Last week, IBM added almost a dozen products and services to its Express Portfolio of offerings for medium-size businesses. In the process, the computer giant took its first significant step toward including business applications and products from other vendors in the rapidly growing family of solutions.
Ever since IBM rolled out its first Express products a year ago, the company has focused most of its energies on two tasks: packing the Express Portfolio with its middleware and recruiting software vendors to develop products on that middleware. On both tasks, IBM has made considerable progress. While the company has yet to offer OS/400 versions of some Express products, it now provides Express releases for much of its core middleware on Windows and Linux and is bringing more of those products to OS/400. As for recruiting software vendors, IBM has convinced over 2,000 of its Business Partners to sign up for the Express early enablement program. As a result, there are now around 350 branded applications that are certified to run on at least one Express middleware product.
While those 350 applications may run on Express products, they do not carry the Express brand name. With last week's announcement, however, IBM took the first serious step toward extending the Express brand to selected third-party offerings. The company also stated that it will focus more Express offerings on two critical requirements of medium-size companies: integrating business processes and information, and getting more value out of information in existing IT systems.
To address the first requirement, IBM rolled out Express versions of its own products as well as those of other vendors. Here is a quick rundown of the new integration offerings.
• WebSphere Business Integration Express for Item Synchronization--This application enables manufacturers and other suppliers to provide information on their products and inventory levels to the UCCnet GLOBALRegistry. With companies such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot demanding UCCnet compliance from their suppliers, solutions that deliver this compliance have become a hot item. IBM is currently offering a Windows version of this product for $7,000 and will ship OS/400 and Linux versions in December. The OS/400 version will likely compete with similar products from LANSA, TrailBlazer Systems, and other iSeries vendors.
• IBM Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Express--While this offering carries an IBM brand name, it is based on the SMARTEAM product line from Dassault Systemes. The package, which runs on pSeries servers and IBM IntelliStation workstations, provides modules for collaborative product design, engineering data and document management, request for quote and bidding management, and aftermarket maintenance management.
• IBM Smart Business Solutions for SMB--This offering provides all the products and services needed to install MySAP All-in-One, a collection of scaled-down SAP applications targeted at specific vertical industries. Back in June, IBM and SAP announced a strategic initiative to promote SAP products among small and medium-size businesses. This package is part of that initiative.
In addition, several of the new Express offerings help customers meet the second requirement: getting more value out of existing information systems. The following offerings focus on this requirement.
• IBM SurfAid Express--For a cost starting at $100 per month, this offering provides regular analyses of an organization's Web site to understand the browsing and buying habits of site visitors. The software, which IBM maintains on an off-site basis, allows companies to improve their Web sites' design and overall effectiveness.
• DB2 Content Manager Express--This simplified version of DB2 Content Manager automates the management and storage of unstructured information in a DB2 database. The server component of the product runs on Windows 2000 and costs $9,375 per server and $1,630 per concurrent user.
• IBM ERP Optimization Services--For a fixed price, this offering provides IBM Global Services consultants to assess your ERP systems and recommend actions you could take to derive more value from them. Prices for the service were not available at press time.
The Promise and the Peril
As the descriptions above indicate, IBM is taking the Express Portfolio beyond its technology-heavy middleware origins by offering products and services that customers think of as real solutions to real business problems. This shift to solutions is possible because IBM has spent the last year getting solutions providers such as SAP and Dassault Systemes on the Express bandwagon.
IBM could benefit greatly from elevating its Express Portfolio to the solutions level, as it could help the offerings become relevant to business executives. At the same time, Big Blue's decision to award the Express brand to selected third-party products could pose problems for the company. Since the mid-1990s, IBM has declared that it is not in the applications business. However, by offering the Express label (and substantial marketing dollars) to some third-party application vendors, IBM could be perceived by other vendors as showing favoritism or as outright competing with them.
While IBM can avoid such conflicts through careful and consistent communications with its Business Partners, it will take work on its part to do so. It will be interesting to see what the company does to keep its Express brand from becoming a bone of contention with the vendors it needs to ensure the success of its mid-market initiatives.
Lee Kroon is a Senior Industry Analyst for Andrews Consulting Group, a firm that helps mid-sized companies manage business transformation through technology. You can reach him at
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