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SMEs are increasing their investment in support staff that can keep their business infrastructures buzzing, says Tim Harmon
CW BUYERS GUIDE
SME IT
part 2 of 4
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). like their enterprise brethren, are shifting their technology focus from IT to business technology. As their focus on business systems -as opposed to technology products - continues to grow. SMEs are investing in their own IT support staff as never before.
Armed with internal IT support resources. SMEs are not ramping software-as-a-service (SaaS) as fast as large enterprises and are taking greater advantage of open source software.
The lines separating large enterprises from SMEs are becoming blurred. As the Generation Y labour pool increasingly permeates the employee ranks of SMEs. their influence is combining with a new generation of tech-savvy business owners to make SMEs look a lot more like their larger enterprise counterparts - on a smaller scale, of course. The result is a sector that is shifting its tech focus from information technology to business technology (BT).
Long gone are the days when SMEs bought only an operating system, an office suite and a bit of security software to meet their business needs.
With a keen focus on fuelling growth opportunities associated with the economic recovery, SMEs are making significant investments in what were traditionally enterprise business applications, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), customer service and support (CSS), marketing automation, and business intelligence (BI).
Internal IT support
SMEs are increasing investment in internal IT support. As SMEs recognise the increasingly important role...