IBM zeros in on SMBs

NEW ORLEANS: The small and medium business (SMB) segment is among the fastest growing markets today, and IBM has major plans to tap into this space. To this effect, IBM announced various new technologies, tools, educational, and marketing programs during its annual developerWorks Live! conference held in New Orleans this month.

IBM"s SMB programs are a part of its bigger "e-business on demand" strategy, which it feels is the next phase of computing. In this, business efficiency can"t improve by simply investing in new technology. It would improve by analyzing the current IT infrastructure and using tools and technologies that would help you integrate your business processes better. The characteristics of this initiative are that the IT infrastructure is integrated, uses open standards, is virtualized, and has self-healing autonomic capabilities.

In an exclusive interview, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, the general manager for e-business on demand commented that we can"t just keep throwing new technologies at our customers and expect them to figure them out on their own. He said that the success of e-business on demand will not depend on a killer application as has been the case of various technologies. Instead, the objective is to improve business productivity, for which there can"t be any one single killer application.

One of the programs announced for SMBs was the ISV Advantage initiative to drive into the mid-market segment. As the name suggests, it focuses on ISVs by providing them with the necessary technical and marketing support to develop solutions for their SMB customers.

IBM would be pumping in $500 million of investments in activities, tools, and incentives on the program. The selected ISVs would also be given priority access to IBM"s Solution Partnership Centers (SPCs) and WebSphere Innovation Centers (WICs) worldwide. Plus, they would be provided technical support to port their applications to IBM WebSphere and DB2.

Buell Duncan, General Manager Developer Relations stressed on the importance of partners by saying that about 100 existing IBM alliances have helped IBM generate billions of dollars of revenue every year. Open source software, or Linux to be more specific plays a key role in IBM"s initiatives for the SMB segment. Linux is the fastest growing Operating System in the world according to IDC. Due to its open source nature and low price, it"s very popular amongst the SMB segment, and the number of applications available on the platform is also constantly growing.

IBM has been a major supporter for Linux, and in 2001 alone it invested nearly $ one billion to support the operating system. One of the programs it announced last year was "Speed Start your Linux Apps", wherein it shipped a record 360,000 kits to help speed up development on Linux using IBM middleware.

The kit contained trial code, training, and support to get you up and running on Linux. Not to mention, it also contains trail versions of IBM"s major products such as DB2, Tivoli, Lotus Domino, WebSphere, etc. The success of the initiative can be rated by the 6,500 applications that were developed using the kit and registered with IBM.

Another drive in the SMB direction is the introduction of lighter or "Express" versions of IBM"s server software product line. These include WebSphere, DB2, Tivoli, and Lotus

Domino. This product portfolio is also priced lower for the SMBs, and yet is supposed to be easy to install and manage, and is based on open standards. By June this month, an Integrated Platform Express program would be launched, wherein IBM would provide Express versions of WebSphere and DB2 on IBM eServers, x225, x235, and x345 systems.