"Service Product Approach" seems to be the core Mantra.

Here are some excerpts from the ITWorld article:

IBM is due to begin rolling out the first two of what it terms "service products" worldwide in the near future. The standardized offerings are designed to be used by any IBM customer anywhere, a very different approach from the company's previous focus on providing customized, one-off services to individual users.

"This will enable us to access the market in a new way," Laurence Guihard-Joly, vice president of IBM's newly formed Integrated Communications Services (ICS) unit, said. "Our strategy is to get to the next level in services, to be brand-driven in the way our systems technology and software already are."

"IBM is trying to invigorate its services business and propel it into growth faster than it has been," Bob Djurdjevic, president of Annex Research, said. He expects IBM's rivals will also adopt the service product approach in areas where they have specific expertise to draw upon.

IBM begun the work on the new services strategy a year ago engaging in a "deep re-analysis of the market" including talking to its customers at all levels, Guihard-Joly said.

By year end, IBM plans to release around 30 service products. They will be a mix of brand-new offerings and existing assets that have been "reassembled, updated, hardened and tested," Guihard-Joly said.

Even with highly complex projects, Guihard-Joly believes about 80 percent of a customer's services needs could be met by IBM's new building block approach.

IBM may create other business units within its evolving services operations. "The key challenge is going to be training their own staff to think in a new way," Djurdjevic said.

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Prashanth Rai