Gateway rolls out SMB services

news
Feb 23, 20042 mins

Company claims its team can bring enterprise-class services to small and mid-size companies

A new service package from Gateway Inc. courts the small and medium-size businesses and organizations that can’t afford a thorough custom services deployment but need something more than an occasional service visit, the company said Monday.

The new Gateway Professional Services team promises to bring enterprise-class service to organizations, the company said in a release. Several service offerings will be rolled out over the course of the year, including server consolidation, storage assessment and security consulting. Potential customers can sign up for OS Migration Services as of Monday for projects like Unix to Linux conversions, the company said.

Service will be provided through the network of 5,000 Gateway service professionals and third-party partners, Gateway said.

As part of a sweeping strategy to reinvent the company and reverse a series of quarterly losses, Gateway announced last year it would switch from a PC-oriented company into a combined vendor of consumer electronics products and business products and services. The initiative has had mixed results, with strong growth in consumer electronics revenue but declines in PC revenue from both consumers and businesses.

Gateway’s server revenue was up 50 percent in the fourth quarter, according to IDC, but on revenue of only $52 million. Industry revenue numbers for the fourth quarter have not yet been released, but in the third quarter, the industry took in about $4 billion from sales of servers based on Windows and Linux, IDC said.

Gateway also recently unveiled a plan to let its reseller network sell services directly to end users.