Change is a constant in the IT industry. Despite the constant evolution of technology itself, it can be argued that the biggest change in the IT landscape is not a technology or set of technologies but the evolution of the buyer’s journey. It is more pronounced within the SMBs than any other segment.

In many SMBs and midmarket firms, the cloud may have first been introduced as a means of reducing CAPEX and/or overall IT costs, but today, it is viewed by the segment as a means of increasing business agility and introducing capabilities that would have been cost or time-prohibitive to deploy on traditional technology. To connect with SMB and midmarket buyers, cloud suppliers need to be able to deliver a story highlighting the ways in which their services provide support for businesses that are planning to use the cloud as a platform for agility and as a means of automating business processes. In a very real sense, the discussion of “the cloud” is similar in scope to the discussion of “IT.” In both cases, use is a given, but the scope and impact of that use are critical to the operational effectiveness and competitiveness. In today’s world, there is little distinction between “business infrastructure” and “digital business infrastructure;” in recent SMB and midmarket survey research, Techaisle found that executives from nearly all upper midmarket firms (1000-4999 employees) agree that we have reached a “post-digital” state where all business strategy discussions include digital considerations.

The IT industry is abuzz with discussion of digital transformation. SMBs and Midmarket firms are adopting digital transformation for operational efficiency, customer intimacy, employee empowerment and product innovation. There are nearly as many definitions of DX as there are firms looking to profit from the trend. Techaisle views digital transformation as the use and integration of digital business processes across an enterprise.

SMB buyers, especially the business decision makers (BDMs) are moving past devices to a mobile solution strategy that capitalizes on the capabilities of new types of end-points..

For decades, “endpoint device” has been synonymous with “PC,” and “PC” has implied a device based on Microsoft Windows and Intel microprocessors. Through the course of this decade, that definition has been eroding.

As IoT outputs do deliver visible and tangible benefits, the momentum for IoT is building within SMBs. SMBs are beginning to use IoT for supply chain visibility, asset tracking, cost efficiencies and in general facilitating collaboration with employees, partners, suppliers, and customers.

SMBs and midmarket firms are investing heavily in AI to bolster competitiveness and automation. The channel will play an essential role in this migration. While demand for AI is broad and deep, it is not evenly distributed throughout the SMB and midmarket: different segments have varying levels of purchase readiness and respond to their own adoption drivers. Successful channel firms will align their messaging and offerings with the highest potential opportunities.

Collaboration is now a central component to virtually all SMB business activities. As the lines of demarcation between tasks have been eroded by the increased pace and changing nature of business activities, SMBs have moved past the time when they linked discrete actions through linear, sequential processes.

A key challenge for SMBs is that paying for & maintaining leading-edge Information Technology is too expensive and complex for the average company to manage on its’ own. The old model of IT asset ownership and large supporting organizations is broken and is being replaced with a pay-as-you-go alternative called Managed Services.

Effective IT security practices go beyond “raising the shields” around users, data & networks – they enable innovation throughout the IT/business infrastructure. SMBs and midmarket firms are not only increasingly dependent on IT – they are dependent on increasingly interconnected systems, which are, in turn, open to an ever-expanding population of devices and access points. This increases the potential damage associated with a breach and attracts heightened attention from hackers. Techaisle contributes to the security vendor community’s ability to address multifaceted demands by providing research that illuminates key SMB and midmarket security market factors: drivers and spending, risks, and challenges, and the technologies that SMBs are or will be allocating resources to address these risks and challenges 

Techaisle’s channel advisory service provides the facts that channel executives need to navigate the future, insight into what must be done to ensure a viable path forward, and information on how vendors can work with channels to help boost momentum at today’s critical business juncture. Techaisle’s data-driven survey research can be augmented by custom research, leveraging the network of 350,000 channel partner respondents globally. Techaisle's channel recruitment methodology enables new IT suppliers and established vendors to expand their channel members.

While the client continues to be a device that becomes increasingly small, smart, connected and powerful, the server and network are becoming less visible as they progressively move offsite both physically and from a management perspective, and simultaneously serve more computing, storage and bandwidth.