As Business Booms, Choices Abound

ll the signs point to 2004 being a banner year for solution providers focused on the small-business market. Some two-thirds of solution providers continue to forecast sales growth in the small-business sector. Small-business owners, too, are expecting sales growth this quarter and for the rest of the year.

More significantly, as CRN Director of Editorial Research John Roberts reports in his Quarterly Outlook, small-business owners plan to invest in IT. And if history is any indicator, these businesses are spending serious money. Some 28 percent of small businesses reported more than $50,000 in capital expenditures in the past six months; an additional 33 percent reported expenditures between $10,000 and $50,000.

With the enterprise and midsize markets stuck in neutral, it’s no wonder vendors are bombarding the small-business space with new technology offerings at a pace fast enough to make a business owner’s head spin. Consumer and SOHO vendors are beefing up their offerings and enterprise vendors are scaling theirs down, all in an effort to collect a slice of the one pie that seems to be dishing it out this year.

But are small businesses better served by beefed-up products designed specifically for their needs or by scaled-down enterprise offerings with more features than they’ll ever use?

In our In-Depth feature, CRN Senior Editor Dan Neel poses that question to security-focused VARs. The game is still playing out, but in the security space, VARs seem to be siding with the enterprise vendors. Since the trend spreads across all technology sectors, Selling Small Business in the future will examine how the issue affects other technology specialties as well.

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However it plays out, confusion for the customer in the form of too many new products means more business for the VAR. The old ‘mystery equals margin’ theory still applies.

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