Local Tech Wire 

Lenovo serving up a new product line – ThinkServer – with help from a Triangle customer

Another good idea from Lenovo?

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MORRISVILLE – Lenovo will serve up a new product Wednesday at the big InterOp trade show in New York – its ThinkServer line. And a Triangle marketing executive is helping make the pitch.

Patty Briguglio, president of marketing firm MMI Associates, plays product supporter rather than PR representative, in touting Lenovo’s move beyond PCs and laptops.

“There is nothing worse for me – the small-business owner – than having my technology give me problems,” Briguglio said. “I have used Lenovo’s ThinkPads for a long time and trust their performance, so when my Lenovo business partner urged me to try Lenovo ThinkServers, I told him I absolutely would.”

Briguglio is one marketer who has embraced the latest technology to help her clients. She recently built a studio for use in recording quality podcasts.

Recruiting MMI as a customer reflects Lenovo’s goals in building servers – winning more business from small businesses (fewer than 500 employees). We reported several weeks ago Lenovo’s plan to build servers, using in part technology licensed from IBM. Lenovo has offered servers in China, where the company is the dominant PC maker. With ThinkServers, Lenovo is seeking to build on its 2008 initiative to sell more laptops and PCs with a host of new models featuring cutting-edge technology to consumers and small-to-medium businesses (SMB) around the world.

Larry Dignan, editor-in-chief of ZDNet, wrote Tuesday that Lenovo’s server effort is “focused” on “SMBs that don’t have technology help.”

“The company bundles software dubbed EasyStartup, EasyUpdate and EasyManagement to configure the servers and track performance,” he said. “ThinkServer customers also get 90 days of priority support. The game plan appears to be to sell commodity servers and make money on support.”

Prices start under $750. Packages include a 90-day free trial for what Lenovo calls “ThinkPlus Priority Support.”

The server lineup includes three towers as well as two rack-mounts. Operating system offerings include Microsoft Windows Server and SUS Linux Enterprise Server from Novell.

Features include Intel Core 2 Duo or Xeon 3000 or 3200 processors.

Now, as for all those “Easy” management offerings cited by Dignan, here’s how Lenovo describes them:

• “ThinkServer EasyStartup – a basic hardware configuration tool that helps customers with limited technical knowledge set up a server environment.
• “ThinkServer EasyUpdate – an update utility that allows users to easily identify, download and install hardware and firmware updates.
• “ThinkServer EasyManage – a full-featured tool developed together with LANDesk that allows users to oversee the performance of one or more servers from a single console.”

ThinkPlus Priority Support, meanwhile, includes phone support on a 24/7 basis and optional on-site response within four hours.

The Skinny

WRAL Local Tech Wire Publisher and Editor Rick Smith dishes out tidbits from the local technology sector. Read more articles…