Techaisle Blog

Techaisle's latest research forecasts worldwide small business (1-99 employees), core midmarket (100-999 employees), and upper midmarket (1000-5000 employees) IT spend (excluding telecom services) will reach US$1.25 trillion in 2022. IT services will see the highest proportion of IT spending. Datacenter solutions will exhibit a growth of 4%. Overall worldwide cloud spending within the SMB and midmarket will grow by 21%. By 2025, 43% of global SMB and midmarket IT spending will be in the cloud.

SMB IT investment is increasing to counter inflation, labor shortage, supply chain concerns and accelerate business transformation through digitalization. SMBs are looking for ways to streamline business and IT processes to best return on existing human capital. In the pursuit of greater efficiency, SMBs are also exploring options that help stretch budgets and use efficiency-oriented techniques to optimize the impact of wage inflation and the increasingly competitive landscape. SMBs plan to invest in PCs, analytics, cloud, security, UCaaS / CCaaS, customer experience solutions, and networking.

They are here - Techaisle's annual SMB and Midmarket Top 10 IT Priorities, IT Challenges, and Business Issues infographics, 12th year of Techaisle tracking at a WW level, and is sought after by IT vendors, channel partners, and media. Techaisle surveyed a total of 5850 SMBs, quota sampled to ensure adequate coverage of four small business (1-9, 10-19, 20-49, and 50-99 employees), three midmarket (100-249, 250-499, and 500-999 employees) and two upper midmarket (1000-2499, 2500-4999) segments. As a result, the data represents a robust and reliable sampling of the market segment for IT products and services.

Compared to previous years, for 2022, Techaisle expanded the lists of the technology areas, business, and IT challenges studied. In addition, this year, we have also added a fourth column in the infographic – Highest Planned Adoption.

Please scroll down/read more to view and download the SMB, core Midmarket, and Upper Midmarket infographics.

In all sectors, the last two years were tough – and as a result, 2022 is challenging from a market planning perspective. As we enter 2022, IT product and service suppliers are looking to create a context for understanding the range of outcomes that the new year may bring. Techaisle is launching its "2022 in Focus" research series to support that effort, which illuminates issues and requirements in the vast SMB and midmarket segments. To begin with, here are our top 10 (and additional 3) predictions for 2022. After surveying thousands of SMBs and midmarket firms, having hundreds of depth calls, we identified over thirty trends. After that, we systematically prioritized ten predictions for your consumption.

We look forward to working with you in the year(s) to develop fact-based perspectives on the issues that shape the success of the IT industry.

The Covid-19 threat to the global economy and to the IT industry is potentially as bad as, or worse than, the health impact. A global workforce that cannot collaborate effectively cannot deliver products that rely on timely supply of components from far-flung suppliers, and cannot create and implement complex solutions. The necessary isolation used to contain Covid-19 has a devastating effect on economic activity. Manufacturing does not work when people don’t. Chinese exports fell by 17.2% in January/February of this year. The impact on solutions is harder to quantify, but may well be even greater. However, with the slowing number of new cases in China, 80% of manufacturing plants have restarted with about 60% capacity which may restore supply-chain balance by addressing supply-side constraints. The freight (including trucking) and air-cargo routes between China and Asia is returning to normal but China-Europe and China-US routes may be impacted until the middle-to-end of Q2. 

Globally SMBs IT spend in 2019 was $662B with a projected spend of US$700B in 2020, a growth rate of 5.6%. It is natural, in the current economic situation to pare down these spends and slice expectations (perhaps deeply) based on beginning-of-the-year projections. As compared to the original SMB IT spend growth rate, the projected growth rates may drop from a low of 29% to a high of 84% depending upon Techaisle’s optimistic to gloomy scenarios, resulting in revised growth rate ranges from 4.0% to 0.9%. 

SMBs are a good indicator to measure the pulse of economy in any country as they constitute over 90 percent of global businesses. They are intricately linked to large businesses, government departments and educational institutions as both suppliers and customers. A large percentage of consumers rely on SMBs for products and services that they consume within their households. Technology plays an important part in daily operations of SMBs across all departmental functions including sales, marketing, operations, finance and customer support. SMBs form the essential thread of the economic fabric of any country and to a great extent their fortunes and investment capabilities are dependent on the economic situations and policies of the countries where they operate. In a downturn and uncertainty the investment capacity of SMBs is deeply affected. Techaisle conducted a global survey of SMBs to assess their investment intent which combined with Techaisle global SMB IT spend data presents four scenarios - Ideal, Optimistic, Pessimistic, Gloomy. 

Download to read full analysis and projected small business and midmarket IT spend growth rate scenarios.