New IBM Data Protection Solution for Mid-Sized Businesses

IBM Corp. announced a broad portfolio of offerings designed to help midsize companies tap into the power of today’s interconnected, instrumented and increasingly intelligent world.  Leading the way are the new Comprehensive Data Protection Solution and BladeCenter Express servers incorporating the latest IBM POWER6 microprocessors to create the foundation for a highly efficient, dynamic infrastructure needed for today’s rapidly changing global economy.

IBM is strengthening its long-standing commitment to the mid-market with solutions specifically designed for midsize businesses that are making the promise of a smarter planet a reality for this critically important market. In particular, these latest offerings address the growing need for dynamic infrastructure, business intelligence, energy efficiency and solutions for smarter work. Through its Express Advantage strategy, IBM continues to apply its unparalleled combination of research capabilities, industry skills, technology innovation and global business partner ecosystem to help mid-market companies succeed in today’s environment.

"The products and solutions IBM has introduced in the last month will help our midsize clients make better business decisions, work smarter, become greener and leaner, and create an easy to manage information technology backbone," said Marc Dupaquier, general manager, IBM Global Mid-market. "Midsize businesses have the DNA to quickly recognize and seize new opportunities and very often are on the leading edge of building innovative smarter planet solutions."

Building a smarter midmarket with dynamic infrastructure

IBM’s strategy for a dynamic infrastructure offers a new model to help midsize organizations address rising cost pressures and higher service expectations while laying the foundation for increased productivity and value creation. Vantage Deluxe World Travel, a leading tour operator offering high-quality, affordable travel programs for travelers in the mature adult market, is benefiting from a dynamic infrastructure. To improve delivery of travel services to their customers, Vantage needed to streamline its outdated ordering process, orchestrating a massive set of business rules for handling online travel bookings that includes a complex set of travel options and alternatives. Vantage engaged IBM to implement an online commerce solution using IBM WebSphere Commerce Express software on an IBM System x3455 platform. This system was put in place to efficiently manage high-volume customer travel requests in a personalized manner and improve the customer experience. As a result, the company saw tremendous return on their investment. Vantage call center agents increased productivity by 80 percent, In addition, they were able to increase their revenue by 140 percent over the last year and are projecting corporate revenues will double in five years.

"As our business grew, it was important to implement a new infrastructure that would save time and money by improving the service in our call centers while improving our customers’ satisfaction," said Peter Groustra, director of Information Technology for Vantage Deluxe World Travel. "IBM enabled us to streamline our order processing system and develop a strong online presence to better reach our customer base."

New solutions and offerings
to enable a dynamic infrastructure include:
The BladeCenter JS23 and JS43 Express now offer greater scalability and IBM’s newest POWER6 processor technology and the ability to run AIX, IBM i, and Linux operating systems simultaneously. This helps to deliver superior business and IT services with agility and speed. In addition, the BladeCenter J23 and J43 Express offer midsize companies a secure, resilient and dynamic infrastructure solution that helps drive cost down, reduces risk, improves energy efficiency and enhances flexibility. The new BladeCenter offerings are also ideal for infrastructure consolidation, virtualization, and demanding applications that require scalable performance and high memory capacity.

The Comprehensive Data Protection Solution eliminates the need to shut down mission critical applications for nightly backups, and provides immediate recovery following almost any type of data loss. The components include Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack, DS3000 Express, DS4000, DS5000 series disk Systems and System x 3550 server, supported by IBM Services and Financing options. The solution helps to manage risk, provides full recoverability should files be compromised, increases productivity by eliminating downtime during recovery, while reducing storage requirements and increasing flexibility to manage data.

For example, a midsize retailer, with a distributed IT environment, needs to ensure that critical applications are adequately protected and can be recovered quickly in the event of a failure. An IBM Business Partner implements the Comprehensive Data Protection Solution to provide automated, continuous protection that reduces data loss risk and downtime by providing near-instant recovery of data, from single files to entire volumes, and remain compliant with data retention regulations.

"Many companies don’t realize how important it is to back up crucial data until after they suffer a disaster and lose everything," said Anthony Bongiovanni, president of MicroStrategies. "There are many cases of midsize companies simply not surviving a catastrophic data loss. This new solution will allow people to sleep well at night knowing that their data and business are protected."

To maximize new storage technology investments, organizations need efficient data migration solutions that help limit the risk of data corruption or loss, and business disruption. IBM Migration Services for open systems attached to System Storage disk systems provides professional services performed by technical specialists to plan and manage a non-disruptive migration of data, reducing the need for skilled in-house resources and project management expertise, and provides proven methods and tools to support an efficient and safe data migration.

IBM Remote Managed Services – Express Remote Managed Infrastructure Services (ERMIS) is a suite of services with new functionality that enables remote monitoring, managing and reporting of Unified Communications devices and Linux server management. It provides near real-time reports, automated notifications and alerts to enhance IT management and efficiency. The service improves infrastructure availability with around-the-clock, proactive monitoring of networks, servers, applications, application infrastructure and unified communication. The new service also enables mid-market companies to improve infrastructure management and free up IT staff while reducing costs by at least 20 percent.

IBM’s Internet Security Systems (ISS) has added the Proventia Web Application security capability that ensures customers’ applications, the largest point of vulnerability, are better protected from malware and attacks without higher costs to its Express offerings which include Express Multi-Function Security Bundle, Express Managed Multi-Function Security Bundle and  Express Managed Protection Services for Server. The new capability will reduce security costs for Express Managed Multi-Function Security Bundle users by as much as 55 percent. Express Multi-Function Security Bundle users will save an average of 15 to 20 times their investment.

Additional solutions for a smarter mid-market
IBM is enabling mid-market companies to work smarter with dynamic, flexible processes, collaboration technologies and new work solutions. The company is also helping midsize companies drive greater efficiencies, compete more effectively and respond more quickly by taking action now on energy, the environment and sustainability.

TheIBM Medical Devices Solution for Oracle Accelerate is a full-function enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management solution for the Medical Devices Industry, using Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Business Accelerators. This new offering reduces inventory, logistics, and transportation costs while improving flexibility and shortened process lead times and vendor performance as well as decreasing procurement costs. In addition, it increases customer satisfaction, improved service levels, and increased revenue while maintaining compliance with FDA regulations.

The IBM Express Retail Solution, a qualified SAP Business All-in-one Solution supports end-to-end retailer requirements including demand management and planning, store operations, merchandise management and back office for finance for midsize retailers. IBM’s deep retail industry knowledge combined with this new Express Retail solution allows a midsize company to implement an enterprise application suite with full functionality at an affordable price point. The solution enables mid-market companies to reduce inventory, logistics, and transportation costs, improve flexibility and shorten process lead times, improve vendor performance, decrease procurement costs, and increase revenue.

IBM recently introduced the LotusLive family of offerings, a new integrated social networking and collaboration cloud service designed for businesses of all sizes. This comprehensive cloud service combines social networking, file-sharing, instant messaging, and mail among other things enabling mid-market companies to significantly cut their travel budgets by using online collaboration. Leading the way is LotusLive Meetings, a full-featured online meeting service used by midsize companies worldwide. LotusLive Meetings enables companies to quickly and easily share information, give presentations, demonstrate software and work collaboratively with one person or up to a thousand. In addition LotusLive Meetings Practical offers midsize businesses an affordable solution to enhance team productivity, shorten sales cycles and manage travel costs for greater efficiency.

Selling to the CFO
IBM is offering a new Selling to the CFO training program to enable IBM Business Partners to more effectively engage the CFO in the sales conversation. Financial selling skills can help Business Partners increase their awareness of the challenges facing today’s CFO and better articulate the business value and ROI of a smarter infrastructure. The program includes training on key topics such as:

• Fundamental financial metrics with an overview of income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow
• How to assess each client’s value drivers and buying decision criteria, enabling tailored solutions aligned with business needs
• How to offer the right financing options to meet a customer’s budget constraints

IBM Global Financing
While market and credit conditions are evolving, IBM Global Financing continues to lend to qualified customers. IBM Financing Advantage offers a comprehensive portfolio of financing solutions to help address the requirements of midsize businesses to fund their IT agendas, maximize working capital, recover technology value and manage risk.

Business Partner Incentives Enhance
Earnings & Profit Potential in Mid-market
IBM Business Partners can derive several benefits by leveraging mid-market software incentives from IBM. Business Partner sales of IBM software to mid-market customers may be eligible for increases up to five percent in both the existing mid-market rebate and the Value Advantage Plus rebate – an overall improvement of up to 10 percent in available rewards. This uplift reflects an overall rebalancing of focus and increased IBM Software Group investment toward the high growth mid-market segment.