IBM has designed a new set of services specifically for small and medium-size businesses to help manage their desktop PCs and printers, the company has announced.
The new suite, called IBM Desktop Management Services, became available Wednesday and is priced starting at $40 per seat per month.
Day-to-Day Tasks
The services are delivered remotely by IBM over the Internet through servers loaded with desktop management software that IBM places at the clients' sites, says Dale Moegling, manager of International Desktop Services at IBM Global Services.
The suite of services will enhance and reduce the cost of companies' desktop management, while freeing up in-house IT staffers to do more sophisticated work, Moegling says.
"This is intended to be complementary to the work of in-house IT folks," he adds.
He gives the hypothetical example of a hospital. By subscribing to the remote desktop management service, internal technical staffers could devote more time to developing and implementing hospital applications. IBM would provide the day-to-day management of desktops, such as virus-definition updates and network monitoring.
"Our offering is for more traditional, mechanical support services," he says.Only PCs running Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP can be serviced by IBM. Other desktop operating systems, such as those based on Linux, aren't supported with this program, he says.
Service Particulars
For $40 per month per user, IBM will deliver a suite of services that includes, among other things:
- IBM servers remotely managed by IBM over the Internet, which have the necessary desktop management software;
- Automated backup of end-users' desktop PCs, so that in case of a hard disk failure IBM can reconstitute the PC remotely without the client's IT staff needing to intervene;
- Virus definitions updates, sometimes before the data is generally available, plus virus scanning;
- Remote desktop monitoring, including automatic software distribution and updates.
Spreading Services
"This suite of services is interesting because it is fairly comprehensive and addresses buckets of different areas that are of concern to [small and medium-size businesses]," says John Madden, a Summit Strategies analyst. "It hits all the pain points."
The suite shows that IBM effectively adapted services and methods it has provided to large companies and repackaged them for smaller businesses in a way that is affordable and simpler, Madden says. Now IBM needs to continue making its case to those potential customers, which may not have considered IBM a services provider they could afford, he adds.
"These . . . folks may be wondering why IBM would want their business. IBM needs to convince them that not only does it want their business, but that it will go out of its way to get it," he says.IBM's initiative is yet another indication of the rising importance of small and midsize businesses for large technology services providers, which see a growth area in this segment of the market, Madden says. Other IBM technology services competitors focusing on catering to small and medium-sized businesses include Hewlett-Packard, Electronic Data Systems, and Dell, recently in partnership with Oracle.
Two factors are fueling the technology services growth among small and midsize businesses, Madden says. One is an increase in demand from the businesses themselves for technology services, and the other is a newfound interest from large tech services providers in this traditionally underserved market, he says.
"The growth has to come from somewhere, and large IT services providers are looking to the midmarket for it," Madden says. He expects the smaller businesses "will feel particularly well-catered to in the coming years."
