Customers applaud IBM services' face-lift

IBM is revamping the way it packages and sells global services to take greater advantage of project similarities and give a boost to its slow-growing services business.

This week the vendor unveiled its first two service products among a lineup of 30 it expects to announce by year-end. IBM’s network convergence bundle is aimed at helping customers determine their readiness for adopting communications networks that combine support for data, voice and video; its IP telephony offering is focused on designing, deploying and managing IP telephony infrastructure.

The services contain blueprints for project elements — such as requirements definition, implementation methodologies and testing plans — so IBM’s services staff can duplicate the tactics they used for customers around the globe and minimize labor-intensive customizations.

The idea of a standard approach to services delivery, in which methodologies are shared and reused, sits well with Dave Komaromi, manager of technical services at law firm Fraser Milner Casgrain. The Toronto firm used IBM services to help overhaul its network, including deploying IP telephony, wireless and now desktop videoconferencing.

There are parts of a project that should be standardized to ensure a customer implementation takes advantage of best practices, Komaromi says. “To know that the tried, tested and true methodologies are what the foundation is run on is reassuring, especially for this technology,” he says.

When it came time to extend the IP telephony project to the firm’s Ottawa office and replacing the traditional phone system there, the structured approach IBM laid out in the first phase made the process easier. “That made for a very easy migration. We didn’t have to reinvest that design effort,” Komaromi says.

Still, there is a place for customization, Komaromi acknowledges. “The standardized approach will get you to a certain point where you’ve got a reliable infrastructure. Then you have to change gears to address what’s unique about an environment, what needs to be customized to make it fit. That’s obvious. IBM clearly does that,” he says.

Likewise Chris Smith, IT director at the Bath Central School District in New York, sees the benefits of working with repeatable services building blocks and using customized tactics as required. The school district has been working with IBM Global Services since 2001, when it embarked on a $1.5 million project to build a converged voice and data network with a wireless LAN overlay. At the time, Bath Central was a convergence pioneer, compared with other school districts, so the project required a fair amount of custom work with IBM, Smith says.

Five years later, it makes sense that IBM is able to execute a more standardized approach to convergence projects using its experiences with Bath Central and other clients, Smith says. Among the beneficiaries will be other school districts: “It’s going to make it more cost effective for districts to afford that kind of service,” Smith says.