BANGALORE, INDIA: Surajit Sen, Director – Channel, Alliances and Market, NetApp India shares his views about technology adoption by small and medium businesses (SMBs).

Excerpts:

CIOL: Which are the top technologies adopted by SMBs?

Surajit Sen: We have seen aggressive adoption of networked storage amongst SMBs, who have become discerning about their data availability and scalability requirements. Networked storage is today available to them at price points, which meet their business goals.
 
CIOL:  On which technologies will SMBs invest in 2009?
 
SS: We expect SMBs to invest in IP-based SAN storage technologies like iSCSI & FCoE in 2009. They would also be looking seriously at server and storage virtualization.
 
CIOL: How has NetApp products helped SMBs in technology adoption?
 
SS: NetApp is very focused on the SME segment. NetApp value proposition of space efficiency and utilization resonate well amongst SMB customers.  NetApp offers technologies like 'Thin Provisioning', 'FlexClones' and ‘deduplication’, which dramatically improve the storage efficiency and reduce costs for customers.  NetApp has launched the S Family product line, which is tailor-made for the SMB customers.

CIOL: How robust are Indian SMBs in technology adoption?

SS: Generally, SMBs refrained from making wide use of technology because of huge costs. However, with vendors offering lot of cutting edge technologies that offers affordable, additional capacity to a lot of IT requirements, SMBs have begun to adopt and implement IT in a big way.

Earlier IT was not stretched to SMBs. From MIS to email to automation – today they have progressed in IT implementation. In the last couple of years, SMBs have mostly deployed the ERP and CRM solutions. Disaster recovery and business continuity process is also on top of mind for most SMBs today.

SMBs, especially small businesses, are very cost-conscious. Unless they see the business value upfront, they would not invest. They look for straight cut business benefits.