The AMI-Partners Blog

AMI has a new press release on the top un-reported SMB trends for 2010. It begins:

Top 2010 ICT trends the industry isn’t talking about in the global SMB markets were released today by AMI-Partners.

Much attention has been given to 2010 trends such as the increasing adoption of SaaS, managed services, virtualization and mobile applications. Although AMI acknowledges most of these are well documented predictions, its team of go-to-market analysts have identified the following six (6) trends that the industry hasn’t fully explored.

Read the rest here:

Figure 1:

New AMI research shows that President Obama and Congress may not be doing the best job of soothing SMBs’ concerns over the economy. US SMBs are showing a little optimism in the new year, with a lot of apprehension.

As a recent AMI report shows, US SBs who felt the government was responding very well to the economic crisis went from 39% in the third quarter to a paltry 24% in the fourth. MBs tell an even more dramatic story. In the MB sphere the number went from 47% to 21%.

This is problematic for a president struggling to sooth worries of SMBs, who are the backbone of the economy. President Obama went on 60 Minutes in early December partly to boost his jobs program and tax breaks for small businesses. (You can watch that appearance here.)

Do these numbers mean that with his clutch of other crises, including a push for healthcare reform and a redoubled terror panic, the president is failing to take his message to SMBs? A few more numbers suggest it could.

US SBs unaware of any stimulus money due to them, as a result of the Economic Recovery Act, jumped from 52% in the third quarter to a whopping 70% in the fourth. Among MBs, it went from 62% to 69%.

These and other numbers come from AMI’s ongoing US Quarterly Pulse. You can take a look at that here.

In a few days, we’ll look at the same survey questions posed to Germany, the UK and France.

AMI has a new press release with some positive news, called, FIRE & Retail SMBs in India show a positive trend towards recovery – is the worst over?

Here’s the first paragraph:

Bangalore, India – January 8, 2010 – India SMBs (small and medium business or companies with up to 999 employees) took requisite steps to increase revenues in the fourth quarter of 2009. These SMBs are set to spend US$4.49B on ICT in the next three months. There is a significant increase in investments for new customer acquisition among verticals such as transportation, construction, healthcare and FIRE (comprised of banking and financial services, insurance and real estate). This comes from the latest study by New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc. In the retail sector, over one fifth of India SMBs mentioned another key focus area for technology adoption is data management.

Read the full release here.

The current economic downturn has forced European SMBs to scrutinize every aspect of their spending. Much has been made about how strained financial circumstances are making the predictable, regular opex outlay of “in-the-cloud” IT services propositions more attractive to SMB decision-makers. Certainly AMI is seeing this reflected in the uptake of Remote Managed IT Services (RMITS), which has experienced a spurt in growth during the last few months (see AMI’s recently published report on The Emerging SMB Managed Services Market Opportunity & Ecosystem in EMEA, August 2009).

In response to this opportunity, AMI has been seeing a range of players enter the market, each vying for their piece of the pie. [Read more →]

When word came yesterday that Facebook was acquiring the social networking aggregator FriendFeed, my thoughts immediately flashed back to a conversation I had in the summer of 2008 with Chris Pallé of The UX Workshop. During our conversation, Chris offered the most offensive thing to my ears at the time: There was something better than Twitter. Still head over heels in love with Twitter, I couldn’t believe Chris would dare to suggest that the basic simplicity of Twitter could be rivaled. What could be better than an instant commiseration among 200 friends about a horrible bus ride I had just taken? An amazing debate we had all watched together on television? A shared reveling in a new product?

This something better was FriendFeed. It wasn’t a Twitter killer, Chris insisted, but was an alternative worth investigating. [Read more →]

With worsening economic condition, negative sentiments, cutbacks in expenses, and climbing lay-offs, SMBs* are looking at various ways to keep their businesses up and running. Everyone is cutting back on costs: even individuals are reprioritizing their needs. While companies have put the brakes on expenses, there is still opportunity for the Telecommunication Service Providers to smile. [Read more →]

Despite what could be considered the most challenging economic environment for information technology, one segment of channel partners is thriving in this market. The economic downturn has forced a number of channel partners to reassess their business model and look beyond their current portfolio of IT solutions. This has led to the growth of partners focused on providing Software-as-a-Service based solutions (SaaS partners). SaaS partners continue to drive significant growth by addressing the key challenges faced by their Small and Mid-sized Business (SMB) customers.

As the recession takes a tighter hold on global IT markets, the attitudes and purchasing behaviors of SMB customers have changed dramatically.  Now even the smallest businesses cautiously calculate the practical and financial impact of their IT investments. Given these challenges, the priorities for SMBs have shifted from longer term growth strategies to more immediate needs, specifically:

1. customer retention
2. efficiency optimization
3. cost control

What separates SaaS Partners from other partners?
SaaS partners provide ideas and solutions that speak to each of the above three areas of their clients’ business. [Read more →]

The business plan is brilliant; value proposition (Customer delivered value) is apt for the current tumultuous times; bandwidth/network availability is all time high in top cities; addressable market is vast and awareness levels are on the rise….. So are we ready to witness a rise in ground level adoption of the cloud computing concept (PaaS/SaaS/IaaS) in India?

One is being presumptuous of the value on offer. Isn’t the very idea of availing business applications on the web with fraction of the cost of traditional routes lucrative enough? What are users saying? AMI Partners Q-pulse provides demand side quarterly updates on the current dynamic market conditions where sentiments, mindset and purchase plans are being constantly re-assessed against the backdrop of changing macro-environmental factors as well as internal company issues. [Read more →]

These are scary times, but they can also be stirring times for IT marketers who believe in specific result. Businesses especially SMBs in recent years don’t have unused equipment sitting around but at the same time are buying what IT they need. They are very cautious about optimizing their IT budget. So it is critical to identify the need of the prospect and match the benefits offered by you. SMBs have always been the heterogeneous part of the market but it is critical to measure the shift of behavior in this scenario. Vanilla offering may not yield the preferred revenue for you.

I am sure at this stage you would not like to waste your resources and would prefer to prioritize customers through systematic sales targeting. You may choose the easier way and go for vertical market segmentation but that would not work as the businesses get smaller. The functional need even within a specific vertical is diverse and your offering deals with specific functions. [Read more →]

As we pull new surveys out of 11 different countries I am struck by something. During our survey we ask SMB business decision makers how likely they are to purchase various IT products over the next three months. We also ask these SMBs what they purchased over the last three months and what they plan to purchase beyond three months. This question is very insightful (or at least has the potential of being very informative) because it asks about planned spending at the IT category level (desktops, printers, SaaS, etc.).

This questions also has another dimensions that is interesting. When AMI asks this question it requires that the SMB be specific about how likely they are to make these purchases. This allows us to delineate between those SMBs who are budgeting (and committed to making specific purchases) vs. those who are less committed and need a little prodding to make that purchase a reality: the “fence sitters.”

[Read more →]