New IBM Solutions Help Midsize Companies Maximize Business Performance and Efficiency

IBM Expands Portfolio of Powerful Midmarket Offerings

ARMONK, NY - IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled the newest Express Advantage offerings, which include hardware, software, and services specifically developed for midsized businesses. The portfolio of offerings provides IBM’s extensive business partner ecosystem with a broad range of applications to deliver simple, affordable, customized solutions for their customers.

Midsize companies are looking for ways to better align their IT strategy with the needs of the business, improve access to information, reduce costs associated with manual processes and securely integrate information from disparate sources. IBM is committed to helping midsize businesses find new and affordable ways to apply technology to provide greater value to their customers.

IBM has launched a new software offering that helps midsize companies deliver better quality software, improve operational efficiency and continuously lower risk. IBM Rational Quality Manager Express is the first centralized Web-based test management solution built on IBM’s Jazz technology. The software provides a Web 2.0 collaborative, customizable environment for test planning, construction, deployment and execution. It also enables workflow control and quantifiable metrics for project tracking and decision-making to ensure that the business objectives and outcomes of a software release have been met. A key benefit of the software is that it provides a central hub for business-driven software-quality delivery.

For example, the CIO of a company that manufactures electronic medical devices depends on the functionality of the company’s software to ensure that the medical devices work. Using Rational Quality Manager Express they can monitor the aspects of the software delivery process that are contributing to the development of the medical devices.

As a result of being informed in real-time, they can now make immediate decisions to enable delivery of a high quality product to the marketplace on time and ahead of their company’s competitors. With the implementation of Rational Quality Manager Express, if an issue with that software arises, the company and its IT staff would be alerted. The company is then able to take immediate action to fix the defects, thereby reducing delays and lost revenue.

“IBM’s hardware, software and services offerings for the midmarket provide business partners with cost-effective solutions to help streamline business processes, gain information insights, employ new business models and secure more reliable access to critical resources,” said Marc Dupaquier, general manager, IBM Global Midmarket. “The addition of Rational Quality Manager Express to the Express Advantage portfolio will enable them to significantly increase their operational efficiencies, employee productivity, customer service and competitive advantage to support growth.”

“We are excited about the addition of Rational Quality Manager Express to the Jazz suite of IBM solutions,” said Arthur Povlot, Sales Manager of Tescom USA. “Tescom is always looking to ease the process of software testing and improve business collaboration to meet the challenges of a constantly changing environment. This new software will enable us to achieve this while improving our customers productivity and increase their revenue.”

New Business Partner Offerings:
IBM has also launched new tools that drive innovation and growth for our business partners in the midmarket. These tools demonstrate IBM’s continued focus on helping business partners better serve the needs of their customers.

IBM’s Solutions Builder Express program, which enables business partners to provide cost-effective infrastructure solutions to meet the needs of midmarket customers, now includes the Solutions Consultant Tool V3. The tool helps solution providers to find clear and rapid resolution for solving discreet IT problems, or expand existing IT infrastructure solutions. By using the tool, business partners can shorten the solution sales cycle by up to 50 percent, while increasing their value-added services, gaining easier access to new markets and increasing profitability.

IBM Software Assembly Toolkit offers a simple and intuitive approach for business partners and independent software vendor to deploy their business applications. The toolkit assembles multiple middleware software products and the applications that run on them, and then creates a package for easy installation on a customer’s computer. This package enables customers, business partners, and service organizations to gain complete control over the deployment experience by embedding OEM software. Deploying solutions happens in a matter of hours and the number of errors that commonly occur during deployment is significantly reduced.

IBM Finances the Midmarket Needs
IBM Global Financing, the lending and leasing business segment of IBM, has designed financing options that can help clients in the midmarket defer up-front investment costs for IBM hardware, software and services, thereby conserving cash for other more pressing business priorities. IBM Financing Advantage offers fast and simple financing at competitive rates, with simplified Web-based processes to deliver credit, price and contracts in less than one hour.

IBM Global Financing now offers “Why Wait,” a no interest no payments program for 90 days deferral plan to support eligible customers acquiring IBM technology now through the end of 2008.The promotion financing structure is a 36 month fair market value lease. Customers installing the new server under the promotion terms make no payments for 90 days, and then make 36 even monthly payments (33 payments in some countries). Customers must be credit qualified, lease the eligible equipment with IGF for the promotional term and structure, and install the product in participating countries by Dec. 31, 2008.

For more information about IBM Global Financing’s offering for financing the technology needs of midsize companies, visit IBM’s Medium business financing solutions site.

IBM expands Express Advantage portfolio
IBM Express Advantage combines a comprehensive portfolio of technology offerings, business solutions and financing options with a network of local IBM Business Partners and dedicated Concierge customer support service to create a powerful, end-to-end approach for helping the mid-sized customer increase efficiency, advance their innovation agenda and grow.

IBM continues to leverage these capabilities to differentiate itself in the marketplace and drive growth in the $253 billion midmarket, one of IBM’s largest and fastest growing market opportunities.

Recently, IBM launched several new Express Advantage security and IT optimization offerings to meet the needs of midmarket companies.

New Express Advantage Security and Threat Mitigation offerings:
IBM Rational AppScan Express Edition helps companies address both external and internal Web security threats before they impact the business. In addition, the software helps small and midsize businesses manage Web security and comply with mandatory regulations including the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

The Express Multi-Function Security Bundle and Express Managed Multi-Function Security Bundle have expanded into a number of new countries including Greece, Israel, Turkey, Luxembourg, Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

Express Multi-Function Security Bundle provides the most complete protection against network threats, vulnerabilities, worms, viruses, spy-ware and spam in a single unified threat management appliance solution. Express Managed Multi-Function Security Bundle was developed for clients who prefer a fully managed multi-function security solution. IBM is delivering a service that provides 24/7 comprehensive protection, monitoring, and supports a broad array of security needs.

IBM partnered with the Aberdeen Group to develop the IT Security Assessment Tool for midsize companies to help assess the existing IT infrastructure and determine where they may be vulnerable. The online tool provides them with suggestions on how they can improve their IT security based on Aberdeen’s market research.

New Express Advantage IT Optimization offerings:
IBM Power 560 Express provides midsize business with enhanced virtualization and energy efficiency, outstanding price/performance and offers double the performance per watt of the HP Integrity and Sun SPARC Enterprise servers. This new server can save companies as much as 93 percent on space costs by consolidating older server technology.

IBM BladeCenter® provides “shared storage,” bringing a storage capability to smaller firms once available only to large enterprises. BladeCenter S can help reduce the number of servers used by an average midsize company by up to 80 percent and cut the cost of shared storage technology by 30-40 percent.

IBM System Storage TS2900 Tape Autoloader Express provides midsize companies that need increased capacity and data encryption for a midrange open-systems environment, with entry-level automated backup for rack systems with low-profile, high density storage capacity. The offering incorporates IBM’s new patented High Density slot technology and can be operated remotely via an easy-to-use Web interface.

IBM System Storage 7214 Tape & DVD Enclosure Express is a low-cost storage and archival solution for IBM Power Systems that offers midsize companies higher performance in the most compact and affordable packaging possible. With faster data transfer rates compared to existing SCSI devices and the choice of several drive technologies, its low-profile design enables it to be installed in one EIA unit (1U) of a standard 19-inch server rack.

WebSphere Application Server - Express V7 is an affordable, ready-to-go solution for developing, running and managing dynamic Web applications. New performance enhancements to this solution deliver data center efficiency via the ability to consolidate workloads enabling smaller footprint, less energy and less cost. New flexible management features also improve efficiencies of administration and allows remote production resource management of WebSphere Application Server - Express V7. It supports the full Java EE 5 programming model and includes Web 2.0 and Web services support. It also includes easy-to-use integrated wizards and samples to get help users get started quickly.

For more information about Express Advantage and the new Express Advantage offerings, visit http://www.ibm.com/expressadvantage.

Join IBM’s Express Advantage online social media communities:

Facebook: IBM Express Advantage group on Facebook

Twitter: IBM Express Advantage channel on Twitter

YouTube: IBM Express Advantage YouTube channel

LinkedIn: IBM Express Advantage group on LinkedIn

Slideshare: IBM Express Advantage slidespace

The Midmarket Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/smb