Amazon.com adds web services to its offerings

CNN

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- Critics thought it was over the top when Amazon.com Inc. expanded from books into music in 1998. When the Web retailer let competitors start selling things alongside its own inventory in 2000, they said Amazon had gone nuts.

Amazon.com employees pack books for shipment in July at the company's facility in Fernley, Nevada.

In both cases, Amazon proved them wrong. Media sales now total in the billions each quarter, and third-party merchandise, more profitable for Amazon than its own wares, makes up nearly a third of everything sold through the site.

Now, Amazon is making an even greater stretch -- selling storage, computing power and other behind-the-scenes data center services.

The venture, which Amazon expects will grow into a significant business segment, could help keep the company strong if retailers get hit by an economic downturn.

More broadly, Amazon Web Services, as the business is called, could improve chances for a new generation of Web startups by slashing how much they spend up front on costly infrastructure.

MileMeter Inc., a Dallas-based startup that plans to sell auto insurance by the mile, started out running its own server in a data center. Recently, it moved most of its applications onto virtual computers in Amazon Web Services' Elastic Compute Cloud.

EC2 lets its customers quickly start up a virtual computer in the "cloud" -- industry slang for data centers around the world -- then use it as a Web server or for crunching data and shut it down just as fast.

"I don't need to have a systems administrator or a network administrator," said Chief Executive Chris Gay. "I don't have to worry about hardware becoming irrelevant."

Gay said he also uses Amazon's online payments service and is evaluating its data storage and simple database services. During the first dot-com boom, he said, "It was a badge of strength to have as much as possible in house.

"Now, unless that is your core business ... it's a liability."

Adam Selipsky, vice president of product management and developer relations for Amazon Web Services, said Amazon wants entrepreneurs to focus on their ideas, not on hardware leases and crashing servers.

"We want to let developers innovate and make money," he said.

Amazon is certainly not the only player. James Staten, an analyst at Forrester Research, said Akamai Technologies Inc., Enki and Terremark each offer at least a portion of the Web services Amazon is selling. IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. offer pricier versions aimed at big businesses, while Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are thought to be working on services similar to Amazon's.

Amazon comes closest to utility-style billing, Staten said. Most competitors demand a contract or minimum payments.

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SMBs to drive Indonesia ICT spend

By Lynn Tan, ZDNet Asia, Monday, January 28 2008 08:21 PM

Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in Indonesia are projected to spend about US$7.2 billion on infocomm technologies (ICT) in 2008, according to a new market report.

In its study released Monday, AMI-Partners said Indonesian SMBs are projected to grow their ICT expenditure by some 11.2 percent over last year, fueled by a boom in the overall economy and a surge in the number of small-sized businesses.

Prasannavadan Gaitonde, a Singapore-based research manager at AMI-Partners, said in a statement: "In Indonesia, more than 99 percent of SMBs are [small-sized businesses], and they account for about 78 percent of the total ICT spend."

Gaitonde noted that approximately 80 percent of these small-sized businesses--defined as having fewer than 100 employees--are startups, or are staffed with between one and four employees. He added that these companies will account for 50 percent of the overall small-sized business expenditure in 2008.

According to AMI-Partners, Indonesia has a "young and dynamic" business environment. The average age of business owners and managers is 33 years, and over 66 percent of these professionals have a graduate degree or higher education qualifications.

Gaitonde said this pool of young decision makers, along with a burgeoning domestic demand, has resulted in a "positive" environment with over 40 percent of SMBs expecting growth of between 15 percent and 20 percent in 2008.

"This optimism is also prodding more SMBs to consider hiring more people, [and] that will help relieve pressure on an otherwise high unemployment rate in Indonesia," he said. "The wage pressures are expected to remain flat through 2008."

Growth potential is also encouraging Indonesian SMBs to increase branch locations, where over 25 percent plan to add one to two branches this year, AMI-Partners noted.

As such, connectivity between branch offices and remote locations will be a top priority for SMB IT decision makers this year, the research house said. It added that the highest growth is expected in data security deployments at 33 percent, followed by data storage at 26 percent and Internet-related implementations at 24 percent.

Gaitonde said Indonesian SMBs will depend more on the Internet in 2008, adding that this increase in online usage will prod more SMBs to invest in basic security tools.

Mobility is another "hot" area because Indonesian SMBs are at the "cusp" of broader adoption of mobility-enabled devices, AMI-Partners said, driven by a desire to improve productivity of their mobile workforce.

For instance, the awareness of WiMax in Indonesia is "very high" and uptake of the technology could accelerate rapidly if the "right" products are offered at the "right" price points, AMI-Partners said.

The analyst company added that VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) and IP telephony tools are still "attractive" alternatives to reduce calling costs.

"Indonesian SMBs expect telecom service providers to play a stronger role in offering them various bundled solutions especially for voice-related services, [and] it is important that service providers rise to fulfill this need of a growing market," Gaitonde said.

Lynn Tan is a freelance IT writer based in Singapore.

SAP brings hosted ERP to Asia

By Victoria Ho, ZDNet Asia, Tuesday, January 29 2008 07:30 PM

SINGAPORE--SAP has brought its hosted ERP (enterprise resource planning) suite to the region.

Announced Tuesday, the company is releasing its Business ByDesign product to Singapore--the sixth country globally to receive it. The product is currently available in Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and China.

Hans-Peter Klaey, president of SAP's SME division, said at the launch event that Singapore was chosen because many regional offices are headquartered in the country.

SAP is targeting the suite at SMBs (small to medium sized businesses) employing between 100 to 500 staff.

Klaey said that a hosted solution "makes the most sense" for an SMB, because it takes the burden of building expensive infrastructure off the shoulders of the companies that may not have the capital freely available.

Historically, SAP has been in favor of on-premise installations. However, it launched a hosted CRM service in 2006, in a bid to capture the growing hosted CRM market.

Similarly, the company is eyeing the growing SMB SaaS market, which it estimates to be worth some US$15 billion.

According to Klaey, 74 percent of SAP's customers are SMBs, with this proportion expected to go up in the years to come. Having offered only on-premise ERP products till this, Klaey said that he expects this to fill the void in the market for a hosted ERP service that is "end-to-end".

Eric MacDonald, SAP Asia-Pacific and Japan president and CEO of South East Asia, said: "[Business ByDesign] addresses the 'testing out' market--the users who don't have the bandwidth to take on huge IT projects but are interested in trying out a product which gives them improved control."

Klaey did not comment on whether SAP's acquisition of Business Objects would see business intelligence functionality added to the product.

Presently, users' data on the system is hosted in Waldorf, Germany with prices beginning at US$149 per user, per month, for a minimum of 25 users.

IBM Unveils Plans for Collaboration Software and Services for Small-and-Medium Sized Businesses

Yahoo Finance, Monday January 21, 9:00 am ET

ORLANDO, FL--(MARKET WIRE)--Jan 21, 2008 -- LOTUSPHERE -- At Lotusphere, IBM (NYSE:IBM - News) announced plans for a software portfolio expansion geared to the needs of millions of companies from 5 to 500 employees that want to focus on growing their businesses instead of running their office systems.

IBM Lotus Foundations is a future line of small business software servers, installed on-premise, and is expected to be offered primarily through IBM Business Partners. In addition, IBM announced a managed beta of a Web-delivered service codenamed "Bluehouse." "Bluehouse" provides extranet services that make it easy for small-and-medium sized companies to securely collaborate beyond their organizational boundaries.

The combination of Lotus Foundations and "Bluehouse" will provide essential software solutions in simple to acquire and manage packages. Small-and-medium sized businesses (SMBs) need superior collaboration and business solutions as much as large companies. With Lotus Foundations and Bluehouse, used separately or in combination, organizations will be able to take advantage of proven enterprise-strength software delivered as a turn-key package for start-up businesses without IT staff.

"Small-and-medium sized business represents a significant growth opportunity for IBM," said Mike Rhodin, general manager, IBM Lotus Software. "Our SMB approach -- which combines easy-to-deploy, self-managed on premise servers with Web-delivered, extranet collaboration services -- uniquely empowers SMBs to succeed in any market."

Based on Linux, IBM Lotus Foundations is expected to provide server software that requires minimal technical expertise and is autonomic -- able to manage and heal itself. This will allow small-and-medium sized companies to focus on their business, rather than spending time and resources managing information technology. Lotus Foundations will be built on the principles of IBM's Express Advantage program for small and medium business such as ease-of-installation and ease-of-use.

The first component of the Lotus Foundations family is currently expected to include a pre-loaded, one-stop-shop solution for small companies: Lotus Domino mail and collaboration platform, file management, directory services, firewall, back-up and recovery, and office productivity tools. Designed to accommodate growth, customers will be able to easily add more users or servers as needed. In addition, as planned, Lotus Foundations will give system integrators and independent software vendors the opportunity to integrate their new or existing applications into the Foundations platform with minimal effort.

A key component of the Lotus Foundations family will be technology acquired through IBM's purchase of Net Integration Technologies, which is expected to close later in the first quarter of 2008, as announced last week. Industry observers have favorably rated the Net Integration Technologies small-business server against Microsoft's Small Business Server. Net Integration Technologies features have consistently received high marks for ease-of-use, installation and disaster recovery. IBM plans to integrate the innovative Net Integration's technology into its Lotus Foundations family of software servers. Lotus Domino is already integrated into the Net Integration platform. IBM's strategies for SMB, collaboration and acquisitions are among the keys to its growth.

"Bluehouse," will offer a suite of collaboration services that allows businesses to work together by sharing contacts, files, project activities and interacting with chat and Web meetings. This new set of services will enable small companies to easily collaborate beyond their organizational boundaries without the need for any in-house technical expertise. "Bluehouse" is now available as a limited beta offering and will be progressively unveiled throughout the year.

SMBs have the same types of business challenges as large corporations but must solve them with limited or no IT resources. They need to compete globally and they require industry-specific solutions that help them automate, simplify and speed product-to-market cycles.

Consequently, small-medium companies need powerful collaboration and business solutions to allow them to work more easily with their customers and suppliers. These new offerings from IBM Lotus software draw upon 20 years of innovation in collaboration with world-class business expertise and research delivered in a way that is easy to access and use.

Today's announcement illustrates the future of work and how IBM operates as a globally integrated enterprise in the 21st century workplace. Global integration has become embedded in IBM's workforce, strategy, leadership and operations -- affecting how the company collaborates across time zones and cultures and locates its operations, functions and leadership anywhere in the world based on the right skills and business environment. Small and medium businesses are increasingly going global and becoming more competitive through technology. Accessing world-class collaboration is the next step.

For more information, please visit http://www.ibm.com/press/lotusphere