Large IT Vendors Target the Western European SMB Market: An IDC Assessment

The growth expected in SMBs' IT spending is attracting major IT vendors present in the Western European market. To better position their offering and win deals with small and medium businesses, hardware, software, and IT service vendors are, at various levels, reorganizing their go-to-market strategies by establishing dedicated sales and marketing teams, after-sale service personnel, setting up partnerships with local ISVs and system integrators, and developing ad-hoc solutions for the SMB market segment.

This IDC study provides a description of the approach that major vendors such as Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP are adapting to establish a winning position in the SMB market.

''Western European SMBs are progressively becoming more IT-oriented and will continue to invest in IT at a faster pace in the medium to long term; the segment will hence not disappear from vendors' business strategies," said Laura Converso, senior research analyst with IDC's European Small and Medium Business service. "As large enterprises start spending again, vendors will redirect some of their attention to the corporate market, but will still push growth in the midmarket."