Small and medium businesses (SMBs) constitute over 99% of all companies in the MEA and Turkey region, however they contribute to only about 30% of the total IT spend. IT maturity among SMB organizations is low, and IT infrastructure relatively weak. Looking ahead, however, as it happened in the developed economies, much of the long term economic growth, innovation and employment in this region will be driven by SMBs. Rapidly expanding local and international business, globalised supply chains, intense global competition and highly demanding customers are forcing SMBs to look closely at operational excellence, cost efficiencies and business agility. The uncertainty in the economic environment and related credit unavailability tends to affect cash flow conscious SMBs more than large enterprises with deep pockets. The more progressive SMBs now see IT as an enabler to address these challenges and capture new opportunities. As a result, IT spending among SMBs is expected to grow strongly over the coming years. Emerging technology paradigms such as cloud and mobility will enable SMBs ramp up or scale down with business and leapfrog technology generations to access cost-effective resources that will make them highly competitive, even against larger enterprises.
IDC wants to demonstrate that ICT technologies, if used wisely, can be part of the remedy for dealing with the fallout of the crisis. Many solutions, from information management and IT outsourcing through business intelligence, virtualization, and green IT to VoIP, unified communication, and IT consolidation, can be applied to improve efficiency, lower costs, and keep profitability high.
Key Themes for SMB:
- Security: Traditionally, SMBs have had weak IT security infrastructure, making them extremely vulnerable to malware attacks and data loss incidents. As a result of rising internet use, proliferation of mobile devices and web app usage, particularly web 2.0 apps, SMBs are facing serious challenges of how to manage, monitor and secure their networks, systems, apps and data.
- Mobility: Mobile devices and smartphones have become the most useful business tools for SMBs. With the proliferation of mobile devices, IT personnel at SMB organizations now have to concern themselves with device management, mobile usage policies, mobile app provisioning etc.
- Collaboration: Modern unified communication and collaboration technologies can be very useful for SMBs as they try to reduce the costs associated with expensive travel and communication.
- Virtualization: Cost savings and flexibility that virtualization offers are great benefits for cost conscious, agile SMBs. As they look to expand IT infrastructure with growing business needs, server, storage and desktop virtualization will be allow them to scale up rapidly with low capital expenditure.
- Cloud: Cloud offers great cost savings, scalability and flexible utility based payment options for SMBs. SMBs in the region are evaluating cloud models that best suit their long term needs. Telcos and ISVs are increasingly expanding their public cloud services portfolio of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings to include specialised solutions for SMBs.
- Storage: Explosive data growth isn’t a problem for large enterprises alone. SMBs too are struggling to manage data volumes, particularly unstructured data. Continuous, incremental spending on storage hardware is an expensive approach. They need to find ways to optimise storage investments and also focus on effective content management.
- Enterprise application modernization: As they expand, SMBs are looking to modernize and enhance their enterprise business app (ERP, CRM) environment. However, they cannot afford to engage in expensive, protracted enterprise app implementation and customization projects. Verticalised, scalable, SMB specific apps with rapid deployment packages are perhaps the need of the hour.
The event is best suited for:
- Line of business and strategy executives
- Insurance, banking and financial intermediaries
- CFO/CIO/CTO/CSO senior management