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AMI-Partners: SMBs in Singapore to Spend $3B on I.C.T. this Year
SINGAPORE --(Business Wire)-- Small and medium businesses (SMBs, or companies with up to 999 employees) in Singapore are set to invest a whopping US$3 billion this year to strengthen their information communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, up 6% over last year's level. Telecom will contribute up to US$1 billion to the 2008 total, according to the latest study by Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.
"A sizeable number of small businesses (SBs, or companies with up to 99 staff) in Singapore have crossed the first wave of IT adoption, which involves building the basic IT infrastructure, such as deploying PCs, using basic accounting and productivity tools," says Balaji Sreedhar, Singapore-based research analyst at AMI-Partners. "They are now in the second wave of IT adoption, which focuses on connecting within the enterprise, such as using local area networks and servers. The third wave involves increasing connectivity outside the enterprise, such as with suppliers, resellers, channel partners, and customers, according to AMI's Three Waves of IT Adoption."
To connect and extend their enterprise this year, SMBs will spend about 20% of their IT budgets on software, security, storage and networking. The bulk of telecom spending will be on services, with SBs accounting for up to 75% of Singapore's total ICT spend.
The top three priorities for SBs in Singapore in the next 12 months are deploying in-house or hosted data backup and disaster recovery solutions, enhancing IT security, and boosting Internet or networking bandwidth or connection speeds.
For MBs, the top two priorities are the same as with SBs. The third priority is enhancing IT storage solutions in terms of storage capacity and storage management. "SMBs in Singapore have been increasing their headcount due to a robust economy and this is driving them to increase their Internet bandwidth, enhance IT security and add more storage in the next 12 months," says Mr Sreedhar. "Top challenges faced by SBs include tough competition, improving company profitability and more demanding customers. Apart from tough competition and improving company profitability, finding and retaining talented staff is a key challenge for MBs."
SMBs in Singapore typically like to make ICT purchases by understanding the total cost of ownership (TCO), buy scalable solutions which meet the growth of their businesses and opt for solutions which align with their overall business strategy and processes.
The top three vertical sectors contributing to ICT spending across Singapore are wholesale, manufacturing and professional services (which include financial planning, billing and record keeping). These three verticals will contribute more than 50% of ICT spending in Singapore this year.
"SMBs in Singapore will continue to spend on ICT technologies this year provided the economy remains robust," Mr Sreedhar says. "Therefore it is essential for ICT vendors to keep close tabs on the pulse of the SMB market to better understand the ICT needs of this dynamic market."
About the Studies
AMI's 2007 Singapore Small Business Market Overview and Comprehensive Market Opportunity Assessment and 2007 Singapore Medium Business Market Overview and Comprehensive Market Opportunity Assessment study highlights these and other major trends in the context of current/planned IT, Internet and communications usage and spending. Products and services covered include established and emerging hardware, software, applications and business process solutions. Based on AMI's annual surveys of SMBs across Singapore, the study track a broad spectrum of issues pertaining to budgets, purchase behaviors, decision influencers, channel preferences, outsourcing, service and support. Also covered are detailed firmographics and critically important technology attitudes and strategic planning priorities. This data points to key opportunities and messaging hot buttons for vendors and service providers seeking to match their offerings to SB market requirements.
For more information about this study, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, please call 212-944-5100, e-mail ask_ami@ami-partners.com, or visit the AMI Web site at www.ami-partners.com.
About Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.
AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence -- with a strong focus on global small and medium businesses (SMBs), and extending into large enterprises and home-based businesses. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business strategy perspectives and "go-to-market" solutions. Led by Andy Bose, the firm has built a world-class management team with deep experience cutting across IT, telecommunications and business services sectors in established and emerging markets.
AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services companies over the last ten years. The firm is well known for its IT and Internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets; its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 25 countries; and its proprietary database of SMBs and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey-based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.
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