Top 2010 ICT trends that the industry isn’t talking about in the global SMB markets were released today by industry analyst Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.

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 six trends that the industry hasn’t fully explored.

#1: SMBs will loosen restricted ICT budgets: Release of pent-up demand spurs SMB ICT adoption in 2010.

SMBs showed signs of releasing pent-up ICT demand in the fourth quarter of 2009. SMBs will tentatively transition out of survival mode and focus on opportunities for business expansion. Technology that facilitates this shift will be much more of a priority in the coming year.

Moving forward, SMBs are looking to enhance existing customer relationships, improve business efficiencies, and above all else, grow revenue. From a small business perspective, this equates to increased use of collaborative tools, improved networking and implementing disaster recovery plans. Medium businesses, as well, are focused on more effective collaboration among employees. However, this will come in the form of more enterprise IT solutions such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and server virtualization. Larger firms will also invest in overdue security and storage upgrades.

#2: Hollow SMB value propositions will be replaced by tangible business propositions.

Substantiated marketing messages with more quantifiable information will be required to drive ICT purchases beyond basic break/fix purchases; separating the winners and losers of ICT manufacturers and service providers.

As a result of the economic downturn, business decision-makers (BDMs) are much more involved in the purchase process of ICT. SMBs will require stronger justification for ICT purchases, and in a language BDMs can directly translate into bottom line results. Phrases such as “save time” and “save money” will need to be heavily supported with hard numbers and proof of outcome.

Resonating with SMBs will require vendors to establish trust; brand familiarity continues to be a leading factor behind ICT purchasing. New vendors, however, can somewhat circumvent barriers to sales by promoting other lead factors such as total cost of ownership (TCO), scalability, and solution alignment with long-term goals.

#3: Cloud computing solutions will struggle to capitalize on the full market opportunity presented in 2010.

Adoption will continue to climb in 2010 (as well as interest), but SaaS marketers will need to reduce confusion, misinformation and apprehension in order to convert interest into actual purchases.

2010 will continue to see accelerated adoption and mainstreaming of key technologies like Cloud computing and Virtualization, as cost savings, operational efficiency and IT disaster recovery are key business drivers. However, marketers will struggle to fully address the growing interest in SaaS and virtual infrastructure solutions due to the amount of confusion in the value proposition and offerings that exist in the minds of SMBs. 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.

#4: Social media will move beyond its primary role as a promotional tool into the more strategic role of business intelligence in 2010.

Growing numbers of SMBs will begin using social media to monitor, measure, and manage its image at the brand, product and services levels.

Businesses will continue to adopt digital marketing media (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, email marketing, blogs, forums, etc.) to reach customers, and as usage of social media grows so will the advantages and opportunities for SMBs to capture valuable competitive feedback. Although the number of SMBs using social media as a source for business intelligence is small it will grow significantly in 2010 as the value of the tool becomes more obvious.

In 2010 SMBs will continue to find new ways to gain visibility in day-to-day operations in a non-technical, non-IT assisted manner. Business intelligence (BI) has been traditionally under-utilized by SMBs compared with large enterprises, and with massive amounts of data assets lying around in these smaller companies, organizations are realizing that they can use existing data resources better to gain clear line of sight into their business and customers for timely decision making. BI tools are now being used by SMBs to focus more on business growth and results, and not just internal efficiency and cost control.

To gain SMBs’ mind and wallet share, SMB vendors will have to ensure their offerings leverage the power of these “social conversations” and provide useful marketing and decision making insights.

#5: Growing number of channel partners to become ‘Total’ IT solution providers, putting pressure on existing CP skill sets.

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.

Two key factors influencing VARs to expand their portfolio of IT offerings and enter new areas of specialization are:

• Consolidation and convergence in the IT industry: A high number of large mergers and acquisitions in the IT industry over the last couple of years (i.e., Oracle and Sun Microsystems, Symantec and Veritas, HP acquiring EDS and 3Com, Dell’s several managed and IT services acquisitions, and Cisco’s several acquisitions) has led to more vertical integration in the IT industry. Vendors that were once strategic partners in the IT space are now competitors, as convergence between hardware, software and services grows. VARs that have typically been hardware-focused are now required to also get up to speed on integration or managed services in order to provide the entire portfolio of the vendor’s solutions to SMBs.
• Effect of economic conditions: With the economy resulting in lower IT investments by SMBs, VARs need to consider new revenue streams. This has led to more VARs in recent times adding additional solutions to their portfolio in order to increase their client base.

Implications for vendors include training and support. For channel partners, training and support are becoming as important as financial incentives to allow them to effectively market their new portfolio of solutions and services. Channel partners realize that in this environment they need to be able to offer not only the product but the additional ‘value’ to SMBs to differentiate themselves from competition.

#6: Maturing of managed services industry will create a “capabilities chasm” among managed services providers (MSPs).

A small, but influential, breed of MSPs will continue to refine their business model and approach to better target and address SMBs’ needs, causing an unbalanced mix of abilities and competence in the managed services space.

Precipitated by the downturn, the Remote Managed IT Services (RMITS) market picked up considerably in 2009, effectively confirming its business model and relevance to SMBs. The year in RMITS was filled with excitement and bustle: commitment and entry by small and large vendors/telcos (Dell, AT&T, Gateway in the U.K. to name a few), greater MSP emphasis on automation through remote monitoring and management software (or RMM - leading players Kaseya, Level Platforms , N-Able and Zenith observed rapid growth) and not to forget the first wave of key acquisitions and IPOs.

In 2010, AMI expects these themes to continue but at a hastened pace, with greater focus on MSP development driven by several factors including the attitude and mindset of the MSP.

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, there is a small, but influential breed of MSPs that are refining their business model and approach to better serve SMBs’ needs. In addition, the increasing availability of IaaS and maturity of SaaS enable MSPs, both new and seasoned, to rapidly acquire the necessary backend infrastructure and services to support their NOC environment, RMM software and monitoring needs. As a result, there will be a lot more white-labeling, co-branding opportunities through “my brand, somebody else’s service” approach and countless new service offerings. These MSPs will widen the chasm between MSPs, causing an unbalanced mix of abilities and competence within the managed services marketplace.

Despite these challenges, the underlying reasons SMBs acquire managed services will remain. 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 2010 and beyond, MSPs have to get better at (i) swiftly identifying and offering innovative managed services without reinventing the wheel, (ii) effectively communicating their value proposition in the managed services ecosystem and (iii) marketing and self-promotion to standout in the chaos.

About Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.

AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence — focusing on global small and medium business (SMB) enterprises. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest-quality data, business planning and “go-to-market” solutions. AMI was founded in 1996 under the name of Access Media International (USA), Inc. by Andy Bose, formerly group vice president at IDC. Since its inception, the firm has built a world-class management team, each with ten to fifteen years’ experience in IT, telecom, online communications or multimedia.

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