Top 5 Tech Segments SMBs Will Spend Money On

1: NETWORK SECURITY
Network security is always a concern of small-business end users and that should continue in the next year, says Audrey Levi, president and owner of Altek Computer Group, a Miami-based solution provider. Indeed, nearly one-third of respondents said they had sought or got a solution provider's input for this technology.

"It's definitely big in the higher end of small business. We're seeing a lot of SSO [Single Sign-On] and adoption of [Cisco's] ASA [Adaptive Security Appliance]. At the small-business level, you're going to see a lot of Active-X type technology, antivirus, content filtering. Those are still hot," Levi says.

Small businesses are employing more people in the field, or allowing them to work from home, which has led to increased security sales around VPN, Levi says. In addition, the refresh of a company's network security is a lower-cost capital expenditure for a small company, she says, which could drive more sales in that area.

"Even a nicely loaded ASA is $5,000 or $6,000. That's not what you'd spend on a server with virtualization or a SAN," Levi says.

2: ARCHIVING AND BACKUP
Of all storage solutions, backup and recovery technologies remain the strongest storage seller for VARs this year, according to a VARBusiness State of the Market survey. In fact, nearly three-quarters of VARs responding to the survey said they planned to sell backup and recovery products this year, and the CMP Channel survey showed that nearly one-quarter of SMBs said they sought a VAR's help in this area.

When shopping for backup and recovery technologies, SMBs cite cost, lack of in-house IT staff and the complexity of solutions as reasons for their hesitancy about implementing these solutions. Fortunately for value-added resellers, two out of three of these barriers are easily solved, as resellers can help SMBs choose from the variety of solutions available on the market and can even manage the processes for them.

Post Computer's Torres says small-business customers are now much more interested in backup and archiving information than in the past. "I'm selling more Iomega REV drives and more optical drives," he says. "It's technology that's been out there for several years, but they're starting to talk about it now."

Brian Okun, a regional sales director for security services consulting firm Prevalent Networks, says that a lot of the SMBs he sees have backup and recovery systems in place but that the businesses have no idea whether or not the systems are effective.

"They have no plans for the testing and verification of data, or they might have older technologies that might not be up to snuff, or might not understand if they have regulations or requirements around data, or don't know what to do with their data. This creates a great opportunity for us to educate our existing client base as well as [creates] new opportunities," Okun says.

Moving SMBs from backup- and-recovery solutions to archiving technologies also presents a great upselling opportunity for resellers, Okun adds.

The VAR finds that the market is ripe for services opportunities, such as backup-and-recovery assessments. In fact, the reseller's archiving and backup business now comprises about 15 percent of the company's revenue and is growing, he says.

Online backup services is also an area where resellers are starting to see increased interest in the SMB market, and vendors are now better enabling resellers to offer such services as part of their managed services portfolios—opportunities that can help them lock into recurring revenue streams.

Next: Client/Desktop Security