IT Trends 2010

Besides widely acknowledged trends (2010) like increasing adoption of SaaS, managed services, virtualization and mobile applications; AMI Partner’s team of go-to-market analysts have identified few trends that the industry hasn’t fully explored.

Summary
With economic upturn, SMBs will tentatively transition out of survival mode and focus on opportunities for business expansion. SMBs are now looking to enhance existing customer relationships, improve business efficiencies, grow revenue etc. Technology wise this equates to - collaborative tools, improved networking and disaster recovery plans. Due to economic downturn, business decision-makers (BDMs) are much more involved in the purchase process of ICT. Phrases such as “save time” and “save money” will need to be heavily supported with hard numbers and proof of outcome. Though cloud computing in increasingly being ubiquitous in IT marketplace, small businesses in particular will require extra handholding in 2010 to fully understand the specifics of how their businesses can benefit from flexible payment terms, scalable solutions, and other inherent benefits, amplifying the need for channel partners to clearly communicate their value proposition and continue efforts to educate SMB customers. Consolidation in the IT industry, convergence between hardware, software and services, and economic pressures are forcing channel partners to find new revenue streams, leading to the growth of “Total” IT solution providers in the SMB market. Over the past 3 - 4 years, the first wave of MSPs have undergone significant trial and error in the technical, operations and sales/ marketing of their managed services business. As a result, influential MSPs are refining their business model and approach to better serve SMBs’ needs. In addition, SMBs have a preference for a single end-to-end provider, instead of out-tasking parts of their IT needs to different providers.

In order to tap SMB IT services market opportunities Dell needs to

- Increase focus for services it can provide around – collaboration tools, networking, disaster recovery
- Have more clear/direct value proposition time/cost saving – more proof points required to sell services to SMBs – selling more to business (than IT) customer/departments
- Remote Managed IT Services (RMITS) market picked up considerably in 2009 – note that customer need more of an end-to-end solution.
- Cloud is gaining momentum – but it’s time to take lead on educating customer on how it can benefit their business.