IBM bundles with Qwest for mid-sized business offering

IBM and Qwest Communications have formed a partnership to deliver bundled services, including managed security, unified communications and remote infrastructure management, among other IT and communications services, to mid-sized businesses across the country. While Qwest already has offered managed services to that sector before, the deal may be more of a first for IBM, which to date hasn't directed its own managed offerings beyond the market segment of large enterprise customers. That could make Qwest a curious choice as its very first national carrier partner as IBM swims down-market, but it might also be the first of many similar partnerships to come for the computing giant.

For more:
- Here's the Qwest press release [1]
- Telephony has this story [2]

Related article
Qwest expanded Ethernet service availability last fall [3]