Techaisle Blog

Techaisle's latest survey research forecasts worldwide midmarket (100-5000 employees) IT spend (excluding telecom services) will reach US$993 billion in 2022. Cloud-managed services are an integral component of IT services and are seeing accelerated spending. Overall IT services will grow by 7.2% from 2021. Midmarket firms are increasing IT spending for cloud optimization, application modernization and migration, and IT modernization. In addition, there is an increased demand for container deployment, microservices, open-source, API management, hybrid cloud workload management, and security and compliance management.

Increasing profitability, driving innovation, and improving the supply chain are the top three business challenges being addressed by midmarket firms. Within 85% of firms, IT is seen as a source of innovation, and 79% expect IT to deliver faster business outcomes. Over 20% of midmarket firms have internal teams dedicated to “finding ‘what’s next?’ technology-driven innovations,” and 40% “have IT budgets specifically for technology-driven innovation;” 11% report that they have embedded IT professionals within business units, charged with finding innovative technology solutions to achieve business objectives.

Founded in 2006, Xero is quickly becoming the preferred small business cloud accounting software and platform for business owners, bookkeepers, and CPAs in Australia/New Zealand, Canada, the UK, and the US. Techaisle’s research and discussions with small businesses show that they love Xero’s price and product simplicity, ease of use, and easy integration with numerous adjacent products. Becca Stern, Co-Founder of Mustard Made, a small business with 18 employees and offices in Australia and the UK, says, “We love that Xero integrates seamlessly with our Shopify stores, our payroll and that we can use it for invoicing some of our larger customers directly. It also gives us an easily accessible snapshot of our business performance and helps us understand our cash flow.”

74% of small business owners are millennials or GenXers who firmly believe in time to value. Xero delivers the time to value. Between 68% to 76% have founded small businesses to create something new, have autonomy, or have flexibility in work/lifestyle. When faced with a cloud software-related issue, 73% of them try to find a solution and fix themselves, time that is scarce and expensive. In 2018, Xero acquired Hubdoc to deploy code-free accounting, finding ways to reduce time out of accounting and bookkeeping work and give it back to accountants, bookkeepers, and small businesses. Xero has innovative reporting features that streamline financial analysis, including customized management report packs and flexible executive summary reports.

Techaisle’s PC market study forecasts SMBs worldwide are likely to purchase 101.2 million units, a 1.9% increase from 2021, revised down from 104.5 million PCs predicted earlier in March. Workforce scarcity (58% of SMBs), inflation anxiety (47% of SMBs), recession angst (41% of SMBs), ASP (average selling price increases) of 3.3% to 7.7% q-o-q, and increasing investments in non-IT capital equipment (18% of SMBs) are contributing to the slowdown in PC purchases.

The North American and Western Europe SMB PC shipment growth rates will likely be 1.9% and 1.2%, respectively. Asia/Pacific and Latin America markets will likely grow by 2.2% and 2.4%, respectively. Healthcare and financial services will probably be the leaders in PC purchases, whereas hospitality and personal services will be the laggards. Between 11% to 15% of SMBs are using Windows 11 PCs, and between 62% to 73% of SMBs may plan to replace/upgrade Windows 10 PCs with Windows 11.

SMBs are wrestling with many challenges, including unreliable network connections, cybersecurity and privacy concerns, productivity issues, and support. In addition, SMBs are mindful of the need for help composing, deploying, and managing digital business infrastructure. The recent surge in remote work has also significantly increased the requirement for effective networks and network management and the complexity of deploying a holistic digital business infrastructure.

SMB networks and network management resources are not as sophisticated as those in enterprise environments. As a result, SMBs will encounter high incidences of network issues such as delivering robust support for videoconferencing and jittering and extending security across distributed applications, devices, and networks.

Networking, a necessary foundation for digital business infrastructure, is a particularly onerous IT management category. Techaisle survey data shows that managing network hardware or network support consumes 47% of SMB IT staff time.

In response to explosive increases in demand for deployment and support of digital business platforms, resource-constrained SMBs are looking for new solutions. They are looking for MSPs as external service providers – and they are looking at SD-WAN. Techaisle data shows that SD-WAN adoption among SMBs will likely grow by 160% within one year. The adoption growth rate is second only to 5G. There is a firm belief within the SMB community that SD-WAN is a critical technology for enabling digital transformation within the SMB segment.

This data indicates a significant and growing opportunity for MSPs to help SMBs deploy digital business infrastructure and manage the associated networking challenges. So what do MSPs need to do to capture this new business?