IBM GLOBAL SERVICES on Wednesday plans to launch a hosted service for , with an offering intended to help enterprises get a application up and running faster than an in-house deployment.

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And in another sign of services activity, PwC and Sun Microsystems will today announce an extension of their partnership agreement to cross sell and market integrated solutions.

IBM's service offering, known as Management Services, is intended to accelerate and reduce the risk of deployment for deployment at mid- to large-size companies. Through the program, IBM will provide services for six industries: automotive, insurance, manufacturing, retail banking, , and utilities.

The services will be deployed on IBM at various data centers. The company also is working with providers to provide functions as part of the offering.

In sampling the service at small engagements, "we've been able to shorten the deployment time from anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent," said Jimmy Augustine, marketing manager for strategic at IBM, in New York City, NY. The use of industry-based templates enables a reduction in deployment times, Augustine said.

"The intention is customers and business executives have expressed a desire in which we will deploy and manage their solutions," Augustin said.

Enterprises can opt for packages from companies such as Siebel, Peoplesoft, Kana and SAP.

As part of the service, customers will be provided with in four key areas: customer behavior, customer value, contact value and performance of the operator, according to Augustine.

For retail companies, IBM will furnish a template that provides customers with data on buying patterns, to stay in touch with consumer trends. Enterprises also will have recent sales data to manage their inventory and . For financial services firms, templates focus on helping companies better understand the customer base, to enable cross selling of other services while providing .

For telelecommunications vendors that are merging or acquiring other companies, a template is available to consolidate various applications and .

Analyst Jocelyn Young, program manager for the services outreach at International Data Corp, in Framingham. Mass., said IBM was following a trend toward managed services.

"I think it's further validation of the trend toward managed services specific to the market. Basically, what IBM would be doing is they're taking this end-to-end approach to their entire services portfolio and delivering it through a hosted solution," Young said.

"They're starting from a very strong foundation of services already," Young said.

Meanwhile, PwC and Sun Microsystems, which in October began partnering in data integration through the PwC ACCEL (Architecture for Cross-channel Customer Experience and Loyalty) program, on Wednesday will boost efforts in this initiative.

The two companies will announce plans to cross-sell-, cross-market and cross-train 3,600 consultants on a new, pre-integrated technology, with being the first technology in a series of solutions sets.

The partnership involves Sun's Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) architecture, hardware and iPlanet software as well as PwC 's business strategy and integration services.