eWeek has weighed in with their annual list of top SMB / MidMarket IT trends to watch in 2009. With IT budgets expected to be tight this year, eWeek says that small business owners must make wise investments in order to stay competitive. And because of the focus on cutting costs and managing budgets, eWeek says that technologies such as cloud computing, virtualization and the latest notebooks/netbooks can be well suited for midmarket companies.
- Cloud Computing. eWeek says cloud computing will continue to get traction, especially in the SMB marketplace.
- Virtualization. eWeek says because of the potential for cost savings, virtualization will be a key trend in 2009 for SMBs. Plus, eWeek says, building a virtual infrastructure can often result in a higher availability of resources, better desktop management, increased security and improved disaster recovery processes.
- Notebook/Netbook Adoption. The attractiveness of notebooks and their smaller, less powerful cousins, netbooks, has grown as features such as battery life and structural durability has improved...making this a trend to watch in 2009.
- Open Source Software. While open source certainly hasn't become a dominant force in the midmarket space, as more SMBs adopt open source technologies for non-critical applications, it is likely others, particularly tech-savvy small business owners, will realize the cost benefit potential of open source technology.
- Online Social Networking. eWeek says social networking has the potential to level the playing field for SMBs in a big way, but first need to understand what you want social media to do for your company.
Cloud computing is a trend I have been following for over a year and I'd have to agree that we will see increased interest from SMBs for not only SaaS, but Infrastructure as a Service as well.
The netbook trend is getting increased attention in the press. It will be interesting to see how the mobile device market and the netbook market morph over time.
Online social networking is a trend that I think will get even more hype in 2009 as the focus moves from consumer (e.g. Facebook) related social networking to business (e.g. LinkedIn) related social networking. With layoffs in the picture for 2009, people will be staying in touch even more via social networking sites.
To read the full article, go to the eWeek page: Five Tech Trends to Watch in 2009