IBM’s Cost-Effective Offerings

International Business Machines (IBM - Analyst Report) plans to lower costs for its clients via its offerings, which is posing a major challenge to businesses due to the difficult economic scenario.
 
Thus IBM released new IT Asset Management software to help companies manage the costs brought on by the proliferation of IT assets such as mobile devices, laptops, printers, switches, sensors and billions of interconnected devices.  The software also helps control the complexity of software licensing and increased pace of compliance audits.
 
The company expects software license reuse and audit exposure savings of $3 million in 2009 and $5 million annually starting from 2010 if a company implements a software license management program using IBM’s IT Asset Management software.
 
In order to reduce cost, IBM announced research collaboration with the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland (IDA Ireland) to develop and expand its Risk Management Analytics capabilities in Ireland.
 
Under the agreement, IBM will use the expertise of its Research labs to develop enhanced methods and tools that will help companies in industries such as manufacturing, pharmaceutical, healthcare and government to manage risk efficiently. The collaboration in Ireland will be joining IBM's worldwide network of advanced analytic centers in the U.S., Germany and the U.K.
 
We believe that IBM is coming up with new cost efficient data centers and new IT Asset Management software to lower costs and is also focusing on new collaborations that will help customers manage their operations effectively amid the economic uncertainty. This is a positive for the company and helps it win new businesses. The expansion of its global network of analytics focused centers is expected to benefit the company going forward.
 
IBM faces strong competition from business intelligence software firm SAS and enterprise software giant SAP AG (SAP - Analyst Report).
 
We have a Neutral rating on the stock.

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