Techaisle Blog

SMB and Midmarket businesses are adopting Converged Infrastructure solutions for reduced cost and imrpoved IT efficiency. For slightly more than 1/3rd of small businesses and slightly less than 2/3rd of midmarket businesses, converged infrastructure solutions are among the top 10 IT priorities for 2018. Granted that by the end of year the actual penetration would be less but the very fact that CI/HCI has percolated to the top 10 is an interesting point to note. Cloud is everywhere, but Techaisle believes that efficiency is a reflection of the compute platform, not simply whether it is housed on-premise or at a remote facility and converged infrastructure contributes to the compute platform. SMBs are adopting converged infrastructure for one or more of five primary reasons:

1. To benefit from integrated design and efficiency
2. To tap into its ability to enable centralization/management of resources
3. To capitalize on performance/time-to-benefit advantages
4. To improve IT agility and its ability to meet business needs
5. To respond to core requirements for cost savings and improved security.

In fact, 39% of midmarket firms said that converged infrastructure helps lower total cost of infrastructure ownership.

My days of being critical of Salesforce and their SMB strategy are over. With the introduction of Sales Cloud Essentials and Service Cloud Essentials, Salesforce has once again become relevant for SMBs, especially for the very small (1-19 employees) and overall small business (1-99 employees) segments. For an SMB, CRM is not only – or even primarily – a system used to manage pursuit of new accounts. The most common use of CRM is as a means of organizing customer services. Techaisle SMB & midmarket survey shows:

• 18% of micro businesses (1-9 employees) are using a cloud CRM solution
• Cloud CRM usage within small businesses has increased by 31% in the last 1 year
• 40% of small businesses are planning to use a cloud CRM solution in the next 1 year
• 15% of micro businesses (1-9 employees) are using a cloud Customer services solution
• Cloud Customer Services usage within small businesses has increased by 15% in the last 1 year
• 49% of small businesses are planning to use a Customer services solution in the next 1 year
• 73% of very small businesses (1-19 employees) using CRM are also using Customer services
• 56% of very small businesses (1-19 employees) using Customer services are also using CRM

Sales & Service together for better customer relationship management

Small businesses often struggle with processes around customer relationship management – maintaining contact with past buyers, preparing for renewals or new product upgrades, informing them of service releases, etc. – and a CRM system provides a central means of scheduling and tracking these activities with/for each customer.

The improved visibility resulting from cloud-based sales and marketing automation systems has in turn illuminated the need for a better-integrated customer management and support processes. This insight is prompting increased investment in systems automating customer support tasks.

Techaisle survey shows:

• 73% of US SMBs are using at least one SaaS application, up from 27% in 2011
• 51% of global SMBs begin their cloud journey with SaaS
• Global SMB spend on SaaS in 2018 will be US$40 billion
• Cloud is the agility platform & SaaS is a zero-friction option for automating business processes
• 74% of SMBs achieved increased business agility with connected business processes

They are here - Techaisle's annual SMB and Midmarket Top 10 IT Priorities, IT Challenges and Business Issues infographics. This is the 7th year of Techaisle tracking at a WW level and is much sought after by IT vendors, channels and media. There is an ongoing trend – in both the buy-side and supplier communities – towards positioning IT initiatives and expenditures in a business context.

To help readers connect positioning with core market drivers, Techaisle research provides insight into the most pressing business issues, IT priorities and IT challenges faced by small (1-99 employees) and midmarket (100-999 employees) businesses in 2018.

For 2018, Techaisle investigated 21 different technology areas, each with several sub-technology categories, 24 different IT challenges and 24 different business issues. At the request of our clients, this year, not only are we releasing data & infographics (shown below) as usual for SMBs (1-999 employee segment), Midmarket (100-999 employee segment) but also for Small businesses (1-99 employee segment).

In 2018, the new and upcoming IT Priorities within SMBs are Virtual Reality (VR)/Augmented Reality (AR) and Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). Within midmarket firms, Artificial Intelligence (AI) appears for the first time for 2018. Workplace transformation is one of the new top IT challenges for SMBs – number 1 on the list for midmarket firms and overall at number six across all SMBs. This obviously points to a need for unified workspace experience. In addition, Cloud orchestration and integration are among the top five key IT challenges for both SMBs and midmarket firms.