Commander is making a big play for a slice of the SMB pie with its new IT management and support solution, Commander 360° Office. The comms provider hopes the offer of hardware, software, networking and management for a set monthly fee will win over SMBs.

The service is aimed at businesses of 20 to 100 staff. It costs about $200 per seat per month for businesses under 60 seats. Commander general manager of data, Steve Evans, said the price would drop to $150 per head per month for businesses of more than 60 seats.

It could scale as low as 10 seats, he said.

The service includes Internet and network access, help desk support and services.

Optional automatic hardware updates are also available.

It would be available wherever DSL is available, Evans said.

Commander has signed IBM, Cisco and Microsoft as vendor partners for the service, which it claims is the first large scale offering of IP-based services including converged networking and WLAN for small business.

Evans said Commander 360° Office aimed to reduce the cost of maintaining IT systems, while improving business performance and productivity.

“The SMB market, to date, has been fragmented in its IT and computing purchases because of difficulties in obtaining reliable IT service and support,” he said.