IBM Offers Business Partners a Toolkit Solution for Resellers Focused on Small and Midsize Businesses
IBM’s Toolkit Helps Business Partners Reduce Network Installation Time from Days to Hours
SAN FRANCISCO (February 16, 1998) – As part of an ongoing effort to help its Business Partners work more effectively with
small business customers, IBM’s Global Small and Medium Business division (SMB) today announced a Small Business
Solutions Toolkit* that will simplify the installation, setup and configuration of network solutions. The Toolkit is the first in a series
designed to support the relationship between IBM Business Partners and their small business customers.
The Small Business Solutions Toolkit includes pre-programmed templates for the installation of applications and
pre-configured network setup. With the Toolkit, Business Partners can fully install a network, including the necessary
workstations, in hours instead of days — which may increase the profitability on their time and effort. And for small businesses,
the speed of installation may reduce the amount of costly downtime they would otherwise face.
IBM designed the Toolkit as a means to help its worldwide network of Business Partners value-added resellers, independent
dealers, independent software vendors, and networking consultants realize greater benefits and profitability from their small
business customers by helping to make the installation process more efficient. For solution developers targeting small business
customers, the Toolkit is extensive and can support the same ease of installation and distribution for their solution that the reseller
enjoys for the applications pre-programmed by IBM. This allows the solution developer to offer their reseller an easy way to
build the network foundation they need to offer a complete solution to their customers.
“Small and medium business represents a tremendous and rapidly growing market — currently comprising 80% of the world’s
work force,” said Peter Rowley, general manager of IBM Global Small and Medium Business. “The Toolkit we are announcing
today and future toolkits are part of our effort to address the needs of this thriving market. By providing our Business Partners
with simple, profitable SMB solutions, we are, in turn, better able to service the SMB customer.”
The Toolkit specifically provides partners with the following:
Installation “Wizards” – – pre-programmed templates that supervise installation of more than 20 leading server and desktop
applications;
Additional “Wizard” steps that offer direction through the entire network setup and configuration;
A simple way to create boot diskettes for all client and server configurations that ease software distribution and installation by
launching preconfigured, unattended client installation a server; and;
Consistent, repeatable network configurations – complete with applications that can be installed in just hours.
Today’s Small Business Solutions Toolkit, as well as future editions, supports the Microsoft’s Windows NT** and 95** operating
systems. Planned future Toolkits will build on the these operating systems by offering the most recent product upgrades with
increasingly sophisticated and customized programs. The kits will be made available exclusively to members of the various
IBM Business Partner programs on a periodic basis.
Interested resellers can obtain the toolkit on the Internet from http://www.software.ibm.com/sw-sell/. From this site, resellers can
download the Toolkit as well as small business-focused collateral to assist in selling IBM small business solutions to their
customers. Qualified resellers will be mailed a special set of “IBM Small Business Solutions Toolkit” CD’s that include the
toolkit, the small business collateral in Adobe Acrobat*** format, a multimedia navigator with video about IBM Small Business
Solutions Toolkit, and a browser-based showcase featuring IBM and Business Partner solutions for small businesses. The IBM
Global Network Internet Dialer and Netscape Navigator 4.03**** are included on the CD to assist the reseller in getting to the
wealth of small business solutions information the toolkit enables.
Source: IBM