Techaisle Analyst Insights

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.

The rigor in data collection, the depth in data analysis and the accuracy in forward looking insights that Techaisle brings in its small business & midmarket research has extended to enterprise. Techaisle’s US Enterprise Cloud Adoption Trends provides an in-depth and definitive look into the state of cloud adoption within large businesses.

1. Only 18% of US enterprises have mature cloud adoption and are optimizing usages; 36% have a cautious approach to cloud. Smaller size large enterprises have reached maturity stage whereas larger sized enterprises have ad hoc approach to cloud
2. In 92% of US enterprises, IT has a voice on the Board and helps drive the direction of the business rather than business deciding IT needs
3. Top IT challenge is implementing new strategic IT applications to improve organization’s competitiveness; 74% believe that investments in cloud increases their competitiveness
4. Greatest benefit of cloud is the ability to launch new products and services
5. 61% want seamless integration with on-premise systems
6. For 65% of US enterprises, security and regulatory compliance is the biggest challenge in developing strategies for cloud adoption
7. In 60% of enterprises data sovereignty and privacy are preventing acceleration of cloud
8. 75% of US enterprises have adopted Hybrid cloud but the largest penetration growth is expected in the use of public cloud
9. 74% are using Amazon AWS but Microsoft Azure is not far behind at 65%
10. 20% of US enterprises use all three types of cloud deployment – private, public and hybrid but the future looks very different

The research deliverable covers several topics including:

• Top 10 Enterprise IT challenges & business issues
• Enterprise Cloud adoption maturity – ad hoc to mature
• Greatest benefits of using Cloud
• Factors driving cloud adoption strategy
• Key attributes of a good cloud solution
• Challenges in developing strategies for cloud adoption
• Factors preventing Enterprises from accelerating cloud adoption
• Current & Planned adoption of services, type of deployment & workloads
• Current & planned cloud applications
• Enterprise cloud best practices - hybrid cloud, hybrid IT
• Enterprise cloud security best practices
• Use of public cloud within enterprises
• Benefits of Public Cloud adoption
• Top drivers of Public Cloud adoption
• Key challenges in implementing public cloud
• Workloads being transferred to Public Cloud
• Key Industry segments using Public Cloud services to derive its benefits
• Types and brands of public Cloud platform being used - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM SoftLayer
• Comparative analysis of AWS, Azure, Google, SoftLayer
• Influencing the Cloud buyer, mapping the buyer’s journey
• Influencing the C-Suite

The Techaisle research contains a wealth of data that marketers can use to understand cloud adoption within the US enterprises and build IT buyer-centric marketing initiatives.

Techaisle has released its annual research infographics on top 10 IT priorities, business issues and IT challenges of SMBs (1-999 employees), midmarket firms (100-999 employees) and small businesses (1-99 employees) for 2019. In its detailed SMB survey Techaisle investigated 21 different technology areas and several technology sub-categories, 23 different IT challenges and 21 different business issues. This is the 9th year of Techaisle’s annual survey research initiative that probes for top business issues, IT priorities and IT challenges. Tracking history provides a fascinating evolution in which new business goals drive new IT priorities and uncover challenges that must be addressed to enable progress on business objectives.

Primary research was conducted among senior IT and business decision makers from Techaisle network of 1.2M B2B IT professionals spread across 30+ countries.

There are some interesting differences in IT priorities as compared to 2018. IoT and VR/AR fell below top 10 (but still within top 15) and replaced by Voice/Digital assistants as well as Open source solutions. Across all regions (US, Europe, Asia/Pacific, Latin America) digital unified workspace and software-defined are becoming a priority for both SMBs and midmarket firms. Security many places within the top 10 IT challenges in different forms – cloud security, mobile device security, data protection/recovery/business continuity – with Cloud security as the top IT challenge.

Global SMB & Midmarket IT spend (excluding telecom services) in 2019 is projected to be US$665B and corresponding cloud spend is expected to be US$115B. Research also found that IT budget growths in 2019 will be the highest in Asia/Pacific (6.2%) and lowest in Latin America (1.8%). While IT budget constraint is not the top challenge within SMBs in the US and Asia/Pacific, it is the top concern in Latin America.

Managing data growth is continuing to pose challenge for SMBs and when probed further Techaisle research found that only 11% of SMBs and 29% of midmarket firms have evidence-driven culture with data-driven decision-making business processes in which data defines requirements or opportunities and management then determines the best option for moving forward. In the US, 17% of small business and 34% of midmarket firms consider themselves to be innovative.

2019 Top 10 SMB business issues, IT priorities, IT challenges

The subject of “IT/business alignment” has been a hot topic of debate for many years. Yet despite this interest, business and IT interests and objectives frequently diverge. To some extent, this is inevitable: the business is concerned with issues that extend beyond IT, and IT needs to manage issues that are (at least, as long as they are working) beneath the notice of most business professionals. However, today’s business environment is increasingly dependent on IT support, and IT products and services that improve productivity and efficiency or which expand market reach and potential. IT initiatives that can be linked meaningfully to broader business objectives are best positioned to attract corporate support – meaning that products and services that address key business priorities have the greatest potential for growth.

The Techaisle SMB survey, which captured the perspectives of both business decision makers (BDMs) and IT decision makers (ITDMs) in US SMBs ranging from 1-999 employees, looked at key business issues and in particular IT challenges. The list of the most important IT challenges faced by SMBs such as budget constraints and the need to control IT costs and improve justification for new IT investments are both tied to the goal of reducing operational cost, and effective maintenance of current IT infrastructure contributes to reduction in operational uncertainty, and thereby get linked to managed services.