From The Editor: Build Your Strategy Around Evolving IT Market Drivers

By Gennifer Biggs, Business Solutions magazine.

One of my favorite presentations at the Ingram Micro VTN Invitational events is the State of the Market address from Gartner analyst Tiffani Bova. When Bova addressed VTN members in 2010, she laid out cloud, advanced analytics, reshaping of the data center, social computing, security, virtualization, and mobile applications as top IT market trends.

2011 IT market trends include:

• Cloud (not a surprise here)
• Mobile applications (especially those customized for your verticals)
• Next-gen business intelligence and analytics
• Social communications (namely collaboration that empower cost saving and innovation
• Video
• Ubiquitous computing (getting computing power where, when, and how the user wants

Why do some of these sound like SMB-oriented technologies? Because they are. Bova outlined that the SMB market represents 44% of total IT spend, accounting for $828 billion worldwide in 2011 alone. Good news for the channel, right? Most IT providers are particularly comfortable talking to and supporting SMB customers, so as more technologies emerge that solve the business problems of SMBs, that means more opportunity for you.