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IBM targets SMBs with new services

By Alun Williams

Posted on 6 Nov 2003 at 14:54

IBM has launched a WorkPlace on demand initiative - service provision for front-end systems. Aimed at SMBs of 100 seats or more, it is intended to optimise business use of desktops, printers, scanners and all other input and output devices.

In the words of Christian Klezl, Manager of Infrastructure Management Services at IBM Global Services, the new WorkPlace services will cover 'anything that is visible' in an office. And IBM believes efficiency savings of up to 30 per cent are possible. Non-IBM kit will also be managed and maintained.

Pricing will vary with each customer's requirements - number of seats, images and geographic locations, etc. - but a ballpark figure of 49 Euros per seat per month was quoted to us by Klezl.

Since the early nineties, services have been a massively important revenue generator for IBM and played - according to former chief Lou Gerstner - a pivotal role in the regeneration of the old ailing IBM of the eighties.

Klezl, however, described the market for optimising data centres and back end systems as now being exhausted. Front end systems, is where IBM sees future revenue - the next frontier, for what IBM previously codenamed 'Project Frontier'.

IBM has described 'Project Frontier' as being part of its on-demand initiative. While this may be stretching the concept a little - use of individual PCs will hardly be time sliced, for example - IBM describes the service as providing flexibility for an organisation's deployment of resources. Businesses will be able to purchase technology on the basis of what they need to consume.

Of course, there are numerous companies providing support services to SMB's, but IBM's line is that these have been more specialised suppliers, either in geographic terms or with particular hardware focuses.