Google ups Indian SME share

Having already doubled its small and medium-size enterprise (SME) customer base in India within a year, global Internet search giant Google is now aggressively trying to reach out to the entire sector for online advertising, writes Economic Times.

India has an estimated 35 million SMEs, out of which only about 200 000 have an online presence through domains, sub-domains and blogs.

"We plan to reach out to all of them, as well as educate the ones who are not online, on the benefits of online advertising," says Google Asia-Pacific's head of online sales and operations, Aliza Knox.

A long-term goal of 2020 is essential for SMEs in the Pan Pacific region to grow together rapidly, a Chinese official said during an APEC ministerial meeting held in Japan, reports Xinhua.

Zhu Hongren, chief engineer of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said SMEs in many countries and regions, including China, experience similar challenges, so a joint effort and shared goal is needed for all the economies.

For instance, the imbalance of development between different regions is one of the common problems.

The debate as to whether public cloud computing will ever be a suitable and safe option for enterprises continues, but one industry insider has claimed it will be the route forward for most SMEs, states ITPro.

David Hill, vice-president of sales for Spirent Communications, in Europe, the Middle East and Africa admits there was fear around putting company information out into the cloud, but the cost savings would entice SMEs to at least investigate the technology.

“I think some of the small medium enterprises, in fact most of them, will end up in the public cloud as time goes on [and] it is all [about] economics again,” he said.