Looking to compete with Microsoft Corp’s BackOffice on its home turf, IBM has launched the IBM Suite for WindowsNT. The suite contains Lotus Domino, the DB2 Universal Database, the eNetwork Communications server and ADSTAR Distributed Storage Manager. IBM has also licensed Intel Corp’s LANDesk Management Suite 6.1, and is including it in the package. An enterprise version of the suite adds TXSeries, MQSeries DB2 Connect and Tivoli Lan Access to that lineup. A beta version of a cut-down small business edition is promised in July. The suites prove that IBM is dead serious about NT, according to Steve Mills, general manager of the company’s software solutions division. The regular and enterprise versions are shipping now. Prices for the regular suite are $2,500 per suite and $225 per user, while the enterprise edition costs $16,250 and $375. Volume discounts will be available, as well as upgrade options for customers who have already deployed one or more components of the suite. Mills claims the new offering has the highest reliability of anything running on NT and also boasts that it installs three times faster than BackOffice. The suite is so good that he figures Microsoft is not an obstacle in this market. If it doesn’t sell well, it simply means that IBM itself isn’t capitalizing on its own customer service opportunities, according to Mills. Looking ahead, IBM will offer integrated suites for AIX and OS/2 later this year, with HP-UX and Solaris versions due in 1999. Also expected later this year are enhancements for the NT suites which will include integrated directory services, single sign-on, common web-based administration and distributed security. More details, Barbed Wire.
