Responding to what it claims to be a demand for such fixed-price solutions, Lotus Development has established a new e-business unit within its professional services organisation in Australia and New Zealand.
The first three offerings-combinations of product and services-are Web Content Management, Sametime Solutions and Portals.
Describing its new bundled e-offerings, Lotus says Web Content Management provides companies with the necessary tools to manage the relevance, timeliness and correctness of information on their Web sites.
Sametime Solutions (Instant Collaboration) provides the technology and services they need to ensure real-time collaboration is implemented quickly and efficiently. Portals provide the tools needed to take control of all relevant corporate information and applications in one central place.
Heading the new e-business solutions group is Rick Jones, a senior manager from Lotus Professional Services. According to Jones, the products on which the new group is initially focusing are in areas where Lotus channel partners have not been very strong. "We've got to build the market for the channel," Jones said. And product marketing manager Jane Morris claimed that the new strategy will bring a renewed focus on products such as Sametime and Quickplace.
Peter Taylor, managing director of Lotus Development Australia and New Zealand, said that an e-business solution "typically involves adding Internet-based innovation to an existing business process, but to be effective, you need both e-business and e-collaboration".
Taylor said that, because of the vendor's previous experience, the solutions are based on a pre-defined core of the applications and required services, which means that it can offer fixed pricing for the project. A typical fixed price for a Web Content Management project is between AU$200,000 and AU$300,000.
"We want to present an easy value proposition," he added.
Pricing for WCM solutions start at AU$100,000, Sametime Getting Started from AU$16,000 while Portal solutions start at AU$30,000.
