The Economy and Business Conditions Having More Impact on Small and Midsize Businesses Worldwide Than Excitement About New Technology
A new report from IDC, “Taking the Temperatures of SMBs Worldwide: Regional Attitudes and Technology Interests, Mid-Year 2008”, finds more concern about the economy among SMBs worldwide than interest in the most potentially innovative new technology. Current economic growth and business conditions are by far the greatest concern for small and midsize businesses, particularly in North America, Latin America and Western Europe, the new study indicates.
"While the growth of SMB investment in technology will continue to outpace spending growth in larger firms, economic and business conditions are on everyone's mind," said John Roberts, Ph.D., research manager for Global SMB Research at IDC. "Despite the global slowdown, SMBs across all regions need to look ahead to when the global economy rebounds. Most still have a near term focus, with only modest interest in technology areas that have been getting a lot of attention elsewhere."
For this new study, IDC's regional SMB analysts assessed the current level of interest or concern in five different areas. This "temperature taking" focused on: future economic growth and business conditions, green technology, software-as-a-service (SaaS), virtualization and use of the Internet as a key business resource.
While there are differences across regions, SMBs in general are currently cold (or showing little interest/concern) when it comes to new and emerging technologies but are considerably warmer (or showing a great deal of interest/concern) when the discussion turns to economic issues.
There are a myriad of factors that could raise, or in some cases lower, the future level of interest/concern among small and midsize business owners when it comes to the economy as well as new technologies. In general, smaller companies across regions are more tactical and near-term in their concerns, but this view is increasingly shared by mid-sized firms as times grow more challenging. Among the four key technologies examined by IDC analysts, use of the Internet as a key business resource was considered having the greatest upside potential in terms of future interest among SMBs.
Virtualization and green technology are not yet registering with SMB owners except in more advanced medium-sized businesses across regions. SaaS, in contrast, has a somewhat higher level of current visibility, although interest is still at an early stage. IDC expects temperature increases in virtualization and SaaS the next 12 to 24 months as vendor promotions gain traction. Going "green" will be a much tougher sell, especially in underdeveloped areas, and IDC analysts do not expect temperature readings to change much in the future.
V.i. Labs’ Research Offers Insight to High-Value Software Applications and Piracy Activity
V.i. Laboratories, Inc., a provider of software protection solutions for securing high-value and mission-critical applications, issued a report revealing that piracy groups are fully exploiting security gaps in the common licensing mechanisms used in electronic design automation (EDA), computer-aided design (CAD), and product lifecycle management (PLM) software to produce counterfeit versions of these high-priced applications.
In particular, the piracy groups TBE (the Bitter End), LZ0 (LineZero0), oDDity, and Zero Waiting Time (ZWT) pose significant threats. Because of the well-organized nature of these groups and their relationships with suppliers embedded in the software vendor operations, some of these piracy organizations are able to issue an average of 500 crack releases per year.
V.i. Labs evaluated 17 leading EDA and PLM vendors, including Agilent, ANSYS, Autodesk, Cadence Design Systems, Synopsis, Dassault, The MathWorks, Mentor Graphics, National Instruments, PTC, Solidworks and UGS/Siemens, and discovered nearly 1,000 crack releases in the last three years alone, with 79 percent of those being PLM or CAD-related, and 21 percent being EDA-related. These statistics suggest that disabling licensing mechanisms within these titles has become more scripting- and signature-based, with little reverse engineering required. In addition, the groups focused on specialized software like EDA and PLM, indicating a criminal sponsorship to meet the demand of manufacturing businesses within emerging markets.
“The sheer volume and availability of crack releases within these industry sectors suggest a high demand for specialized applications by businesses engaged in manufacturing and designing products,” said Victor DeMarines, vice president of Products, V.i. Labs. “Unlike consumer-based software, these titles are often used by companies that can and should be purchasing licenses.”
V.i. Labs further analyzed several major releases of PLM vendors and determined an average Time To Crack (TTC) metric. TTC represents the point in time where the piracy group has produced a quality crack release of a vendor’s new software version. The average TTC for PLM vendors was 30 days. The fact that these vendors share the same license management framework plays a significant role in the piracy groups’ ability to leverage one vulnerability across multiple vendors.
The research was conducted using Vi Labs’ professional services and its partnership with Internet Crimes Group.
Salesforce.com Acquires InStranet
Salesforce.com, a technology provider in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), has acquired InStranet, a provider of knowledge management technology for business to consumer (B2C) call centers. The acquisition brings powerful knowledge base Dimensions technology to Salesforce CRM Customer Service & Support, enabling customers and call center agents around the world to quickly find the answer they need, the first time. The addition of this technology and approximately 350,000 global call center agents accelerates the momentum of Salesforce CRM Customer Service & Support in the growing customer service and support market, which is currently estimated at $3.4 billion by.
"This acquisition gives Salesforce CRM Customer Service & Support unique technology that provides a better approach to knowledge base management," said Sheryl Kingstone, director, Enterprise Research at Yankee Group. "And the timing is ripe; companies have been asking for a better way to organize their corporate knowledge to serve customers, and this acquisition will help salesforce.com differentiate itself from the competition."
The Customer Service and Support Market Opportunity -- Turning Agents into Brand
Traditional customer service and support vendors' "search and hope" approach using keyword search technology has been riddled with failure: Customers struggle because they can't find the right answer to their questions through Web-based self-service portals, and call center agents are more challenged than ever to help customers due to the large amount and complexity of information buried in their knowledge bases. According to IDC, searchers fail to find what they are looking for 30 to 50 percent of the time (Source: IDC, "Microsoft Buys Powerset Up the Web Search Ante," Doc # lcUS 21330608, July 2008).
InStranet has solved the customer service and support challenge by taking a completely different approach to knowledge base management through its patented knowledge base Dimensions technology, which adds the customer's context, such as product or geography, to the knowledge base to quickly hone in on the right solution and eliminate irrelevant search results. This technology provides call center agents with accurate answers to customer questions quickly and greatly improves customers' Web-based self-service experience, drastically reducing the number of calls to call center agents by frustrated customers.
NetSuite Opens Major Facility in Denver Metro Area
NetSuite, Inc., a vendor of on-demand, integrated business management software suites for mid-market enterprises and divisions of large companies, has expanded into the Denver, Colo. metro area, including the opening of a new sales and services facility in the city of Centennial.
"Our Denver presence is a strategic investment that we believe will accelerate our growth," said Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite. "The information technology sector is growing rapidly in the Greater Denver and Centennial areas, due in no small part to the region's highly qualified and educated work force. We hope to leverage this expertise and regional location to service our growing customer base in the central region with world-class sales and professional services teams." |
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