Is IBM Countering VCE World with Pre-Engineered Offerings?
It looks like Big Blue may be trying to counter the VCE (VMware, Cisco, EMC) world with its latest ‘standardized’ approach in the marketplace. IBM’s new Pre-Engineered Technology Service Model aims bring a streamlined, one-stop shop approach to its services and solutions. The goal is to provide a quicker, more robust and less expensive near-turnkey offering than traditional multi-vendor deployments have in the past. So what is IBM’s end game? Read on for some perspective.
Instead of spending the “weeks or months” to build a standalone server configuration, IBM says it can offer a preconfigured server build that can have a customer’s environment up and running in a few days. The vendor has a similar offering for service desk and storage builds. The new, standardized technologies are based on “leveraging shared global insights” and experience, according to IBM.
Translation? IBM is looking to oust market players while simultaneously providing IT as a Service. IBM touts its new offerings as an “advance” in the way IT can outsource services, including cloud computing technologies, and says they can cut IT management costs nearly in half.
IBM’s foray into outsourced services comes at a time when clients’ demands exceed the time required to deploy the tools for said demand, according to the vendor, and customers need something up and running as fast as they can so they can keep up with the market and continue to grow their businesses without IT getting in the way.
IBM also noted its preconfigured offerings can add value by virtualizing new servers, and can even provide a complete unified communications network for global businesses in “a matter of weeks.”
Interested in IBM’s offerings? Check out IBM’s outsourcing IT page to see the full lineup.
Meanwhile, where does the channel fit into all this? IBM IT Outsourcing services typically aren’t available for partners to white label or re-brand for resale. Channel partners working in the large enterprise space and higher might see some competition from IBM, but otherwise, resellers — and even the VCE community — probably won’t see much impact from this new set of offerings. It seems unlikely SMBs will be looking to IBM to suit their ITaaS needs, and even SMEs may be too small a market for IBM.
We’ll keep tabs as IBM’s latest outsourced services roll out to a cloud near you.
Sign up for The VAR Guy’s Weekly Newsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. Follow The VAR Guy via RSS, Facebook and Twitter. Follow experts at VARtweet. Read The VAR Guy’s editorial disclosures here.
