Cloud is clearly established within the US SMB market, in a way that is unique in the global context: nowhere else have the vast majority of SMBs leapt into the cloud. Cloud is also gaining acceptance in Asia/Pacific, Europe & even in Middle-East, regions where Cloud is being seen by SMBs as solving real-world business problems. But most suppliers are peddling their technology assets, focusing on non-viable channel relationships & showcasing wrong-sized solutions for workloads that have very short acquisition & deployment time window.
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Insightful research, flexible data, and deep analysis by a global SMB IT Market Research and Industry Analyst organization dedicated to tracking the Future of SMBs and Channels.
The first step in understanding if a particular type of technology will be important to a market is to understand why it might be important: how can the technology meaningfully address the business needs within the target community? This begs in turn a more fundamental question – what are these needs?
Techaisle’s recent SMB Cloud Adoption survey shows that the top ten business issues identified by SMBs align with well-recognized cloud attributes or applications. For example, cloud is seen as a way of delivering improved automation to a very wide range of functions, within IT and across the business as a whole; these solutions improve processes, which in turn will improve production and support of products. Cloud also supports key collaborative technologies (notably, mobility and file exchange), which have a positive impact on productivity, and cloud is viewed as the primary platform for ‘systems of engagement’ that help businesses attract and retain new customers. Cloud encompasses many different types of offerings, which deliver benefits that align with SMB needs.
Similar observations are made regarding the challenges faced by small and midmarket businesses.
In today’s SMB market, it is critical for vendors to build detailed understanding of the small and midmarket segments, and to align resources and strategies with requirements as SMBs move from initial experimentation with sophisticated solutions towards mass-market adoption.
In its latest study, Techaisle analyzes 1,116 survey responses to provide the insight needed to build and execute on cloud solution strategies for the small and midmarket customer segments. Techaisle’s deep understanding of SMB IT and business requirements enables vendors to understand the ‘why’ and ‘when’ of solution adoption, current and planned approaches to solution use, the benefits that drive user investments, and key issues in aligning with buyers and building and intercepting demand.
Highlights of findings presented in the report include:
It would be unusual to find a “Chief Strategy Officer” or an equivalent group dedicated solely to long-term planning within a small business, or even inside most midmarket enterprises. For the most part, a small team of executives shares responsibility for both charting the company’s direction and managing its daily operational activities. This can make it difficult for SMBs to separate the strategic from the tactical – but it has the advantage of ensuring that ‘big picture’ priorities are reflected in the day-to-day actions taken by the management team.
This direct, visceral link between business imperatives and daily activities has some interesting implications for IT suppliers. Because the business decision maker (BDM) is often responsible for IT-related decisions, the IT supplier needs to ensure that its messaging is relevant to BDM ‘care-abouts’ – and because the BDM is often the source of both strategic and tactical direction, it is important for the IT supplier to root marketing messages and activity in an understanding of how their offerings, and/or the solutions in which their offerings are positioned, address the high-level objectives of the SMB customer.
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