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Facing waning demand for Microsoft products, more than 1,000 Microsoft Business Partners have already signed up to sell IBM Lotus Foundations "office-in-a-box" appliance for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) in the first five months of 2009.  Some of these guys partnered up with IBM right after Microsoft launched Windows Foundation, an attempt to create a skelton box for SMBs which has to be replaced when folks outgrow it.

"Lotus Foundations is a complete, cost-effective solution that easily scales as a business grows. When you add users, you know exactly what it will cost and the functionality you’ll get ," said Bernie Leung of Mesa Technology. "With Microsoft SBS, you always have to worry about what additional licenses you will have to purchase – the SQL client is just one example. "

Microsoft partners are looking for an alternative that provides SMBs with more collaboration computing power for less money and more reliability in these challenging economic times.

"And with Lotus Symphony, we don’t have to pay for Microsoft Office.  Most importantly, Lotus Foundations is simple to use and easy maintain.  It eliminates the expense of having a full-time IT expert on staff," said Jose Lopez Gonzalez, CEO, Lopez y Cortina, an insurance provider in Monterrey, Mexico.

"If you sell servers to small business or non-profit organizations and you want one that has everything they need to run their network in one box that is extremely easy to manage, you owe it to yourself to look at the Lotus Foundations appliance,” said David Lawrence, President, Smart Technology Enablers.

New IBM clients such as Lopez y Cortina, Murak & Associates LLC and Calvary Baptist Academy are indicative of many small businesses in North America and around the world.   For these organizations, who lack the luxury of dedicated IT personnel, keeping expenses in check is a top priority.  As such, these companies are looking for ways to make dealing with technology easier.

The following are comments made by a sample of IBM clients and partners who have signed up for Lotus Foundations in the past five months.

Lotus Foundations….dramatically improved our email platform.  And instead of using disparate software, every user has the same comprehensive solutions, creating a common experience and standardized security and back-up protection across the company." — Jose Lopez Gonzalez, CEO, Lopez y Cortina

For us, collaboration is paramount.  With the VPN and file sharing features in Lotus Foundations, our consultants around the world can access information just as if they are in the office.  And with this solution, we know our data is safe.  The backup process is completely automated.  It’s one less thing for us to worry about." — Gerry Murak. Principal, Murak & Associates .

Our IT setup consisted of a series of old desktop computers.  Our file management system consisted of information stored on CDs, disks and hard copies of important documents.  We needed a system to help centralize and simplify our file storage, but we didn’t have a huge budget. Lotus Foundations enabled us to implement a complete data storage system and stay within budget. And as an added savings, the included Lotus Symphony software enables us to cut all future costs tied to buying and upgrading Microsoft Office licenses. – Kathy Rutledge, teacher, Calvary Baptist Academy .

"With Lotus Foundations, we were able to get a more complete solution and cut our costs significantly. The full year cost of our Lotus Foundations environment is equivalent to what we paid for only about one-and-a-half months with our SBS solution. That means we can spend more money on developing solutions that help our customers improve the way they do business."  — Dr. Tim Miller of EnVision .

This one is too good!

Lotus Foundations is like a giant aspirin for the IT headaches that plague business owners every day." — Greg Gould of GDomino .

"The Lotus Foundations server is a wonderful device – the ease of install and configuration makes getting right to work a quick job. For the money, we could not have come close to finding this functionality anywhere else – enterprise quality in a small business box." — Robert Thresher, owner, Thresher Enterprise Systems .

"With Lotus Foundation remote management, we have eliminated 50% of the support travel time allowing us to grow our Managed Service Provider division. As a result, we have grown sales and our customer base by 80% in the year 2008.  With all the technology opportunities today, we are seeing a large number of customers looking for long term solutions outside of Microsoft, and Lotus Foundations and IBM Symphony are two great alternatives that offer small business organizations an IT solution that grows as their business grows – and adds value without taking away from their bottom line." — James Sulfare, Solinkit, LLC .

"Lotus Foundations allows us to service our more than 100 different clients remotely.  In fact, of all of the clients we’ve serviced that have IBM servers running the Lotus Foundations, we’ve only ever met two face-to-face. Lotus Foundation’s ease of setup and management allows us to ship out an unconfigured unit to our client.  Upon receiving the unit, I have frequently instructed over the phone, the secretary — with zero computer experience – on the setup and configuration of the unit," said Hari Boukis, owner, Advertising Magic .

"We chose Lotus Foundations from IBM for its high availability and ease of maintainability. Lotus Foundations also helps companies keep costs down do to its reliability, all-in-one office software suite, ease of use and maintainability.  Additionally, since our solution is Windows-based, the ability to run Windows applications alongside Linux applications makes the Foundations environment a complete SMB solution." — Jim Abraham, Managing Partner, Line Fifty Software.

Edit: 200+ Microsoft Partners Per Month Flocking to Sell IBM Lotus Foundations Appliance – IBM’s Press Release on this occasion.

Continuing the pursuit of ‘happyness’ – Lotus Foundations & Gardner Rich

Here’s a very interesting case study on Lotus Foundations, formerly known as NitixBlue. Gardner Rich Inc. has been a fan of the Lotus Foundations platform for years over competitors such as Microsoft. Check out the case study.

Continuing the pursuit of "happyness": Gardner Rich improves core-business efficiency, secures data and addresses regulatory compliance using the NitixBlue aka Foundations solution.