AMD has launched a new corporate initiative in the form of a new computer brand aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. Called the AMD Business Class, the new program will allow companies to standardize their OEM hardware and stick with their choice for at least 24 months.

According to the company, the new feature will bring a plus of stability and will allow customers to use the same hardware for a long time without having to forcefully upgrade their systems to pass re-validation tests.

The new initiative will unfold in collaboration with AMD's major processor customers, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo. According to Hal Speed, a marketing architect for AMD, the new products will be available through AMD's partners including Acer, Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, Hewlett-Packard, and Lenovo.

"It's not like retail", he said, adding that "People are buying this for work and we really tried to identify the nuggets (of technology for business desktop PCs) that weren't being looked at."

Intel has already set up a similar program, given the fact that companies would rather purchase a standardized set of hardware than use it for a long time.

The new systems are not built to deliver the latest additions in the IT industry, such as state-of-the-art CPUs and high-end graphics subsystems, yet the platforms will be built around the 780V chipset and the discrete Radeon option, a premium combination for office use.

"AMD has tackled the consumer market, they've made significant inroads into the mobile PC market, and they've made some inroads into the business market", said Dean McCarron, an analyst at market research firm In-Stat. "This is an important program for them", he continued.

Despite the fact that AMD is pitching its new platform at small- and mid-sized business, it can also be designed to scale up so as to satisfy its corporate customers. All the systems in the AMD Business Class family will come with a choice of AMD Phenom X3 triple-core and AMD Phenom X4 quad-core processors as well as AMD Athlon X2 dual-core chips.

Optionally, OEM vendors could integrate the ATI Radeon HO 3000 series of graphics chips, but the open architecture would allow system integrators to choose non-AMD graphics and chipsets, such as the products currently delivered by Nvidia.