It’s not unusual for a company to spend months’ worth of time, money and manpower building a standalone server configuration. The same labor-intensive timeline applies to rolling out service-desk and storage services.

Now, IBM hopes to help companies speed up IT system deployment tasks with the introduction of a set of technology templates for its services portfolio.

For example, rather than spend weeks or months building a standalone server configuration, IBM will apply pre-configured server builds that will get a client's environment running in days. Known as “assets,” these new templates “integrate process, software, industry expertise and IBM Research know-how to create reusable service components that act as the underpinnings for IBM's outsourcing services business,” according to IBM’s website.

By standardizing the approach to IT outsourcing services, IBM says it can reduce the time it takes to transition a client's IT environment by more than 60 percent and potentially reduce management costs by up to 50 percent. What’s more, companies can achieve a faster return on investment and improved flexibility, while freeing up time and resources to focus on mission-critical projects.

"By infusing our industry-leading expertise, software capabilities, experience and best practices into our service offerings in a standardized, systematic method we can speed up the time it takes to do something very complex in a very reliable way," said Erich Clementi, IBM Global Technology Services senior vice president, in a statement.

Before offering up these templates to customers, IBM tested the standardized offerings on its internal systems.  By deploying its entire storage infrastructure using the standardized asset-based approach, IBM estimates it will lower its storage costs by nearly 50 percent.