IBM Canada Ltd. last month added IBM Services Anywhere Select to its portfolio of services targeted at medium-sized businesses. This new e-business On Demand service allows customers to keep servers on location while IBM remotely manages their Web infrastructures and systems.
Services Anywhere Select allows in-house technicians to free up the time they would normally spend continuously monitoring their computing infrastructures, leaving them open to deal with more critical matters, IBM said.
Beth Feeney, IBM director of e-businesses hostings for SMBs (small and medium businesses), said IBM On Demand business solutions are tailored to the unique needs of different customers.
“We typically have a deep set of skills available, but we know sometimes the customer likes to control certain components of [the computing infrastructure] like content,…so they may choose to take ownership of that layer but look to IBM to take on some of the other areas from a support standpoint.”
Feeney said it is paramount for medium-sized businesses to maintain a reliable infrastructure.
“We think it is critically important to our customers in the small and medium segment as much as it is to our large enterprise customers. That’s why we are really trying to deliver a set of capabilities that provide that kind of robust environment that’s got the ability to meet [SMBs’] reliability needs…because the business expectations are extremely high in the marketplace no matter what size firm you are.”
Pricing depends on the services ordered by the customer. There is a one-time charge of US$5,000 for IBM to build the necessary infrastructure to remotely manage the environment, a US$1,000 change charge, and a monthly charge of US$200 per server.
IBM On Demand services are currently available in Canada to any customer that is online and requires that a virtual private network (VPN) connection be established between the customer and IBM.
Find more On Demand information online at www.ibm.com/mediumbusiness. IBM Canada can be found online at www.ibm.com/ca.
