IBM to woo small and medium enterprises

IBM is not known for selling software to small and medium sized businesses. It would like to but, somehow, its stuff always looks a bit daunting and seems to carry the need for clever in-house IT people.

Last Monday, at Lotusphere, the leopard didn’t exactly change its spots but it certainly gave them a good tweak. Along with a raft of announcements for the 7,000 or so enterprise clients who attended the event, it announced its intention to offer something good to organisations of between 5 and 500 users who have little or no internal technical capability.

In a tiny box, Foundations will provide “mail and collaboration platform, file management, directory services, firewall, back-up and recovery, and office productivity tools.” It will be provided by third party software houses who can easily integrate other application packages. Foundations can also be installed on an existing server.

Bluehouse is a suite of collaboration tools, hosted by IBM or a partner, and delivered as an online service which will enable businesses to share contacts, files, project activities and interact with chat and web meetings.

I’m trying to nail IBM down on whether the Bluehouse web service is predicated on ownership of Foundations. While at Lotusphere, I thought not. But, reading the official material later, I find the messages are mixed.

Here’s one: “With Lotus Foundations and Bluehouse, used separately or in combination, organizations will be able to take advantage of proven enterprise-strength software delivered as a turn-key package for start-up businesses without IT staff.”

And here’s another: “This new set of services will extend the Lotus Foundations family by allowing Foundations customers to securely collaborate beyond their organizational boundaries without the need for in-house technical expertise.”

Whichever way you look at it though, both offerings look like a serious attempt by IBM to address the needs of smaller enterprises. And, looking at its general approach to software, I think this is all to the good. Let’s hope it gets cracking quickly and finds a way of serving this new market effectively.

David Tebbutt is an award-winning columnist and feature writer who specialises on the subject of using software and technology to increase business productivity. He's an analyst with Freeform Dynamics but, in previous lives, wrote for Director magazine, Real Business and was also editor of Personal Computer World. http://freeformdynamics.com