Virtualisation and cloud infrastructure vendor VMware believes there are a lot of opportunities in the small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) market.
This emerged at this week's VMworld Europe 2012 Conference, in Barcelona, in a presentation by John Churchhouse, the company's SME director for EMEA.
Churchhouse pointed out that VMware, which did not focus on the SME segment two years ago, was increasingly realising the massive opportunities in this market.
There are about 62 million SMEs worldwide and their IT spend is $507.6 billion, he said, quoting an IDC study. However, only 20% have their servers virtualised.
The SME market is hugely untapped, said Churchhouse. "A recent study revealed that three out of four SMEs are planning virtualisation projects and seven out of 10 of them will choose VMware."
He explained that a typical SME, with one to nine employees, has a low IT budget with no plan to increase it. These businesses also have a low growth rate and low adoption rate, he added.
According to Churchhouse, the second category of SME typically has 25 to 100 employees with a moderate IT budget per employee. He revealed that these enterprises see IT as critical to business growth.
The third group, which he described as the best-of-breed SME, has more than 100 employees. "These enterprises have higher revenue growth, high IT budgets, more sites or locations, as well as higher usage of consultants or managed services providers."
During his presentation, Churchhouse also revealed the winner of the "Thinking Big For Your Business" competition, which VMware opened for SMEs.
UK-based law firm Clarion was named the winner and walked away with a $20 000 cheque. The competition asked how SMEs in EMEA would reinvigorate their business with $20 000 worth of VMware software - challenging entrants to go beyond cost-cutting and be forward-thinking in their approaches to IT, to ultimately deliver a transformational effect to their businesses.
Churchhouse noted that, in the end, Clarion impressed the judging panel with its ambition to become the first law firm to use Project Octopus as a virtual data room.
"The entry from Clarion perfectly captured the essence of the competition, which was true business transformation through the use of innovative technology," said Churchhouse.
"It was particularly exciting to consider the impact the prize could have within an industry where confidentiality and security of data are so vital to everyday operations. We're excited to work with Clarion to deliver innovation and improved business value in a sector where there is no margin for error."
Duncan James, infrastructure manager at Clarion, said: "We're over the moon with the result. It's our ambition that the forthcoming VMware Horizon Suite will enable our workforce of lawyers and staff to have a single integrated way of accessing and managing their apps and desktops, as well as the secure sharing of data, wherever and whenever they happen to be working."
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