SMBs Projected to Spend over $250 Billion on Data center technology between 2012 and 2016

Small and Mid-Market firms will invest over a quarter trillion dollars in Datacenter Technology in the period between 2012 and 2016, according to the most recent report from Techaisle. Datacenter segments include Servers, Networking including Security Appliances and Storage solutions. We can also begin to add Virtualization within the context of data center as virtualized data centers are becoming front-and-center. As seen in this bubble chart, the nine key segments include each of the three product categories in the three largest regional markets, North America, Asia Pacific and Western Europe.  As we have shown in recent reporting, the rise of China continues to offer some of the most interesting market opportunities for vendors marketing to SMBs; the Asia/Pacific Storage Market being is the latest example, with combined spending over the forecast of $16B alone at a CAGR of over 22%. This is followed by the Asia/Pacific Networking Market, which is expected to reach $24B at a 14% rate. Although not growing as fast at 7%, the Asia/Pac Server Segment is expected to reach ~$17B. Other important points include:

• Growth rates for the combined Datacenter volume by region are forecast at 14% CAGR for Asia Pacific, 7% for North America and 5% for Western Europe. Worldwide is estimated at 8%. Combined market share of these three Regions accounts for 80%+ of Spending over the period.

• The North American Market with lower growth rates manages to stay ahead in volume overall for the combined spending, but as is happening with Japan and Western Europe already, the US Market will most likely be eclipsed in volume by China in the following, post-2016 forecast.

• Western Europe Networking and Server Segments will be overtaken during the current forecast, again squeezed by increases to Asia/Pacific by China.

• Latin America is growing relatively quickly at over 9%, driven by rapid Networking and Storage adoption but Spending is limited to <6% of the WW Total.

As mentioned, North American SMBs will spend the most, with Storage expected to grow fastest at ~11%, and while Western Europe Spending remains stable, Storage is also expected to grow the fastest at ~7%.  Asia/Pacific at ~14% overall is influenced by rapid growth in all three Segments, especially Storage, which was the fastest rate among all Regions and Segments that had real volume, i.e. 2%+ WW Share.

As per Techaisle's upcoming channel report, over 35 percent of VAR channels have started to address data center solutions. And as always, China is an anomaly where over 40 percent of VAR channels are now offering data center solutions.