Martin Banks

It looks as though IBM is going to start throwing blade server systems at small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). These systems will be cut-down versions of the blade servers it already sells to the enterprise market. Such a move into the SME sector is bound to see IBM leaning more heavily on its channel partners, systems integrators and resellers, who must be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect.

IBM has rightly identified the SME market as an area for growth. Many smaller firms are looking to invest in new IT hardware and infrastructure, and have more opportunities for expansion than larger firms. Also, larger enterprises are stuck with investments in legacy system architecture, which means blade systems may remain peripheral to their needs for some time yet.

It is true that few small firms either own a datacentre or have any real need to build one. But a sawn-off blade server that can scale quickly into something larger as a company grows may make perfect sense to buyers.

However, the lack of a datacentre culture in the SME market is only half the problem, as IBM well knows. The biggest stumbling block is that very few smaller businesses have the luxury of an IT department. And because they don’t have onsite development teams, they rely on the channel to keep them up to date with technology and supply the support they need to deploy new solutions.

To make life easier for them, IBM is likely to ramp up its development of pre-packaged core systems that target SMEs in vertical markets and are designed to work straight out of the box. The vendor is expected to start with retail and bank branch systems.

IBM has a long history of marketing pre-packaged systems, starting with the System 3x family and on through to the AS/400. Channel partners could buy base systems configured with the hardware and software utilities most likely to be needed for a certain market sector, and all they had to do was load and c onfigure their specific applications code.

Now, with its imminent push into the SME market, we can expect to see IBM release a set of Reference Architectures designed for the channel, each setting out the best pick list of blades and sub-systems for various market sectors. These “in-a-box” systems could be like manna from heaven for firms that have neither IT support nor systems knowledge.

In the longer term, however, this SME blade push could be just a precursor to a shift to the software-as-a-service model, with channel partners being not just the developers, but also delivering the services.