Saturday, November 13, 2004
IBM announces an SME package
IBM announces an SME package
The solution for employees to collaborate over networks is part of broader worldwide launch of Workplace solutions for companies, reports AMIT ROY CHOUDHURY
Business Times
13 Nov 2004
COMPUTER giant IBM Corp on Wednesday showed it means business with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) when it announced a new offering that helps employees in smaller organisations collaborate more effectively over networks.
The offering, called IBM Workplace Services Express (WSE), is 'a new team collaboration solution with an integrated portal, which makes it easy for users to work together by providing easy-to-use and easy-to-customise work spaces to create, edit and share documents,' C J Martin, IBM's Asia Pacific solutions executive for portals and workplace, told BizIT.
WSE is part of a broader worldwide announcement of an array of new software solutions and products targeted at both SMEs as well as large enterprises.
Mr Martin said WSE, designed for small to mid-sized organisations with up to 1,000 employees, would help companies seeking broad gains in productivity, simpler access to documents and business applications as well as easier deployment and management of their Information Technology infrastructure.
The system installs and deploys in a matter of hours, a factor that Mr Martin said was attractive to SMEs because these tend to have fewer system administration experts at their disposal. 'SMEs need to have something installed and up and running very quickly.'
WSE also integrates with a variety of applications and productivity tools that mid-market employees need but which they previously could not get without a significant amount of customisation, he said.
He added that WSE can integrate with general ledger and inventory management applications and also with Windows Explorer views, productivity documents like spreadsheet, word processing tools as well as graphics presentation packages.
'Besides it also integrates with typical collaboration sort of features you need like mail, calender and instant messaging,' Mr Martin said.
According to IBM, the SME market worldwide is worth around US$300 billion. IBM classifies companies as SMEs if they have fewer than 1,000 employees.
An IDC spokeswoman told BizIT that its latest forecast, updated in August, sees Singapore's SME sector spending US$1.2 billion on IT this year. During this same period, SMEs in Asia Pacific (minus Japan) are expected to spend US$29 billion. The research agency classifies SMEs as having less than 500 employees.
Speaking to BizIT, IDC Asia Pacific research manager Alan Tong said WSE is an integrated solution which allows extensive employee collaboration.
'It is a network-delivered workplace and this means users can access data, information or messaging through a Web browser,' Mr Tong said. 'The WSE allows team collaboration which means that within the organisation users can exchange information or documents through the workplace and also manage documents.'
Stating that it is a very strong solution package for SMEs, the IDC analyst said: 'Looking at what is available in the market at the moment, there are a lot of standalone pieces of solutions out there. What IBM is offerring to the customers is an integrated solution which is delivered through a portal infrastructure.'
According to him, this would hit a sweet spot for organisations looking to improve their collaboration infrastructure - especially those organisations which have several branch offices or remote workers.
'The offering is moving towards a Web base rather than a client server type, which means you don't have to be on the premise, you can be anywhere to access the information,' he said.
Mr Martin said WSE would be available in Singapore within 30 days. While pricing details would be known only then, IBM will have two pricing models. One will be on a per user basis and another on a per CPU basis.
Mr Martin said that apart from the new WSE version announced, which is an expansion of the company's Express product line, IBM also announced the WebSphere Portal 5.1. The new version of WebSphere Portal is an upgrade of the company's portal infrastructure software.
IBM also announced the availability of a variety of domain specific industry implementation of infrastructure and collaboration software.
The solution for employees to collaborate over networks is part of broader worldwide launch of Workplace solutions for companies, reports AMIT ROY CHOUDHURY
Business Times
13 Nov 2004
COMPUTER giant IBM Corp on Wednesday showed it means business with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) when it announced a new offering that helps employees in smaller organisations collaborate more effectively over networks.
The offering, called IBM Workplace Services Express (WSE), is 'a new team collaboration solution with an integrated portal, which makes it easy for users to work together by providing easy-to-use and easy-to-customise work spaces to create, edit and share documents,' C J Martin, IBM's Asia Pacific solutions executive for portals and workplace, told BizIT.
WSE is part of a broader worldwide announcement of an array of new software solutions and products targeted at both SMEs as well as large enterprises.
Mr Martin said WSE, designed for small to mid-sized organisations with up to 1,000 employees, would help companies seeking broad gains in productivity, simpler access to documents and business applications as well as easier deployment and management of their Information Technology infrastructure.
The system installs and deploys in a matter of hours, a factor that Mr Martin said was attractive to SMEs because these tend to have fewer system administration experts at their disposal. 'SMEs need to have something installed and up and running very quickly.'
WSE also integrates with a variety of applications and productivity tools that mid-market employees need but which they previously could not get without a significant amount of customisation, he said.
He added that WSE can integrate with general ledger and inventory management applications and also with Windows Explorer views, productivity documents like spreadsheet, word processing tools as well as graphics presentation packages.
'Besides it also integrates with typical collaboration sort of features you need like mail, calender and instant messaging,' Mr Martin said.
According to IBM, the SME market worldwide is worth around US$300 billion. IBM classifies companies as SMEs if they have fewer than 1,000 employees.
An IDC spokeswoman told BizIT that its latest forecast, updated in August, sees Singapore's SME sector spending US$1.2 billion on IT this year. During this same period, SMEs in Asia Pacific (minus Japan) are expected to spend US$29 billion. The research agency classifies SMEs as having less than 500 employees.
Speaking to BizIT, IDC Asia Pacific research manager Alan Tong said WSE is an integrated solution which allows extensive employee collaboration.
'It is a network-delivered workplace and this means users can access data, information or messaging through a Web browser,' Mr Tong said. 'The WSE allows team collaboration which means that within the organisation users can exchange information or documents through the workplace and also manage documents.'
Stating that it is a very strong solution package for SMEs, the IDC analyst said: 'Looking at what is available in the market at the moment, there are a lot of standalone pieces of solutions out there. What IBM is offerring to the customers is an integrated solution which is delivered through a portal infrastructure.'
According to him, this would hit a sweet spot for organisations looking to improve their collaboration infrastructure - especially those organisations which have several branch offices or remote workers.
'The offering is moving towards a Web base rather than a client server type, which means you don't have to be on the premise, you can be anywhere to access the information,' he said.
Mr Martin said WSE would be available in Singapore within 30 days. While pricing details would be known only then, IBM will have two pricing models. One will be on a per user basis and another on a per CPU basis.
Mr Martin said that apart from the new WSE version announced, which is an expansion of the company's Express product line, IBM also announced the WebSphere Portal 5.1. The new version of WebSphere Portal is an upgrade of the company's portal infrastructure software.
IBM also announced the availability of a variety of domain specific industry implementation of infrastructure and collaboration software.
# posted by MiDBA @ 11/13/2004 02:47:00 PM 
