New research reveals that small and midsize companies use and buy software differently than enterprises do. Check your plans against your peers to make sure you're following best practices.
Surprise! Software for small and midsize companies isn't just a scaled down version of enterprise applications. While large and small companies share many concerns, SMBs are more innovative, more optimistic, and more likely to buy than build.
These conclusions come out of a recent Forrester Research report The State Of SMB Software: 2009 and data from Forrester's Enterprise and SMB Software Survey: Enterprise Versus SMB: Who Influences Your Software Purchasing Decisions? and Software Budget Outlook And Preferred Purchasing Channels By Company Size: 2008 To 2009.
By far the biggest hoopla coming out of these studies is the idea that companies large and small are still worried about the security of open source source software. But bMighty open source blogger Matthew McKenzie has debunked that notion as sensationalism.
But I'm not interested in rehashing that question. I'm interested in how small and midsize companies use and think about software differently than larger companies, and how business owners and IT folks can leverage those differences for competitive advantage.
According to the study, application integration and cost cutting are SMBs top goals, followed by boosting innovation. But relatively few SMBs are focusing on expanding the use of SaaS or moving applications off-premise. That makes sense to me, because those are essentially tactics, not goals. At the same time, though, concerns about SaaS is dropping dramatically, the report said in many cases by half or two-thirds, which should lead to greater adoption even if it's not a specific goal for most SMBs. The most popular SaaS apps are CRM -- can you say, Salesforce.com -- but Web 2.0 technologies are also starting to show up. Other popular initiatives resemble enterprise choices, including updating key legacy apps and increasing use of collaboration technologies.
Surprisingly, Unified Communications was the top software technology of interest to SMBs, even though only 25% have either implemented it or are about to do so. Another 10% are piloting UC apps, and 30% are looking into it. Other top choices include the following, in descending order of importance:
- Unified communications
- Open source software
- Mobile development tools and middleware
- Business process management (BPM)
- Business activity management
- Information as a Service
- Event-driven applications
- Platform as as Service (PaaS)
- Contract life-cycle management
- Information life-cycle management (ILM)
- Business rules engines
- Application life-cycle management (ALM)
- Complex event processing
- Enterprise service bus (ESB)
Among packaged applications and information and knowledge management, human capital management software is the most widely implemented (23%) but ERP will attract the most growth (19%).
Many SMBs are still unsure about platform software and SOA. Only a quarter of SMBs are either using or will pursue SOA in the next 12 months. Of those, internal integration is by far the most popular use.
On the infrastructure side, database software leads platform and infrastructure software activity, implemented at 32% of SMBs, with another 28% planning to expand. Portal server software (8%) and enterprise collaboration software (8%) are mostly in pilot phases. Other technologies SMBs are considering include SOA and Web services management, application servers and platform software, and business process management (BPM) software.
And despite the hype, Web 2.0 tools such as discussion forums, blogs, social networking, and wikis have only a relatively small following among SMBs, though interest is rising overall.
Perhaps thats because most SMBs still prefer to deploy on-premise packaged applications, and the Web 2.0 tools are ofen a less-discrete purchase.
Next Page: SMB Software Purchasing Surprises
