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 the
results in that space of time.
It was imperative that the timing for events such as the
skeleton was 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 interested to
know that Lenovo, the company 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
US TV broadcaster NBC with 450 desktop computers, 260 laptops, 200
printers and 50 file servers to support a state of the art
broadcasting facility.
Sponsoring the Winter Olympics was an ideal opportunity for
Lenovo to express to the world that it had arrived, 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 Lenovo’s general manager for
EMEA, Milko van Duijl, freely admits to have thought before the
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 we get it wrong, we get it wrong in front of eight billion
people.”
These are auspicious times for Lenovo and the boost from
providing an error-free Olympics is now driving a campaign in the
SMB arena. What Lenovo now aims to do is build on the reputation
for product excellence that it believes 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 £228bn
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 van Duijl, will be to work with channel partners to
totally align the supply chain so it better supports SMBs in some
key areas such as 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 among SMBs for lower
end prices, yet it believes that it shouldn’t simply be the
cheapest player around. Whilst Lenovo will bring to the market more
notebooks at entry prices, it will also capitalise on the strength
of the ThinkPad brand, believing that its overall price/performance
will be attractive to SMBs.
What this means is that the devices will be bundled with
non-entry level functionality that van Duijl believes SMBs will
recognise the importance 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,” he says.
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 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 SMBs will have built-in, cost effective and
secure mobile data connectivity enabling access to the internet,
email and corporate applications wherever a Vodafone signal is
present. 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.
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. But the biggest change is
that in IBM, PCs 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]; 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?