When it comes to the small-to-medium business customer, what a lot of vendors don’t get is just how much the IT organizations of these types of companies need to get done with very few people to actually do the work.
In contrast to the average Global 2000 company that seems to have a specialist on hand for every IT task, the average SMB organization needs to leverage every asset they have in multiple ways.
This is why SMB organizations tend to look askance at vendors who show up with products that require them to rip and replace things they have today that are working. Instead, what they prefer is a model that allows them to embrace something new that extends their capabilities.
A good example of something that fits that model is a new unified communications offering from ObjectWorld Communications. The new offering allows an IT organization to keep its current PBX system in place while using the ObjectWorld offering to take advantage of new capabilities based on VOIP (Voice-over-IP) technology.
An IT organization could opt to rip and replace the PBX systems all together, but the amount of risk that creates for the average SMB organization tends to outweigh the benefits brought forward by new VOIP technology. Over time, they may very well opt to eliminate the PBX system, but in the short term a phased migration approach is usually an easier sell both politically and economically.
In contrast to this approach we have what Cisco is trying to do, which essentially calls for the wholesale elimination of the PBX function. Basically Cisco is arguing that the entire telecommunications function can be replaced by the network. Trouble with that approach is that it assumes that there is somebody in the IT organization with the skills on hand to run that. As we all know, that pretty often is not the case so for a lot of IT organizations making the leap to the Cisco approach is a little more adventurous than they are inclined to be.
None of this means that the Cisco approach won’t work as well as any other. It just means that Cisco needs to think through the transition strategy a little bit more before IT organizations at SMB companies are going to endorse it.
There are countless example of vendors that have not really thought through how selling to the SMB sector is different from the rest of enterprise, not just in terms of budget dollars. A reduced appetite for risk is one of the hallmarks of the SMB sector. Until vendors find a way to mitigate the risks associated with moving from one generation of technology to another, no matter how good their marketing is they will not see SMB customers move to adopt new technologies any faster than they do today.
Michael Vizard is Senior Vice President/Editorial Director for Ziff Davis Enterprise. He can be reached at michael.vizard@ziffdavisenterprise.com.
