Eye On The SMB Prize 

The small and midsize business, or SMB segment, is made up of 400 million companies around the world and accounts for 65 percent of global employment. It also represents a $610 billion IT spend, representing a massive opportunity for the channel, according to Michelle Ragusa-McBain, Cisco Systems’ provider elevate leader.

The COVID-19 pandemic sped along IT trends that were already creeping in the background, including the as-a-service trend, especially in the SMB space. Today, a third of Cisco’s revenue is being driven by subscriptions, and they aren’t the only ones. Tech giants such as HPE, Dell and IBM are also going all-in on subscriptions and consumption-based IT.

“You can see the writing on the wall of how things are converting and changing,” Ragusa-McBain told an audience of solution providers at CRN parent The Channel Company’s XChange NexGen 2022 conference in Orlando, Florida on Tuesday.

Ragusa-McBain during her keynote shared research from Cisco and other third-party research firms that illustrate the changing IT landscape and demand for different buying models coming from SMBs. She also shared five tips that MSPs can implement to boost their marketing strategies and content distribution and how to craft the right portfolio of technology solutions to grow their businesses despite, or perhaps because of, the “new normal.”

Here’s what Ragusa-McBain told partners.