IBM teams with Lawson to target SMBs
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(InfoWorld) - IBM Corp. and Lawson Software Inc. are expanding their existing relationship to jointly target small and midsize business (SMB) users, initially in North America and three specific industries. All applications vendors, including Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and SAP AG, see the SMB market as a huge source of future revenue and each company is coming up with ways to hone in on that sector which, unlike the enterprise applications space, lacks clear market leaders. Under an agreement announced Thursday, IBM will be able to resell Lawson's S3 and M3 applications in North America, and will be involved in the development of the software for users in the financial services, fashion and food and beverage industries. Lawson will collaborate with consultants from IBM Global Business Services and the vendor's hardware, software and sales staff to come up with ways to solve business and technology issues specific to those vertical sectors. The agreement builds on an existing relationship between the two firms centered around helping users adopt SOA (service-oriented architecture). "This has been a long time coming," said Harry Debes, president and CEO of Lawson. "We've been talking for IBM for almost a year." Despite adding additional sales staff at a rate of 50 to 60 hires planned for this year, Lawson found itself unable to go after as many SMB users as it would like. "The IBM relationship will dramatically increase our reach," he added. Like IBM, Lawson defines SMB users as companies with annual revenues of between US$100 million and several billion dollars. IBM has previously resold Lawson software outside North America, notably the M3 applications Lawson gained from its 2006 $480 million purchase of Intentia, but on a very ad hoc basis, according to Debes. "There was no formal agreement around it," he said. "We've crafted this agreement so it could become the basis of a global agreement." The plan is to see how the relationship with IBM works in North America over the course of the next 12 months and then determine whether to widen its scope to other countries and other industries. "We wanted to walk before we can run," Debes said. He reassured Lawson's resellers elsewhere in the world that any future moves within IBM would take place taking into account existing partnerships. "At the same time, we don't want to become overly dependent on one channel for revenue," he added. The other industry sectors Lawson focuses on are health care, retail, government and education, manufacturing, wholesale distribution and service and rental. IBM and Lawson already have around 3,000 joint customers, but Debes said, "There wasn't very much togetherness" about how those sales were achieved. He's hopeful the new formalized relationship will result in significant new business for Lawson. Debes isn't worried about the continued speculation that IBM might re-enter the applications market, which it quit in 1999. "It doesn't keep me up at night," he said. "I firmly believe they will be in the apps space. They're not pretending to be in the ERP space, they already are." He pointed to IBM Italy's recent acquisition of several ERP companies. "They're smack dab in the middle of the ERP market. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when," he added. "If theyâre wise, theyâll look to do partnerships with Lawson, if theyâre foolish, theyâll do SMB partnerships with SAP." Â
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Looking to outdo rival Microsoft, IBM plans to ship a new bundle of development tools that can simplify how software gets built.
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InfoWorld - IBM&#160;hopes to bring BI to a wider audience of midmarket customers with a new software stack developed in partnership with Business Objects SA, industry sources said.
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InfoWorld - IBM Corp. is releasing more software to make it easier to program, manage and administer its mainframes in an ongoing bid to attract more customers to purchase its big iron hardware instead of high-end servers.
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IBM is extending its support for the products of one of its software competitors, Sybase, to present a Linux server-software package.
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Information technology (IT) giant IBM is ready to grab more shares in the IT related market of China&#39;s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with more products at affordable prices.
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InfoWorld - IBM Corp. is adding to its blade server line with an upcoming model targeted at small-to-medium-sized businesses.
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BMC Software Inc. has added IBM Corp.'s IMS mainframe database to the platforms supported by its SmartDBA family of products, completing a two-year mission to provide tools for managing all of the major databases from a single, Web-based console.
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(InfoWorld) - IBMÂ unveiled a Web site and IT security software application Thursday as part of its effort to compete with Hewlett-PackardÂ and SunÂ for customers in the fast-growing SMB sector. New customers can share tips on how to migrate from servers to mainframes on the Web site, which acts as an online community for users, system integrators, software vendors, and academic institutions. Existing customers can use the enhanced z/VM virtualization software to support more virtualized memory or use the new Tivoli zSecure V1.8.1 suite to monitor threats and enforce compliance. IBM created the new version of zSecure with technology from itsÂ first-quarter acquisition of Consul Risk Management. That purchase is part of IBM's strategy to spend $100 million toÂ simplify its mainframe platformÂ by 2011, hoping to persuade businesses to buy its System z9 mainframe computers instead of high-end servers. IBM sells an enterprise-class version of its z9 for large corporations and a business-class version for SMBs. Compared to servers running on chips from Sun or Intel, customers can save money by using power-efficient mainframes, said Jim Stallings, general manager of System z for IBM's systems and technology group. "The biggest reason customers are drawn to the mainframe -- a trend we've seen for more than 10 years now -- is power," Stallings said. "Servers running on the faster chips and greater numbers of chips draw an enormous amount of power, and our smaller customers can't get that power. I'm talking about basic electricity." The streamlined architecture of the mainframe makes it attractive to customers who need to process large amounts of information, such as financial services firms and hedge funds, he said. That group is quickly growing to include midrange banks, including the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus and Nexar, an Internet banking company in Belgium. "SMB customers are realizing that they cannot afford to change their infrastructure every two years because it's too expensive. The cost comes not so much in the hardware as in training people to administer it," Stallings said. "Our customers came to us and said, 'We want to migrate more work to the mainframe because of the economics. We're way over the religious debates about which processor is faster -- we don't care -- we need better economics.'" IBM is making a big bet on its mainframe business with the $100 million investment, but the gambit may pay off. In theÂ first quarter of 2007, the company credited strong growth in its software and system z sectors for an 8 percent increase in net income to $1.8 billion and a 6.6 percent increase in revenue to $22 billion, compared to the same period in 2006.
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(InfoWorld) - IBMÂ is revamping part of its sales organization to better target the small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) market. IBM is realigning its Systems and Technology Group (STG), creating one sales group to sell to large enterprise customers and another to sell to SMBs, business customers with no more than 1,000 employees. It will also better integrate STG with IBM's Global Technology Service (GTS) group and with companies in its Global Business Partners Organization, and design products specifically for the needs of SMBs. The changes were outlined in a memo released Thursday by William Zeitler, IBM's senior vice president and group executive of STG. A new level of sales management will be created within each of 220 geographic sales territories IBM operates globally. The new SMB Systems Sales Manager in each territory will focus solely on SMB sales efforts. IBM named Ross Mauri to head a new Power Systems unit within STG selling high-end System p and System i products to enterprises, and named Marc Dupaquier to run the new Business Systems unit selling low-end System i and p products to SMBs. IBM is making the changes to boost its market share in the $32 billion market, based on 2006 sales, for IT systems for SMBs, said Alex Gogh vice president of channels marketing for STG. IBM's share of the SMB system market was just 15 percent, half of what it is for the overall systems market. "This is a reaction to the marketplace opportunity and a recognition of how large the SMB market opportunity is," said Gogh. The SMB Systems Sales Manager positions are being created to offer just one level of IBM sales management to work with partners to sell to SMBs, not one manager for each of many different product lines, said Bob Samson, vice president of worldwide systems sales for STG. The partners are usually system integrators or independent software vendors. "[Before], a partner had to go to five different IBM people in a territory. Now they just have one," Samson said. The sales reorganization coincides with the introduction of new products designed to appeal to SMBs, including blade servers, he said. IBM announced June 13Â the coming BladeCenter S systemÂ that is packaged to include server, storage, input-output connections to a network and software integrated into a single chassis. IBM said it plans to begin shipping the product in the fourth quarter. With new products and the sales reorganization, IBM hopes to build on the momentum created from Wednesday's announcement of the best quarterly financial performance the company has recorded in six years. For the second quarter of fiscal 2007, ending June 30, IBM reported net income rose 11.8 percent to $2.3 billion on a 9 percent revenue gain to $23.8 billion, compared to the same quarter of 2006. Earnings per share (EPS) grew 19 percent to $1.55, over the year ago quarter.
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IBM said the strategy is to enable companies to centrally manage business applications and tools across employee devices. That should help companies cut IT support costs as well as build work
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Company hopes to attract users who will later upgrade to its small business software.
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IBM Corp. hopes a new effort to simplify programming for mainframe computers helps keep those warhorses competitive.
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By Leslie Brooks Suzukamo, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.  Feb. 1--Lawson Software and IBM are strengthening their relationship,  with IBM agreeing to sell Lawson's business software when IBM calls on its  small and mid-size clients in North America.
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Sybase said today that it has struck a deal with IBM in which Big Blue will market and distribute Sybase&#39;s Linux database management software.
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IBM&#39;s homegrown server processor, the Power5, continues its migration across an ever-widening range of systems; this time making its way to machines aimed at the upper edges of the SMB market, especially those firms in retail, finance, banking, and health
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IBM is trying to use SCO as a punching bag this week as Big Blue fires off another motion for partial summary judgment in its legal slugfest over Linux and Unix copyright issues.