IBM wants to turn more customers on to pay-as-you-go PC ownership.
The company"s Global Services division this month began offering a new menu-based service that will enable companies to treat PCs as they would utilities such as electricity, paying by the month for PC hardware, PC services or both. Although IBM and others have been offering monthly payment plans for PCs for some time, Big Blue says the new plan offers more flexibility.
Instead of requiring customers to sign up for the technological equivalent of a five-course meal, IBM Global Services lets customers choose from an a la carte selection of PC hardware and services, said Dale Moegling, international desktop executive for IBM Global Services. "We wanted...to work with a customer that had 50 seats all the way up to a customer with 500,000 seats," Moegling said.