SMEs to drive IT spend
Study reveals UK SMEs will spend around $18bn in 2006
A buoyant UK economy will see small businesses spend 10 per cent more on IT in 2006, according to a study by AMI-Partners.
Britain's economic growth has outstripped the rest of Europe at 2.6 per cent GDP per annum, compared to two per cent by the rest of the EU, and now firms of under 100 employees will pour an estimated $18bn into IT spending this year.
The key areas to small UK businesses in 2005 were networking, where spending grew 28 per cent from 2004, and security which grew 20 per cent over the same period.
Somnath Das, research associate at AMI-Partners, said: "The flexibility of wireless connections has attracted the UK small businesses to adopt wireless LAN. Many of them are planning to implement in the next year and the UK has a genuine room for greater IT adoption."
David Kelly, EMEA sales director at networking vendor Linksys, said: "We have seen a small business demand as firms attempt to take advantage of the technology on offer.
"For any small business security is a concern and this is another area of demand we are seeing," added Kelly.
Chris Durnan, chief executive at security reseller Peapod, said demand has been stronger in the SME market.
"We find the 100 to 250 employees market as a sweet spot for us, where there has been heavy investment in security and in particular network security."
Ed Blake, head of e-security at VAR Real Solutions, said: "We have seen a lot of spending on security, with email and web security being the most important. IT spending in general is picking up and I expect security to continue to go well."
Ash Hussein, sales and marketing director at network security reseller Axial Systems, said the enterprise market is growing at a similar rate to the small business market.
"The vendors we work with are pushing towards the small business space and the market is growing."
Hussein added wireless and Voice over IP are the main areas of growth, which leads to additional consultancy and service revenue for the channel.