Small Business VoIP

In addition to today’s official launch of Lotus Symphony, IBM (News - Alert) has announced a small and medium sized business initiative called “Blue Business Platform” to simplify information technology for the SMB. The solution comprises a number of elements including Lotus Notes and Domino mail, file management, directory services, firewall, back-up and recovery, anti-virus, and anti-spam features. Lotus Symphony will be offered as the office productivity software within the Lotus Foundations suite.

 

IBM Lotus Foundations Start is an “all in one” solution that carries IBM’s promise to get a small or medium business up and running within 30 minutes. It is the first offering in a planned line of small business appliances, and contains the hardware and software essential to local and start-up businesses with five to 500 employees and little or no in-house technical resources.

 

The beauty of a solution like this is that it allows a small or medium sized business to focus on running their core business, as opposed to worrying about the myriad day to day issues associated with technology.

 

And in an SMB market that IBM pegs at $500 billion, it’s an opportunity you can bet the company will not take lightly.

 

According to Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president of messaging and collaboration software, IBM Lotus, “Small businesses need to get up and running fast. If they’re not nimble in how they serve their customers, they don’t stay in business very long. Part of the appeal is not having to run around adding things. Foundations Start has everything you need including integrated software applications for human resources, customer relationship management and accounting.”

 

The solution starts at a price of $149 per user and contains all of the tools necessary to start collaborating right out of the box, including Lotus Notes and Domino. As mentioned earlier the solution leverages the newly available Lotus Symphony for applications such as spreadsheets, documents and presentations.

 

Foundations Start also comes with support for Microsoft (News - Alert) Outlook, to accommodate these users accustomed to that particular e-mail environment.

 

Other features include intelligent disk backup that automatically configures itself and ensures critical data is always protected; disaster recovery which is designed to allow a business to perform a full system recovery in just a few minutes in the event of a complete system loss; and security features such as a self-configuring firewall, and integrated anti-virus and anti-spam.

 

The solution is available now in English and will be made available in several other languages (simplified Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese and Swedish) by July 30.

 

IBM announced their first customer for Lotus Foundations, a private stock brokerage firm based in Chicago by the name of Gardner Rich & Co., LLCi. The firm was founded by Chris Gardner in 1987 with only $10,000 and one piece furniture after years of homelessness. The 2006 movie, “The Pursuit of Happiness,” which starred Will Smith is based on Gardner’s life story.