CompTIA Research

Summary of “CompTIA's Fifth Annual Convergent Technologies Research Study: Discovering Trends and Opportunities in the U.S. and Canada SMB Markets”

About the Study

The SMB market is a major area of growth today. What should providers of Convergent Technology solutions know about the SMB end-user market?In order to answer this question, CompTIA conducted an in-depth study on the Convergent Technologies market. Findings from this study of 518 SMB respondents during June-July 2007 will help you capitalize on this market.

Extensive analysis was conducted to identify the greatest areas of opportunity. The sample of SMB end-users (companies with 20-499 employees), represent a mix of industries, including government, financial, manufacturing and healthcare. Detailed results provide information on topics including SMB attitudes and perceptions, the current state and future of convergent technologies, purchase spending and decision-making, and purchase behavior and channels.

Sample of Key Findings

• A vast majority of SMBs are neither early adopters nor significant laggards. They typically tend to wait until the technology is proven in the market with a justifiable ROI, before making any major technology investments.
  
  
• Improved productivity and efficiency followed by cost savings emerged as top purchase drivers for converged solutions among businesses that are planning to invest in these solutions within two years.
  
  
• More than one-half of SMBs in the U.S. and Canada that are planning to adopt some type of converged solutions indicate the need for a small network upgrade to support such solutions. And more than two-thirds agree with the importance of a network assessment on a periodic basis.
  
  
• More than three-quarters of both U.S. and Canada SMBs have not had any major network attack or security breach in the last twelve months. However, those that suffered a security attack experienced a significant-to-moderate impact on downtime due to delays. Typically, these attacks happen every month or bi-monthly in the U.S. and 3-6 times a year in Canada.
  
  
• In the U.S., more than one-third of SMB end-users anticipate a 10%-20% growth in their spending on telecom and network services for next year. Canadian SMBs expect less than 10% growth.
  
  
• Customer references and word-of-mouth are the most important sources of information in influencing and guiding SMBs purchase decision-making process for IT and communication systems.

---

Complete reports, white papers and Web poll results are available to CompTIA Corporate Members. Use the 'Member Login' box on the left to access all of CompTIA research, or click here if you have forgotten your username or password. The information contained throughout these studies is proprietary to CompTIA. No portion of these studies may be reproduced in any form without the expressed written permission of CompTIA. However, small segments may be quoted if proper citation is made. For more information or if you’re not a member and would like to purchase the report, please contact research@comptia.org.