IBM Boosts Services Push

To take top honors in the Services category in this year's VARBusiness Tech Innovators Awards, Big Blue did something contrary to its well-known nickname: It focused on the little guy—releasing its Express Managed Services offerings specifically for the small and midsize markets.

The EMS portfolio includes six separate managed-service offerings and two bundled offerings, addressing e-mail security, Web security, firewalls, VPNs and online backup for distributed services.

"From a customer perspective, [the portfolio] is innovative because it gives them a modular portfolio to address their top needs, which are consistently security, backup, and resiliency and infrastructure management," says Michael Riegel, director of EMS. "Customers say to us, 'What's great about these offerings is that they allow me to focus more on running my business and less on IT.'"

He adds that partners, too, are keen on EMS. "They can offer one-stop shopping, and they can piece together an entire solution from a variety of components," Riegel explains. "This is end-to-end."

The price points are also a key innovation that IBM has been working to bring to the midmarket, Riegel says. For example, the EMS service for e-mail runs as low as $2 per user per month. And the services are offered only through partners, something equally innovative when it comes to the channel.

IBM partners agree. "I was on a call with a prospect this morning and he said, 'Gee, at this price point, why would I do that myself?'" says Bill Abram, president of Elmsford, N.Y.-based Pragmatix. "We like the fact that it can extend our services offerings in a seamless way. In the SMB space, price is always a concern, and this is light-years ahead of anything IBM has offered the SMB customer recently."

Abram adds that the product is also ahead of its time processwise. From customer engagement to final contract signing and initiation of services, he says it's easier and faster to navigate. "We've been onboard since the beginning, with services of our own that are similar in the space, and we've used the IBM services to extend and even replace some services we used to deliver ourselves," Abram says.

Riegel says that in the first half of 2007, partners can expect to see a few more EMS offerings released. "We'll continue to address the top midmarket customer pains and offer the broadest portfolio of services," he says.