Analysts are saying SMB services are one of the hottest growth areas in the industry, and at the same time it is a highly competitive and localized marketplace, said Jim Corgel, general manager of small and mid-sized business at IBM’s Global Services unit in announcing the partner investment.
IBM is making a significant investment to expand its SMB technology and consulting services focus and collaborate with Business Partners around the world to create solutions that help SMBs improve their business performance. He said that IDC reckons that SMB customers will spend $360bn on information technology in 2005.
To assist the largely regional system integrators who serve the SMB market, IBM is creating dedicated teams for each region to help partners figure out how to sell more services to SMB customers. Partners will also be allowed to resell various Express Managed Services created by IBM, which cover application management, business transformation outsourcing and other exotic services that small businesses do not typically think they can afford. IBM has been testing this concept with some partners in the US and Europe and has found enough success to roll it out as a product that all partners can participate in selling. Partners will also be allowed to sell IBM’s hosting and strategic outsourcing services.
