IBM is going after small and medium businesses and the white box server vendors who serve them.

Talking at IBM's Partnerworld conference in Las Vegas Bill Zeitler, group executive of IBM Systems and Technology Group, said the Small and Medium Business market was growing faster than other markets and IBM had to do better in that market.

Big Blue will aim to compete with white box vendors(no-brand boxes) with its Blade servers and newly-announced X3 boxes. More details on Infoworld here.

In not unrelated news IBM announced a $300m spend on helping resellers go after the SMB market. SMB customers already provide more than 20 per cent of IBM's revenues. IDC estimates the SMBs will spend $360bn in 2005 on IT.

IBM consultants will partner with regional systems integrators in Europe and the US. IBM will offer preconfigured mySAP solutions targetted at smaller firms. Partners in the US will be able to resell IBM hosting services to SMB clients. More details on IBM's website here.®

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