Monday, February 24, 2003

Line in the sand - *SMB Market battle has commenced In my first posting for the year, I stated that this will be the 'Year of the *Small Business market'. While the market definition is nebulous - I would state *SMB (that's 'M' for mid) as firms with ~1000 employees (end users) and *SB for upto ~500 end users. In any case, salvos have been fired in this market segment by IBM and Microsoft. IBM has introduced DB2 Express, WebSphere Express, Lotus Domino Collaboration Express and Tivoli Storage Resource Manager Express. Microsoft has commenced its marketing campaign based around its forthcoming Windows 2003 Server. MS also has "Bobcat" in the wings, this is the .NET-based Small Business Server due sometime this year. Ironically, this market segment will be won not on technical terms (hardware/software/network) but upon service & support. The *SMB market has fewer IS/IT staff and are more sensitive to costs. 8:47:09 AM