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Midsize Businesses’ Technology Adoption Plans
By James A. Browning

While it has been widely reported that IT spending will improve this year, vendors should not simply assume that IT spending will increase and therefore that midsize businesses (MSBs) will dedicate the lion’s share of their IT budgets to new technologies. The fact is that some legacy systems remain critical to MSBs, while others still adequately support the business, giving MSBs time to determine the appropriate path.

In a recent Gartner survey of North American MSBs, larger MSBs (500-999 employees) top IT initiatives cited include infrastructure upgrades, Web enablement of applications, business intelligence and security. Infrastructure upgrades include projects such as hardware replacements, network upgrades, operating system upgrades and migrations, and remote access improvements. Planned Web-enablement projects include business-to-business links, online payments and transactions, online access to information and e-learning. Security areas of interest include antivirus, Spam and network security.

Smaller MSBs (100-499 employees) cited projects that resulted in operational efficiencies as their top IT projects for 2004. These businesses are focused on optimizing their infrastructure to reduce costs of operation and utilize capabilities that may have never been applied from previous IT investments. This focus also drives objectives to enhance levels of performance and availability. The other top two planned IT investments in 2004 for smaller MSBs were security and customer relationship management.

Spending Plans on new Technologies

Source: Gartner Research (December 2003)

Figure 1 cites the intentions of a group of North American MSBs when it comes to adopting some of the more-hyped technologies in 2004. And when considering adoption of new technologies, references from like-size and like-industry peers, as well as affordability and ongoing operational expenses, drives adoption more than the tendencies of larger enterprises.

Impact the technology decisions of nearly 500 MSB IT Executives at Midsize Enterprise Summit, April 18-21 in Nashville. Click here for details.

If you have a question related to this article, e-mail Jim Browning at midmarket@gartner.com.

James A. Browning is Vice President and Research Area Lead of the Small and Midsize Business Research organization at Gartner, Inc.

Reference
Article Top View
Midsize Businesses Set Sights on 2004 IT Budget Plans
Publication Date: December 12, 2003
Author: James A. Browning, Gartner, Inc.



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