IBM pursues SMEs with DB2 Express

Taking another step in its pursuit of the fast- growing small and medium enterprises market, IBM has recently launched scaled-down versions of its DB2 database management system. Gaurav Patra has the details

India undoubtedly has a huge—albeit fragmented—small and medium enterprise (SME) market. Since the people managing the show are based at different locations, costs are bound to add up in such a market. It is therefore critical to maintain a low cost of ownership in this segment. “People who run the business in the SME segment do not have much programming knowledge; rather, they have more of a IT-cum-business background,” says Vivek Rawat, who heads DB2 for IBM India. This means there should be more autonomic capabilities built into the database product, and that the requirements to manage and run the database should be lower. “The biggest challenge that an SME faces is to keep the system running with the least interruption. At the same time, the user has also started looking for enterprise features,” says Rawat. Keeping this in mind, IBM has introduced a new range of products specifically targeting the SME space.

IBM wants to work more closely with ISVs and is committed to increasing its focus on them, says Vivek Rawat

This new range is known as the DB2 Express range of products. These products will be sold through IBM business partners and will be exclusively targeted at SME customers. DB2 Express is a fully-functional database for the mid-market segment. IBM business partners preconfigure it for vertical markets such as retail, manufacturing and banking. Using DB2 Express, the partners can offer a one or no-click database installation. DB2 Express includes self-tuning and self-configuring functions that let customers reduce complexity, increase reliability and reduce the total cost of ownership. It runs on both Linux and Windows.

Offerings

IBM has divided its database business into three segments: OLTP system, business intelligence and content management.

The Express range of products are basically one-CD installations. In databases, IBM has Database Express, DB2 Work Group Server, DB2 Enterprise Edition and DB2 Extended Enterprise Edition.

From the technology point of view, this single-click installation has all the features of a DB2 Enterprise Edition, except that it has been fine-tuned to meet SME needs. But IBM has not compromised on features. Rawat also says that DB2 Express is even cheaper than Microsoft’s SQL Server. To increase DB2’s attractiveness to the SME segment, IBM has announced the concept of unlimited user. So at Rs 3 lakh one gets unlimited user access on DB2.

Apart from this, the company has also launched a Standard Edition of DB2 Warehouse Manager, which has a huge set of functionalities designed for the SME market; three different mining products have been built-in.

Another high-focus business area for IBM is content. “Content is a new and emerging business area in India. Content management continues to be a high-growth area for us. In India, 85 percent of data is still unstructured, with huge opportunities for this business in the SME segment,” says Rawat. As far as the content business is concerned, today IBM has customers in segments like banking, insurance, manufacturing, media and government. “The content management industry in India has just started looking up, so this can be a good revenue stream,” believes Rawat.

IBM already had a solution for enterprise content management, while the SME segment posed as a challenge. “To address this challenge, we have introduced IBM Content Manager on Linux. It’s a low-cost solution, it’s even cheaper than our own DB2 Content Manager,” says Rawat. This one-CD installation, DB2 Content Manager Express, reaffirms the company’s commitment to Linux.

Marketing strategy

As far as its DB2 business is concerned, IBM is primarily working with its partners, and some of the projects it has bagged are migration cases. Rawat says that earlier customers used to buy different products/

solutions from different vendors. But now there is a definite change even in the SME segment. “That is where we are witnessing critical success. Customers are now looking for end-to-end solutions and that is why we are winning. Our strength is hardware, software, storage, services and our partners. We have the capability to meet customer requirements,” says Rawat.

With the tech slowdown resulting in a squeeze on IT budgets, IBM has heard many a CIO talking about cost-cutting measures and the need for efficient management of RoI. And with customers affected by the pricing policies of some IBM competitors, the company sees great opportunity there.

Apart from this the company has also signed up with a number of independent software vendors (ISVs) and provides the opportunity to work on both Linux and NT environments. IBM has increased its commitment through its channel programmes, which are designed to help partners get into the IBM system. “The best thing is that unlike our competitors we do not compete with ISVs—that is why they are more comfortable with us,” says Rawat. He also feels that ISVs like SAP, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards are helping the company to a great extent. “All our ISVs’ primary development platform is DB2. The reason is that we have increased our commitment to our partners and are giving them more scalability options; we have also increased our investment in technology,” says Rawat.

In the days to come IBM is considering a greater focus on the government space, which is looking for more open standards; IBM will continue to drive some migrations through its partners. “We also want to work more closely with ISVs and are committed to increasing our focus on them,” says Rawat.

gaurav@expresscomputeronline.com