ome solution providers are starting to exploit market overlap to pave new avenues of business.

With the collision of PC, wired and wireless networking, digital imaging, multimedia, broadband and other technologies, the worlds of business-to-business IT solutions and consumer electronics are shaking hands. In turn, more and more channel players say they're finding that home users are seeking traditional small-business offerings, while small companies are embracing consumer-oriented digital products that can fill a variety of their business needs.

Take Scott Herrema, CEO of Eclipse Microcomputer Systems. The Littleton, Colo.-based solution provider began tapping the home market three years ago as a way to expand its customer base beyond small businesses. Now home projects represent a chunk of Eclipse's sales, accounting for $300,000 of its $1.8 million in revenue last year, Herrema said.

For example, Eclipse implemented a home networking solution for a couple in Fort Collins, Colo., that controls their house's lighting and entertainment systems from a touch-screen remote control. Herrema installed structured wiring (Category 5 Ethernet wires) that connects the lights, audiovisual equipment and computers to a central server. So when the couple wants to watch a movie, they can simply push one button to dim the lights, close the blinds, and turn on the television and DVD player.

"A large home and a small business have a lot in common," Herrema said, noting that those venues have similar phone setups, networking systems, and telecom and data components. "A lot of the home automation solutions are the same things that are happening in the commercial small-business space."

Besides snaring home entertainment engagements, solution providers are installing complex home security systems and outfitting the rising number of home offices, where users are seeking business-quality printers, computers, LANs, wireless networks and remote-access software.

Avi Rosenthal, CEO of Integrator Concepts, Boca Raton, Fla., said telecommuters want the same technology and connectivity that they get in the workplace. "People have gotten very comfortable at work, and now they want to be as productive at home as they are at work," Rosenthal said, explaining that it's not difficult for solution providers to make the transition to serving home users. "The experience in setting up these technologies [for businesses] translates very well into setting them up in people's homes," he said.

Eclipse's Herrema said the home market offers solution providers a broader range of products to install, and the products typically carry higher margins than conventional small-business offerings. Home networking solutions, for one, can bring gross margins of 30 to 50 points, Helen Heneveld, co-owner of The Training Dept., a Tucson, Ariz.-based home networking education firm, said at the Electronic House Expo earlier this month. Solution providers have the necessary PC skills and can learn from or partner with other companies to pick up complementary technologies, she said.

And solution providers attending the Orlando, Fla., expo said they see great opportunity. "We're going to modify our existing business," said Enrique Nieves, general manager of Techno Traders, Daytona Beach, Fla. "We've seen the need from customers to hook up their computers to browse the Web through their plasma TVs. We don't do that now."

Home entertainment systems, in particular, are an excellent opportunity because many IT business products easily carry over into the home, solution providers said. Users also are becoming more interested in home theaters, projection systems and high-quality audio solutions as the prices of multimedia products fall and their quality rises.

For its part, Cyber Home Networks has seen a stream of business installing home theaters since it began focusing on the home market three years ago, said Kevin Hourihan, president of the Stormville, N.Y.-based integrator. "We do a lot of home theater systems for people finishing their basements," Hourihan said, adding that Cyber Home Networks even builds speakers into walls and installs theater seating.

Solution providers also are wiring homes for audio and video distribution. Products from vendors such as Escient, Indianapolis; Home Director, Durham, N.C.; and Onkyo, Upper Saddle River, N.J., can turn any home computer into a server, with CDs, digital music files and radio station presets accessible from any room in the house. Such solutions also open the door to personalized media distribution, in which each family member's audio and video preferences can be stored and accessed readily, solution providers said.

And once entertainment and data products are set up, integrators can tap the house's network and install home automation software,such as Lantronix's Premise Home Control and Listman Home Technologies' United Home,to enable the devices to communicate.

"Home automation software allows you to integrate the items in a home to control things, and products can interact with each other. For example, when I disarm my [home's] security system, my lights come on automatically," Integrator Concepts' Rosenthal said. The software also can be configured to identify someone entering the house based on their security code, automatically adjusting lighting, temperature and music to the person's preference, he said.

More important, automation software can allow homeowners to control everything from a single device, such as a Smart Display, a Tablet PC, a PDA or a touch screen. "The software allows each house to have a central brain,a computer or a Web tablet," Rosenthal said. "From there, you can control the lights, security and home entertainment."

Forrester Research predicts that by 2010, more than 14 billion consumer devices will be capable of being networked, and 95 percent of those devices will be noncomputer products. And by next year alone, home networking is slated to be a $12.5 billion market, according to research firm In-Stat/MDR.

On the flip side, many small businesses are turning to digital solutions that include consumer electronics and/or home computing products, such as digital cameras and camcorders, scanners, flat-panel and plasma displays, digital projectors and wireless networking devices.

Just ask D&H Distributing. Jeff Davis, vice president of sales at the Harrisburg, Pa.-based distributor, said small businesses have been increasingly purchasing consumer electronics products. For example, high-definition televisions are being used as monitors and videoconferencing displays in conference rooms, and real-estate and insurance professionals are using digital camcorders to make videos for presentations or claims, he said. Businesses also are buying DVD players, digital cameras and projectors, programmable remote controls, home security products with IP-based cameras and MP3 players.

"Our own salespeople have MP3 players connected to their computers at work," Davis said. "They've made them their entertainment systems."

Solution providers and distributors said continued price declines in digital technology are enabling small companies to accomplish a variety of business tasks at a lower cost. For instance, a small business looking to print 500 color brochures could buy a color laser printer and a digital camera and do the job in-house for roughly the same cost as contracting with a commercial printer,plus own the means for future printing jobs, said Stephen Allen, president of New York-based solution provider Integrated Technology Systems, which sells digital cameras and color printers to real-estate companies.

Similarly, Stephen Monteros, general manager of GST/Micro City, a Cerritos, Calif.-based solution provider, said he sells digital cameras to law enforcement agencies to aid in evidence collection, as well as to government transportation and safety agencies to archive project photos.

Plasma displays also are starting to catch on, with businesses using the technology for conference room projection systems. "I've seen the prices drop and plasma displays become adopted more often in the office," Monteros said.

Also on the imaging front, ML Technologies is exploring ways to use DVD jukeboxes to store customer receipts for easy archiving and retrieval. Jeff Ahlstrom, technical specialist at the St. Anthony, Idaho-based solution provider, said that many small companies would find a solid business value in such a solution. "We're still trying to find the right vendor. We've just started scratching the surface," Ahlstrom said.

Hershey Technologies has been implementing document imaging solutions in the government market. Neal Fisher, vice president and founder of the La Jolla, Calif.-based solution provider, said his company's customers include the Riverside, Calif., County Mental Health Department, which uses Cardiff Software applications and Kodak scanners to help monitor the success rate of patient treatment. Last year, Hershey also created a wireless solution using Hewlett-Packard iPaq Pocket PCs with integrated bar-code readers to help the U.S. Navy keep track of spare-parts inventories, Fisher said.

At press time, Hershey was evaluating a wireless pen from Logitech that, when used with special paper, lets users write in a normal fashion and store up to 50 pages of text in a single pen, Fisher said.

"You still need the forms-processing application on a server," he said. "But it's $100 per pen vs. $2,000 for a Tablet PC."

SCOTT CAMPBELL contributed to this story.