You and i Will Like Solution Editions

I’m frequently asked about ways in which IBM is promoting IBM i in the marketplace. As I promised in my “Announce Day” blog, I want to provide more details about our latest initiative to partner with industry-leading ISVs to promote IBM i as the best platform for SMB business solutions: IBM i Solution Editions. Because people tend to think of IBM i as being more expensive, IBM i Solution Editions deliver competitive total cost of acquisition (TCA) and significantly lower total cost of ownership (TCO) when compared to the stack Windows and x86 components. I want to thank Guy Paradise, our POWER platform offering manager for his help in getting this information.

IBM i Solution Editions provide complete, integrated solutions for midsize businesses. These solutions are optimized for the latest IBM Power Systems to deliver new levels of performance and energy efficiency, and they leverage the total integration of the IBM i operating environment to lower your ongoing TCO. According to a recent ITG report, Power Systems with IBM i can reduce your three-year TCO by up to 41 percent as compared to running Windows Server on competitive x86 servers. The security and ease of management of IBM i, along with its legendary reliability, allow companies of all sizes to have an advanced IT capability without huge IT staffs.

The IBM i Solution Editions enable you take advantage of the combined experience and expertise of IBM and partnering ISVs, to deliver a low-risk implementation of your new business solution. IBM i Solution Editions are:

• Pre-integrated and supported with implementation services to enable rapid deployment
• Optimized for performance, scalability and system utilization
• Totally integrated with IBM i, with trusted security to deliver low cost of ownership
• Designed to lower risk by leveraging over 30 years of IBM and IBM business partner experience
• Specially priced to deliver competitive TCA and proven TCO

The IBM i Solution Editions are built on POWER7 processor-based systems, which can reduce energy consumption, downtime and other operational costs. Coupled with the total integration delivered by IBM i, these solution offerings deliver the performance you need, along with low TCO. Each Solution Edition provides a simplified, easy-to-manage, high-performance IT environment for core business applications. IBM i Solution Editions optimize leading business software with POWER7 processor-based systems and the IBM i operating environment. The Solution Editions are offered through an extensive, highly skilled worldwide network of IBM Business Partners and backed by IBM’s trusted services and support infrastructure.

IBM i Solution Editions deliver:

• An integrated, trusted combination of relational database, security, Web services, networking and storage-management capabilities
• A broad and highly stable database and middleware foundation for efficiently deploying business-processing applications
• Flexible configurations for memory, disks and network adapters, and your choice of tower or rack mount to address your individual requirements
• Lower TCA and TCO across the hardware, systems and application software due to tight integration and partnering between IBM and the application providers

The IBM i Solution Editions are available for the IBM Power 720 Express and IBM Power 740 Express. The Power 720 Express allows small or midsized companies seeking simplicity to avoid increased spending and staffing requirements while becoming more responsive to their customers, improving their productivity and keeping their data secure. The Power 720 Express with IBM i integrates features to simplify your IT environment and deliver a complete, cost-effective business system that can grow with your business. The Power 740 Express provides the same integrated value as the Power 720 Express with additional capacity and expandability, enabling even higher system growth and more consolidation as your business grows. The performance, capacity, energy efficiency and virtualization capabilities of the Power 740 Express make it an ideal server for solution deployments with demanding capacity and growth requirements. Both systems deliver outstanding performance and workload optimizing features of the POWER7 processor.

So who are the leading ISVs offering IBM i Solution Editions? The current list includes the following companies with worldwide offerings:

• IBS
• Infor
• Lawson
• Oracle JD Edwards
• SAP AG

In North America, we currently also have:
• Healthcare Management Systems
• Jack Henry & Associates
• SolarSoft
• VAI

And we’re working with more companies, too. You can get information about IBM i Solution Editions, and see the up-to-date list of ISVs online. I’m excited about the IBM i Solution Editions because, as much as I love our operating system, I know that it’s not a complete solution until it’s partnered with an application that allows a customer to run a business. Working with ISVs who have these solutions completes the picture, and demonstrates the continuing value of the work You and i do on IBM i.

Comments

[Aaron Bartell]

I think the Solution Editions are a great idea and am glad they are being documented in more easily digestible formats like this blog. The question I have is where are the media outlets that IBM is taking this? It isn't enough to put it up on your website. Are there ads being placed in prominent trade rags or banner ads on websites that ARE NOT part of the existing IBM i ecosystem? (i.e. IBMSystemsmag.com, ITJungle.com, SystemiNetwork.com, etc don't count because that is just preaching to the choir).

I don't know how much you have control over marketing as you are more on the technical side, but it would be great to hear where this is being promoted so we as the community can point at it as proof that IBM believes enough about it's IBMi Solutions Editions to actually advertise them. If IBM doesn't believe enough in them to advertise them, well, what am I supposed to say to the company that is leaving the IBM i for Microsoft?

AaronBartell.com

[Bill Langston]

I think IBM will promote these solution editions indirectly by providing the various ISV's with co-op marketing dollars that they will use to promote their individual solutions. It isn't the kind of IBM i-specific marketing you might be looking for, but the ISV's probably spend the more more cost-effectively to reach their target audiences than IBM. Of course, the ISV's still need IBM marketing support to validate the i as a platform and that's what's been lacking for a long time.