Lenovo enters server market; Targets SMBs

Lenovo on Tuesday said it is entering the server market with the ThinkServer, a lineup starting at $749 targeted at small and medium sized businesses.

Lenovo, the former PC business of IBM, hit the market with a focus on laptops and notebooks, but now appears to be branching out a bit. Nevertheless, Lenovo's effort is focused. The company said its servers are designed for SMBs that don't have the technology help.

Specifically, Lenovo has three towers and two x86 servers for companies with one to 500 employees (statement). The servers run on Windows Server or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell. The towers designed for smaller businesses run on Intel Core 2 Duo or Xeon 3000 to 3200 processors. Higher end versions will run on Intel Xeon 3000 or 5000 processors.

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