide standard support and updates/fixes. Therefore, the EULA must state that support is provided. The EULA cannot state that support is not provided as that conflicts with the the marketplace policies and DLA.
Billing/invoices and taxes — These are handled by the marketplace. Your EULA should not confuse the user about billing, payments and taxes directly to you or another third party that you may use for other channels.
Global — Your EULA must be valid for use in, and comply with, any local requirements of any country or territory in which you choose to make your Product available through the marketplace.
Privacy — Your EULA or privacy policy must inform Customers about any Customer Information you collect. You must also inform Customers how that Customer Information is used, stored, secured and disclosed, and describe the controls that Customers have over the use and sharing of their Customer Information and how they may access their data and information. If your Product is hosted, or includes hosted components, you must comply with applicable laws or regulations regarding disclosure of locations in which the Product is hosted or where data is stored.

Product ratings and reviews

IBM may implement mechanisms that allow Customers to rate and provide feedback about your Product(s) listed on the marketplace. If you provide information to integrate with a Product rating/review service, the marketplace will make that rating and review information available to Customers.