Small businesses are considered to play an important role in the growth of the U.S. economy. However, usage of new and advanced technologies stands as a major challenge for many SMBs. With the increased awareness and rapid growth in technology, many SMBs today are keen to adopt new technologies. According to the CompTIA’s Second Annual SMB Technology Adoption Trends study, about 80% of the SMBs are interested to focus on use of new technological solutions.
The adoption of information and communications technology (ICT) is considered to be a key factor for increasing the productivity growth of small and medium enterprises. Adoption of computer networks and use of the Internet helps in enhancing the businesses. Some SMBs are using ICT technology with Internet in order to facilitate the commercial activities. It can also be used for promoting the products and services online.
A positive impact of ICT adoption is seen specifically on the Internet business solutions, growth of revenues and reduction of administrative costs. An OECD research reveals that for every 10 percent increase in number of staff using computers, 1.3 percent of increase of productivity is observed.
The CompTIA’s report revealed that 71% of the businesses having 19-499 employees are interested to make investments in new technologies only if fair return on investment is guaranteed. Some of the IT solutions that SMBs are interested to include them in the business are given here.
Virtualization – The study revealed that 37% of the respondents are favored to adopt sever virtualization in the next 12 months. Virtualization is nothing but the creation of a virtual version of something such as a hardware platform, operating system, network resources or a storage device. The main purpose of virtualization is to help in centralization of administrative tasks by improving scalability and workloads.
Unified Communications – Unified communications help SMBs in maintaining proper contacts with the clients. About 25% of the SMB’s are involved in adopting Voice-over-IP solution for unified communications. Real-time communication services include instant messaging, telephony, video conferencing and speech recognition. The non-real-time communication services include unified messages such as e-mail, voicemail, and fax. The integration of real-time and non-real time communication services is termed as unified communications.
Managed Services – Managed services provide the responsibility of administering a specific IT or communication function based on the requirement of the business. SMBs are making use of managed services such as e-mail security, intrusion detection, and virtual private networking. When compared to 2009, it was observed that there had been two to three fold increase in adoption of managed services by the SMBs.
Open Source Applications – Open software is computer software that is provided for copyright holders for studying, changing and improving the software. One of the most important benefits of using the open source software for SMBs is cost savings. Reduction of upgrade costs and software purchase costs can be helpful for SMBs. Open source software is thought to be utilized by 20% of SMBs.
Mobility Upgrades – Mobility upgrades include the applications of LAN and other wireless network solutions that can be used in business. Adoption of mobility upgrade techniques help in enabling off-site employees to access company networks. About 45% of the SMBs are interested to adopt the mobility upgrade techniques.
It can be concluded that the SMBs are looking forward to apply new technologies for their growth and development. ICT technology acts as a tool in improving the marketing aspects of SMBs. Most of the SMBs are showing interest in making use of applications such mobility upgrades and virtualization solutions.