BANGALORE, INDIA: Indian small and medium businesses (SMBs) are set for a major technological transition. While the small businesses are aggressively investing in basic computing infrastructure, the medium-sized businesses are looking at boosting their IT infrastructure for increased revenue growth and competitiveness.

So which are these top technologies that are catching up with the Indian SMBs?

According to a forecast from Frost & Sullivan on 'Unified Communications in India,' the total market size of UC is approx $670M in 2008 which is likely to grow to more than $1B by 2010. A majority of this includes enterprise IP telephony (almost 50 percent) and applications like presence, mobility, conferencing and collaboration are around 10 percent. The highest growth area is around these applications that add maximum value to end-users.

While SaaS model is gaining acceptance as a viable alternative for businesses, it still hasn't become mainstream. According to a report from AMI Partners, about 26 percent of small businesses, and about 33 percent of medium businesses currently use and/or plan to use SaaS which is a pretty large scale given the number of SMBs in India.

So is the story of SOA adoption among SMBs. Studies show that integration remains the biggest reason for SOA, but the focus can shift to new applications and portal development in future.

Going by leading vendors, customer companies and the market forecasts with regard to top technologies for SMBs in India today are certainly:
1. Unified Communications
2. IP Telephony
3. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
4. Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), and
5. Web 2.0

The list of technologies doesn't end here but goes on and on. CIOL brings to you a special on "Top Technologies for SMBs" which focuses on the key driving factors that are making SMBs adopt these technologies. The special will also talk about challenges enterprises face in adopting new technologies, the services/ products offered by various vendors to the SMB market.