IBM Broadens Efforts to Prepare Small and Medium Businesses for Growth Provides $1 Billion in Financing; Launches New Cloud and Business Analytics Offerings
Bangkok, October 14, 2011 -- IBM Global Financing, the leasing and loan segment of IBM, today announced that it will provide $1 billion in financing to help credit-qualified small and medium businesses (SMBs) over the next 18 months take advantage of a new suite of advanced technologies such as analytics and cloud. This effort is designed to help SMBs spur innovation and drive economic growth by making credit more easily accessible, with approvals in less than a day.
"SMBs are the engines of new ideas for our economy and for economic growth. We are helping SMB clients in Finance and Banking, manufacturing industry to optimize technology with variety of financial services," said Mr. Santi Wongsirikul, Country Manager of IBM Global Financing, IBM Thailand Company Limited. " Significant efforts need to be made to provide a strong foundation for SMBs to establish their business for growth. As information has become the new currency, the ability of SMBs to survive in an increasingly competitive and global environment is largely determined by their use of new technologies such as cloud and analytics to quickly access the right information and use it as a competitive advantage."
Financing is one of the biggest challenges limiting the success of SMBs today. U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) consistently reports that well over 50 percent of small businesses fail within their first five years due to lack of capital. Since this segment is responsible for nearly 65 percent of global GDP, representing more than 90 percent of all businesses and employing more than 90 percent of the world’s workforce, SMBs play a critical role in a global economic recovery.
Today's news addresses the urgent need for capital by providing the right foundation and resources to support SMBs in this economy. IBM's $1 billion in financing for SMBs is designed to eliminate many of the cost barriers they face to grow their business. IBM will offer simple, flexible lease and loan packages, some starting at as low as 0 percent for 12 months with no down payment,* allowing them to immediately acquire the IBM technology and services they need to begin to transform their businesses, while managing their cash flow more effectively.
As part of today's announcement, IBM is also launching a comprehensive set of new solutions, which include workload optimized systems combining hardware and software and services offerings focused on technologies, such as cloud, analytics, collaboration and security, specifically designed to address SMBs key needs. IBM aims to help this segment by making these advanced technologies, once reserved for larger enterprises with large budgets, available to SMBs through IBM Business Partners at an affordable price. These new offerings also introduce technologies from IBM's recent cloud, analytics and security acquisitions such as Cast Iron, BigFix, SPSS, Netezza and Cognos.
Clients can now take advantage of these new technologies with no money down and by simply making monthly or quarterly financing payments. For example, many of the offerings are less than $5 per user per month (over 36 months) for 100 users. In addition, these technologies can now be up and running in a matter of two to three days, saving SMBs up to 50 percent in cost and time.
The new solutions also include analytics for SMBs to tackle "Big Data" challenges to help better extract insight and spot trends to make better business decisions and identify new market opportunities. These offerings will combine technologies from IBM's recent acquisitions. In fact, the survey highlighted analytics as the top priority by more than 83 percent of CIOs.
In addition to software, services and financing, IBM offers a variety of ways for entrepreneurs to grow their businesses with no-charge access to advanced technologies, leading business and technology experts and training. Through its Global Entrepreneur Program and network of 40 global Innovation Centers, IBM helps businesses solve tough challenges, enter new markets and access the training and support needed to get their products to market faster.