The AMI-Partners Blog

AMI has a new press release:

New York, NY — April 21, 2010 — Small and medium business (SMB) investments in software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications (excluding CRM and ERP as SaaS) will jump 18% CAGR over the next five years, projects Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc. The projections are even more pronounced when contrasting CRM as SaaS vs. CRM installed at site—the former is expected to grow 16% CAGR while spending on CRM will remain flat over the same period.

Read the full release here.

AMI has a new press release on audio and web conferencing:

New York, New York — April 14, 2010 — The total US audio and web conferencing market was $1.5 billion in 2009, AMI research estimates. Web conferencing is expected to drive spending over the next five years, boasting a 22% CAGR, while audio conferencing is expected to grow a more modest 4% YOY, according to a new report titled “Audio and Web Conferencing: Usage, Spending, Distribution, Market and Growth.”

Full release here.

We have a new press release with SMB ICT spending predictions, and a really cool Heat Map.

NEW YORK – April 6, 2010 –New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc. has just released its new “Heat Map,” intelligence on the top SMB verticals planning to make significant ICT investments this year. Focusing on global small and medium business (SMB) enterprises, AMI is a leading go-to-market consulting firm specializing in IT, Internet, telecom and business services market intelligence trends and strategy.

Here’s our Friday press release on Channel World.

We have a new press release over at AMI-Partners about India SMBs’ use of managed printing and publishing services, and how this dovetails with green IT concerns.

Bangalore, India – March 25, 2010 – Small and medium businesses in India (SMBs) are increasingly feeling the importance of managed printing services: 18% of these SMBs are using managed printing and publishing services. India medium businesses (MBs or companies with 100 – 999 employees) are more inclined to use managed printing services than small business (SBs or companies with 1-99 employees). According to New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc., many India SMBs are assessing their printing needs and researching how managed printing services might be able to help them meet these requirements.

Full release here.

With President Obama signing healthcare into law, AMI’s analysts found ourselves revisiting our wealth of research into how this legislation could affect SMB.

Benefits in the form of tax incentives will kick in for small businesses immediately. But how will it affect SMBs’ IT landscapes?

Look for a press release on that soon, here.

On Monday, it was announced that Google would no longer censor its search results for Chinese users, a move that was bound to enrage the Chinese government.

On Tuesday, China responded.

As the Times reports,

The Chinese government moved on Tuesday to restrict access of mainland users to the Hong Kong site, the use of which Google had hoped would allow it to keep its pledge to end censorship while retaining a share of China’s fast-growing Internet search market.

But mainland Chinese users on Tuesday could not see uncensored Hong Kong content because government computers either blocked the content or filtered links to searches for objectionable content.

See the whole article here.

Bangalore, India – March 25, 2010 – Small and medium businesses in India (SMBs) are increasingly feeling the importance of managed printing services: 18% of these SMBs are using managed printing and publishing services. India medium businesses (MBs or companies with 100 – 999 employees) are more inclined to use managed printing services than small business (SBs or companies with 1-99 employees). According to New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc., many India SMBs are assessing their printing needs and researching how managed printing services might be able to help them meet these requirements.

Full press release on that next week, here.

Other findings from the India MB report below:

Close to 30% of MBs mentioned they are on the lookout for effective business management tools in the next 12 months.

Over two thirds of India MBs intend to use social networking sites for marketing their products and services in the next 12 months.

See the full report here.

This chart posted on the Obama administration’s website makes the job situation visually pretty clear.

Good news today in the Washington Post. The U.S. economy “soared” at its highest growth rate in six years (5.7%):

The U.S. economy roared ahead in the final months of 2009, growing at its fastest rate in six years, as corporate America stopped slashing its inventories and again started to invest for the future.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, rose at a 5.7 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, the Commerce Department said Friday. That is the highest pace of growth since 2003, and it constitutes strong proof that the recession reached its end earlier in 2009. It was also a surprisingly positive result, well above the 4.6 percent rate of GDP growth forecasters had expected.

Some of this is just an adjustment from the prior quarter, the article notes:

But there remained reason to doubt how strong the economic recovery will be in 2010. The biggest component of the GDP growth was a steep drop in the pace at which businesses were cutting back on their inventories. Firms reduced their inventories by $33.5 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $139 billion in the third. In the math of GDP, which attempts to capture the value of goods and services produced within U.S. borders, that added 3.4 percentage points to overall growth.

Read the whole story here: