"We see this as a major new category of systems, one different from appliances and custom solutions," said Marie Wieck, IBM general manager for application and integration middleware.

Unlike appliances, which tend to address niche uses, PureSystems packages will have a potentially wide user base, given the general duties they can undertake. And unlike custom packages, they can be deployed relatively quickly, Wieck said. These two packages "pre-integrate the hardware and the software as a single new system family," she said.

IBM's idea behind these packages is that they can cut the amount of time it would take organizations to build and deploy servers and applications. IBM has configured the packages so that they can be deployed and expanded with minimal effort.

Getting an enterprise application up and running in a closely regulated IT environment can take months. Much of the work is specific to matching the technology to the internal environment, such as configuring the system to meet organizational policies and to interact with other internal systems. But IBM managers are convinced that using IBM preconfigured systems will still cut deployment by a third of the time or more, as IBM has done most of the work in getting the internal componentry to work together.

"Things that used to take up to six months to deploy can be done as little as in two weeks," with these packages, Wieck said. They eliminate tasks such as setting up a database or a group of servers as a cluster, or linking an application with the company's personnel directory of possible users.