SMEs to up IT spending
According to the latest IDC forecast of small business technology news, the nearly eight million SMEs in the US will spend more than $125 billion on advanced technology in 2011.
For example, Computer Business Review reports that SME technology consumers are becoming savvy to cloud services.
Research from global strategy consulting firm AMI-Partners notes that SMEs are expected to show a strong inclination to purchase bundled cloud offerings this year as opposed to stand-alone applications.
SME technology budgets decreased 4.2% in 2009, according to IDC, states InformationWeek. While the recovering economy is certainly a factor, IDC senior analyst Justin Jaffe says it's not the only one - nor is the spending increase necessarily all good news for IT pros who support smaller offices.
“It's a combination of forces, including cautious optimism about the economy and a growing willingness to spend on IT, especially compared to increasing staffing levels,” Jaffe said in an e-mail.
“In fact, the smaller the business, the more likely the balance tilts more towards technology spending growth,” he added.
SMEs are responding to today's new economic realities in distinct ways and, in many cases, adapting differently from large enterprises, reveals eWeek.
Although the small business segment has traditionally shown higher IT spending growth, that pattern was broken in the past two years as smaller firms were more adversely affected by the economic downturn.
That noted, the small, lower-midsize and upper-midsize segments will each continue to make a significant contribution to total SME spending, though upper-midsize firms will have the highest rate of spending growth in 2011.
Notebook PCs will continue to be the form factor of choice and will represent a larger share of total PC shipments into the SME market than desktops, the report said. In 2015, the number of SMEs with notebooks will approach 4.7 million.
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