Techaisle Analyst Insights

Dell

The year 2014 belonged to Dell with its end-to-end solution portfolio, post-privatization enthusiasm and channel momentum. In 2015 Dell will have to accelerate its market penetration with converged infrastructure, cloud client computing, security and new IT services offerings.

• Key question: Can Dell align its "breadth" capabilities with the "depth" required to position, deploy and support an increasingly-complex portfolio – and can it do so at scale?

IBM

IBM began to regain its lost glory in 2014 with rapid-fire Cloud announcements – SoftLayer, Cloudant, Bluemix, Watson analytics, Verse and Cloud Marketplace. IBM is in the best position to cement its place at the CIO table with its Cloud offerings. In 2015, IBM's biggest challenges will be to make all offerings work together instead of "ticking all boxes". Its GBS (Global Business Services) group has to announce bite-sized packaged services solutions, analytical services and performance-based pricing to disrupt the market.

VDI gets a bad rap because of cost and complexity but its utility in a mobility driven market segment cannot be underestimated. Although Techaisle's most recent SMB VDI adoption survey is still in the field, as per our last survey conducted in January 2014, the US SMB VDI adoption continues to increase. Techaisle's quantitative VDI/DaaS research shows that the SMB objectives in adopting either on-premise or hosted VDI/DaaS solutions revolved around mobility, application availability from anywhere and on any device, disaster recovery, centralized management and administration of end-point devices at the same time reducing costs. SMBs are recognizing the need to adopt virtualization within their businesses, however, Techaisle survey also shows that 56 percent of SMBs consider the technology complex to understand and implement.

Techaisle's recently completed survey of SMBs and Mid-market companies reveals the following Top 10 IT Priorities, IT Challenges and Business Issues that the IT and Business Decision makers are facing in 2015. For the first time in many years the top SMB business issue is Increasing Profitability. This is followed by Increasing Business Growth and Reducing Operating Costs.

For the midmarket businesses Reducing Operating Costs is the top business issue for 2015 followed by Increasing Profitability and Increasing Business Growth. Also appearing for the for the first time in 2015, Managing Uncertainty is among the top ten business issues for both small and midmarket businesses.

It is a given that SMB’s Cloud Computing adoption is growing. It is a given that SMB’s SaaS is fast replacing on-premise software. Does it even matter if the growth rate is 20 percent or 25 percent, whether it is US$100 billion market by 2012 or US$125 billion market by 2014? What really matters is how adoption can be accelerated. What really matters is how the right advice is given to SMBs that are adopting SaaS/Cloud Computing.

There are many forecasts in the market. Depending upon which market research firm one follows each has its own stated forecast, definition and defensible methodology.

Market will grow, it has to grow. Industry is driving SMBs towards Cloud and increasingly taking on-premise alternatives off the market. Everyone that is in the IT business is talking about Cloud Computing. There are hardly any alternatives left for SMBs.

So we should really get off the forecast and market sizing train. Instead we should concentrate on factors that will help vendors and channels to accelerate adoption. Now one may argue that all analyst firms have conducted their own surveys to determine the reasons for adoption or non-adoption. However, each of them misses the point of finding those important nuggets that identify a path for vendors and channels, a path that will lead them to Cloud Computing nirvana.

Analysts and analyst firms like us should seek answers to burning questions such as:

1. What applications should vendors focus on?
2. What comes first – back and storage, mission-critical applications, CRM, vertical applications or something else?
3. What should channels be doing in targeting the SMBs?
4. What should be done to convert the non-adopters to adopters?
5. How should SMBs be educated?
6. What is the role of multi-touch devices?
7. What will happen 3 years from now?
8. Which SMBs will regret and which will rejoice after adopting Cloud Computing?
9. How to educate channels?
10. Which market segments are more important than others?

Hence, instead of talking about SaaS/Cloud Computing Spend and growth rates, let us begin a sensible dialog about 10 “thundering” questions about Cloud Computing. You can even check out Techaisle’s Cloud Computing reports here.

Tavishi
Techaisle