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Strategies & Market Trends : Rande Is . . . HOME -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (22373)	3/19/2000 11:38:00 PM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 57584

Just a small part of the Big Blue. IBM Unveils $300 Mln Marketing Effort for Mid-sized Companies Armonk, New York, March 19 (Bloomberg) -- International Business Machines Corp. unveiled a $300 million marketing campaign and several partnerships to promote IBM products and services that let mid-sized companies conduct business online. Terms weren't disclosed. IBM, the world's largest computer maker, and closely held Xspeedium.com will jointly rent software to businesses over the Web. The alliance, the other partnerships and the marketing effort will target companies with 100 to 999 employees, IBM said. Businesses are selling more products to each other on Web site exchanges. The market for the computers, software and services that mid-sized businesses need to set up and run these online sites is $135 billion this year, IBM said, citing figures from IDC, a Framingham, Massachusetts-based researcher. ``We're not only going to help people who want to establish (Web sales) exchanges, but we're also going to help businesses connect to them,' said Peter Rowley, a general manager for IBM's mid-sized business initiative. In the $300 million effort, IBM will advertise, hold conferences and send out mass mailings to push its products and services for Web site sales to mid-sized businesses, Rowley said. Subscribers to the Web site set up by IBM and Xspeedium.com, which rents applications to businesses over the Web, will get software for a $250 monthly fee. The programs monitor inventory and orders, and store customer information. The site will be run on IBM computers and software and will be managed by IBM's services arm. IBM and VerticalNet Inc., which runs business-to-business Internet trading sites, will promote each other's products and services to business customers. VerticalNet will push IBM products and services to online exchanges set up for industries such as health care, manufacturing and communications. IBM, in turn, will link software business customers to the VerticalNet sites. IBM's AS/400 servers, which manage networks of computers, will run software from i2 Technologies Inc. and QAD Inc. Applications from i2 link manufacturers to suppliers, while QAD software lets companies manage orders and deliveries.