ARMONK, NY -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 06/07/05 -- IBM today announced that it is once again the number one vendor in server provisioning software for 2004, according to a recent IDC report [1].

According to IDC, IBM continued to hold the top spot in worldwide server provisioning market share. The report also says that over the long term, large enterprises will require heterogeneous, scalable products provided by vendors that are solely focused on server provisioning or will invest heavily in this technology. Similar tools that are homogenous will offer limited but useful capabilities.

IDC includes four key technology areas in its definition of server provisioning software: configuration management, server provisioning, patch/software management, and change and audit reporting.

IBM's orchestration and provisioning technology allows organizations to automatically provision resources across the entire IT environment to respond to changes in IT workload, helping improve efficiencies and decreasing manual labor. IBM complements that with workflows, based on years of best practices, for automating IT processes using IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager.

"IBM continues to focus on helping customers implement server provisioning into their IT environments to reduce hardware TCO, increase process efficiencies, and reduce complexity," said Arvind Krishna, vice president, provisioning and security development, IBM Tivoli software. "Our sustained leadership and growth in this area serves as a strong foundation for IBM's move into IT service management and demonstrates that we are delivering on our promise to help our customers transition into on demand businesses."

About IBM

IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across IBM and key IBM Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that help enable customers, large and small, to take full advantage of the new era of e-business on demand. For more information about IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com. For more information on IBM's on demand strategy, visit http://www.ibm.com/ondemand.

[1] Source: IDC Worldwide Server Provisioning Software 2004 Vendor Shares (IDC #33460, June 2005)

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