IBM said Monday it has extended the reach of its single sign-on supply chain management software to small and mid-sized companies looking to keep up with the growing demands of suppliers, partners, and retailers that they share access to crucial resources and competitive information.

As more large business partners demand access to finished-goods inventory data, raw materials availability data, or real-time work-in-progress information from smaller suppliers, the latter group is forced to come to grips with their growing supply chain intranets.

According to Red Herring, IBM, which primarily serves large businesses, is shifting its focus in the supply chain management arena to include smaller companies. IBM's Tivoli Federated Identity Manager Business Gateway is a server-based SMB version of its full-blown management product, which sells for between $50,000 and $70,000 per server.

The SMB version of the product is not just a scaled down version of the enterprise product. Instead it was re-engineered for SMBs.

For instance most SMBs do not have a high tolerance or capacity for long, involved projects of the sort to which IBM's Tivoli users are accustomed, so the SMB version is much more plug-and-play than Tivoli's usual enterprise fare.