Vendors vie for SMB market

Long an underserved technology market in the past, SMBs (small and midsize businesses) are now seen as important revenue streams for major IT vendors. With the SMB market worth some $300 billion and growing at a significantly faster pace than Fortune 1000s, there are significant revenues to be garnered. In response the big vendors, including IBM, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems, are retooling enterprise hardware and software offerings to meet SMB needs — delivering low-cost platforms with

simple, automated features that bring ease of use and low maintenance requirements.

IBM Makes an Express Play

“For the last 10 years we have been internally componentizing our middleware,” says Chris Wicher, vice president of development at IBM’s software group responsible for the design, direction, and implementation of the company’s Express products, an SMB line unveiled this summer. “If you dissect the code in WebSphere, you can break apart the thing into component subparts.”

It is this dissection of enterprise-class technologies that has allowed IBM to create Express. The line includes includes combinations of server and desktop hardware; an SMB version of Content Manager; and SMB versions of server apps including WebSphere, DB2, Tivoli, and Notes; along with special financing options. Hardware in the line includes ThinkPad notebooks, NetVista desktops, and eServer xSeries servers. The WebSphere Commerce Express bundle enables the easy creation and management of e-commerce sites. IBM says a simple installation process permits users to build an online store in less than an hour.

The Express line is directly targeted at professionals likely to be found at SMBs, such as systems administrators, Wicher says. “We don’t want midmarket users having to turn 250 knobs on a Web apps server, whereas an enterprise needs to do that to more properly optimize for a much more complex environment.”

Microsoft Buys In

Not to be left behind, Microsoft has set its own SMB agenda. During the past two years, the company has purchased Great Plains Software and Navision, both specialists in developing SMB software. Since the respective acquisitions, Microsoft has completed the integration of both companies’ development teams into its core SMB development group.

“What we are trying to do is build an architecture that allows applications to be customized and to work together,” says Nigel Burton, general manager of Microsoft’s small and mid market solutions and partners group. “The first product that was the result of these integrated teams is Microsoft CRM, which has all the qualities we expect to deliver for all business solutions in the SMB space.”

Some of those qualities include a simpler installation and configuration procedure than other Microsoft products geared toward corporate users with much larger IT staffs. The company has taken pains to integrate the SMB product with desktop applications such as Outlook, Word, and Excel so that data can be more easily shared.

Microsoft has also integrated the product with its complete stable of existing Business Solutions applications, all of which are sold exclusively to SMBs, so that midmarket customers have a reduced need for IT intervention because they can more easily perform data mapping for contacts, accounts, orders, and invoices. This way SMBs have a centralized view of all customer and product information.