IBM Broadens Efforts to Prepare Small and Medium Enterprises for Growth

Provides US$1 Billion (RM3.2 billion) In Financing; Launches New Cloud and Business Analytics Offerings

Petaling Jaya, 6 October, 2011 -- IBM Global Financing, the leasing and loan segment of IBM (NYSE:IBM), today announced that it will provide US$1 billion (RM3.2 billion) in financing to help credit-qualified small and medium enterprises (SMEs) 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 SMEs spur innovation and drive economic growth by making credit more easily accessible.

Financing is one of the biggest challenges limiting the success of SMEs today. The 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, SMEs 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 SMEs in this economy. IBM's US$1 billion in financing for SMEs is designed to eliminate many of the cost barriers they face to grow their business. IBM will offer simple financing solutions, 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.

This financing will be made available to SME clients in Malaysia through IBM Business Partners who can benefit from enhanced online financing tools to generate price proposals and get approvals for credit applications for SME clients in less than a day, all available by a simple click of the mouse.

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 SMEs’ key needs. IBM aims to help this segment by making these advanced technologies, once reserved for larger enterprises with large budgets, available to SMEs 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 SMEs up to 50 percent in cost and time.

The IBM solutions will help SMEs deploy a cloud platform quickly and help SME clients free their employees from worrying about IT and the significant costs associated with it. In a recent IBM Midmarket survey of 650 CIOs, half are looking to invest in cloud over the next five years, a 50 percent increase in demand for cloud since the last CIO study in 2009. Cloud solutions can also help SMEs automate their IT infrastructure, allowing their staffs to shift more attention to strategic projects focused on growth.

The new solutions also include analytics for SMEs 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 network of 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.

"SMEs are the engines of new ideas for our economy and for economic growth. Curiosity and new thinking are what sets them apart," said Vincent Ler, General Manager, General Business, IBM Malaysia. "Significant efforts need to be made to provide a strong foundation for SMEs to establish their business for growth. As information has become the new currency, the ability of SMEs 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."