When Shelley Rudman unexpectedly won a silver medal for
her valiant efforts in the Skeleton at this year’s Winter Olympics,
the world knew she’d gained her unprecedented achievement for the
UK in a matter of seconds. In fact the world expected to know so in
that space of time.
It was imperative that the timing for events such as Shelley
Rudman’s are collected, analysed and presented to a multitude of
destinations in almost the flicker of an eye. In essence the Turin
event and the Olympic Games in general are entirely dependent on a
robust and innovative technology foundation.
Also more or less dependent on such technology foundations are
small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) who may be very interested
to know that Lenovo, the company who was responsible for making
sure the Turin Winter Olympics was a success is now moving its
attention from ice rinks, ski slopes and sleigh tracks to the SMB
arena.
The Lenovo Olympic PC solution included more than 6,000 pieces
of personal computing equipment deployed throughout Turin and the
mountain venues. In collaboration with other technology sponsors,
Lenovo computing equipment distributed data and results from more
than 200 competitions and events in real-time to media and Olympic
Games audiences throughout the world. Furthermore Lenovo supplied
to printer TV broadcaster NBC 450 desktop computers, 260 laptops,
200 printers and 50 file servers to support a state or the art
broadcasting facility.
Sponsoring the Games was an ideal opportunity for Lenovo to
express to the world that had arrived on a world following its
acquisition in 2004 of IBM’s PC division. Yet it also represented
a gamble as if it had got things wrong then incalculable damage may
have been done to the brand, something that Lenovo’s general
manager for EMEA Milko van Duijl freely admits to have thought
before event.
“The Olympics was phenomenally important to us in creating our
own identity. The association was important in that it radiates a
quality image for Lenovo. I’ve seen from close up how tough the
International Olympic Committee [sponsors' criteria] are. It [was]
a unique opportunity to be synonymous with going with the best. In
Olympics stars are born and people who have trained for so long
peak at the Olympics; it [was] the same for us. [We thought] that
if we do a great job we will be a new player associated with
quality but if get it wrong, we get it wrong front of 8 billion
people.”
These are auspicious times for Lenovo and the boost from
providing an error-free Olympics is now driving and a campaign in
the SMB arena. What Lenovo now aims to do is build on the
reputation for product excellence that it believe IBM created
whilst taking advantage of the fact that it is a more streamlined
body that can connect better with SMBs than IBM did, or in fact
could.
At the end of February, the company launched the first-ever
Lenovo-branded PCs to be offered worldwide, the Lenovo 3000 product
family, which says the company will offer ‘an optimal computing
experience’ for SMBs featuring several new desktop and notebook
models with the latest processor technologies in a new silver
chassis.
According to market analyst Gartner, SMBs spent more than $400
billion on computer-related products and services worldwide in
2005, and Lenovo is shaping itself to capture revenue from what it
believes will be an even more lucrative market in 2006. Part and
parcel of this says Milko van Duijl will be to work with channel
partners to totally align the supply chain so that it better
supports SMBs and in some key areas such a mobility, resilience and
security.
He explains: “trend number one is in mobile as there is a drive
for companies to have a mobile work platform to cut down real
estate and give the ability to work anywhere at any time.”
Lenovo recognises there is a strong desire in SMBs towards lower
end prices yet it believes that it shouldn’t simply get involved in
a Dutch auction, being merely the cheapest player around. Whilst
Lenovo will bring to the market more notebooks at entry prices, it
will also capitalise eon the strength of the Think Pad brand,
believing that its overall price/performance will be attractive to
SMBs.
What this means this that the devices will be bundled with
non-entry level functionality that Mr van Duijl believes SMBs will
recognise the important of: “Security is more and more important
and so [we offer] a biometrics fingerprint reader and to [rely on
such technologies] you need a good reader…that protects the
machine. Another critical, but not wholly recognised feature, is
protecting the hard drive like an airbag in car: if you drop your
bag, losing data [could lead to] a crisis that is indefinable.
Therefore you need to have a high quality laptop that can’t lose
that data. Then you need good wireless LAN capabilities in the
machine.”
The latter is an area of great interest right now. At the end of
January Lenovo announced plans to offer by summer 2006 integrated
3G/ EDGE/GPRS data connectivity—that is non-data card— from
Vodafone into upcoming models of ThinkPad notebooks, in particular
the ThinkPad T60 and X60 models. The service will be available in a
number of European countries and upgrades to HSDPA networks will be
available when they become on stream.
To Lenovo this means that SMBs will have built-in, cost
effective and secure mobile data connectivity enabling access the
internet, email and corporate applications wherever a Vodafone
signal is present. Mr van Duijl reveals that such a service has
been available in the US for a while with the telephony provider’s
SIM card built into the motherboard of the laptop.
Mr Van Duijl’s strategy is to use the technical foundation of
IBM but to use it as part of a more comfortable Lenovo experience.
He says: “We want the market to think that nothing has changed and
they’ll continue to see IBM products. Bur the biggest change is
that in IBM, PC were not the most strategic part of the portfolio.
There’s nothing wrong with that and I have tremendous respect for
IBM, that was [their choice] a choice; but [in SMB] there was no
thinking such as ‘let’s do something and bring out a widescreen
device or a tablet’ etc.”
It’s clear that Lenovo will indeed be doing some thinking along
these lines for the SMB community. Who knows whether the products
will offer medal winning performance.