Understanding the spending habits of SMBs will help IT service providers hone in on the perfect pitch and sale. Find out what 2012 means for SMB decision makers, and the trends influencing their decisions.

By Jacob Kazakevich

How are small and mid-market organizations responding to trends like cloud computing, mobile deployments and increasingly complex IT requirements? Learn about the five top IT drivers for SMB decision makers over the next year, and gain valuable insight into the factors that are influencing IT budgets and purchasing decisions.  

1.  Growth in Mobile & Distributed End-User Workforce
Mobility and "anywhere computing" is transforming business, driving productivity, and increasing efficiency. Today’s workforce needs to have all IT tools accessible in one place and standardized across all devices and networks, while IT managers need the flexibility to adapt to various users needs (such as CEO vs. the sales team).

2. Delivering on Increasingly Complex IT
End-user IT needs are rapidly growing more complex. Today’s IT is consumed using web-accessible SaaS, Line-of-Business applications, and new collaboration tools, as well as using data in the cloud, locally, and across multiple devices. The provisioning, management, and maintenance of these many individual components is highly complex and extremely costly for an SMB. CIOs, in study after study, are looking for a simple, integrated way to deliver comprehensive IT to their workforce from one provider.

3. Security and Compliance Requirements
Companies are becoming more and more reliant on data and are increasingly at risk from cyber security threats, data-theft, malware, device loss, and more. Compliance and control of high-value corporate data across devices, SaaS apps, and social media is increasingly complex, and the cost of downtime in dollars, as well as company productivity is extremely high.

4. Business Continuity and Performance Expectations
SMBs demand enterprise-level performance, business agility, and resilience from their IT, and are calling for risk management planning and integrated disaster recovery. Yet with today’s economic conditions, shrinking IT budgets are causing decision makers to look for options that deliver IT more efficiently and cost effectively without sacrificing on performance, availability, and features.

5. Increased Presence of Brand Name Options (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM)
Cloud computing is entering the mainstream with awareness being driven by solutions from major brands, and creating competition for existing managed service providers. While not every technology is right for every company, SMBs are reviewing these branded offerings, and evaluating if there is room for additional value from service providers in terms of customer satisfaction, flexibility, or product features.

Jacob Kazakevich is the president of OS33, an IT-as-a-Service delivery platform provider.