Techaisle survey shows US SMB PC-as-a-Service market needs serious attention

Techaisle’s survey of 1127 US SMBs, analyzed in the report US SMB & Midmarket PCaaS (PC-as-a-Service) Adoption Trends, shows that the market for PCaaS is currently at an early stage – but there is a market. The total proportion of PCs that are provisioned/delivered via PCaaS is still relatively small, but this is not a pure development market – an adoption beachhead has been established. Surevy shows that the ‘big three’ drivers of PCaaS for SMBs are cost 1/ predictability, 2/ a streamlined process for new asset procurement and 3/ the ability to accelerate PC refresh.

Roughly one-third of small (1-99 employees) businesses, and nearly 60% of midmarket (100-999 employees) firms, are aware of PCaaS as an option. This creates a sizeable potential market of potential buyers with at least some understanding of the offering. Most of these small businesses and about two-thirds of the midmarket organizations that are aware of PCaaS report plans to adopt the technology. Adoption intent increases with buyer sophistication.

Current awareness, use and adoption plans are concentrated within the more advanced segments of the SMB market. PCaaS marketers are urged to understand the drivers motivating these advanced buyers, analyzed in the Techaisle report, (firms atop the IT sophistication, cloud maturity and/or digital transformation adoption scales) and to reflect their preferences in PCaaS positioning. Additionally, PCaaS marketers will benefit from understanding the characteristics of these segments – use of appropriate market channels will help ensure that marketing investments yield awareness and preference within the advanced user groups.

In contrast to the very small business segment, current and planned adoption of PCaaS within the midmarket segment is relatively robust. This reflects both buy-side and sell-side drivers:

• On the buy side, increased experience and comfort with multiple types of cloud services enables midmarket firms to be more proactive in seeking additional cloud services, and capitalizing on their management knowledge and understanding of cost benefits.
• On the sell side, some of the initial midmarket uptake of PCaaS was triggered by Microsoft’s program as well as HP’s device as a service program. In particular, the Microsoft program was quite attractive to midmarket buyers due to bundling of Office 365 with the service and availability through channel partners (CSPs) and distributors.

“Land and expand” is an overused term in today’s IT market, but it is an appropriate description of PCaaS marketing objectives. Firms that can establish initial relationships with leading-edge SMB buyers are poised to both expand within these accounts and to benefit from longer-term interest from less advanced SMBs who will come to see the benefits enjoyed by leading-edge peers/competitors, and who will look for suppliers who have established traction and relevance within the US SMB community.