The Tech Revolution Continues For SMBs

Published for the Week Of June 14, 2004

arlier this year I predicted that this would be the year of enterprise technology moving downstream into small businesses.

As we approach the halfway mark, I am still confident in that prediction. We’ve already seen major enterprise vendors making moves to attract small-business solution providers and their customers.

In the spring, Cisco Systems announced several programs for solution providers focusing on the small-business segment. In May, storage giant EMC introduced a storage array targeted at small and midsize businesses and priced at less than $6,000. And early this month, Check Point Software Technologies expanded its year-old channel program for small-business solution providers. The company increased marketing and support for the VARs as well as expanded the product lines available to them, recognizing that all small businesses don’t fit into one box.

Going further, this month in our In Depth feature, CRN Senior Editor Joseph F. Kovar, a.k.a. “The Storage Guy,” takes a look at one example of this growing trend, the emerging “SAN-in-a-can” movement. Kovar reports that EMC is not the only enterprise storage vendor that is packaging lower-priced SAN bundles for the small-business market.

But small-business VARs and their customers aren’t necessarily allowing themselves to be spoon-fed from above. In storage, for example, solution providers say only a select group of small businesses actually need a SAN. For customers that do need a SAN, many solution providers prefer to build solutions based on their customers’ needs rather than on low-priced vendor bundles, Kovar reports.

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As small businesses are faced with more and more technology choices, one thing is clear: They will rely on their solution providers to help them make the right ones.

Larry Hooper is editor of Selling Small Business and senior editor/features at CRN. Contact him via e-mail at [email protected].