IBM Corp will host application tools from Progress Software Corp and applications from its independent software vendor partners, in an applications hosting service aimed at the European small business market. IBM is hitching a lift onto the 77 EMEA ISVs signed up by Progress, the supplier of application development tools and services, to mine a new, small to medium sized enterprise outsourcing revenue stream. Bedford, Massachusetts-based Progress gets an infrastructure provider to share the ASP risks. IBM will run the service from AS/400, RS/6000 and Netfinity NT servers based in Portsmouth, UK.
Progress says that the service will cost between $90 and $450 per user per month and will feature 350 applications. The Bedford firm claims that the market represents a massive opportunity, with half of the SME market a ægreen fieldÆ and the other half having invested only in electronic point of sale (EPOS) devices.
