Technology, Software and Service trends for 2006
What does 2006 hold in store for small businesses when it comes to IT technology, software and services? We looked at a number of areas and asked several key vendors and providers to give us their thoughts.
Software for Business | 23 Jan 2006 :
Small business has been a particular focus for Microsoft over the last couple of years, according to business group manager, Clive Ryan. He points to small business editions of Office and Microsoft CRM and to Small Business Server although he admits: “I don’t think the market knows why they’re called ‘small business’.”
He highlights Business Contact Manager in the small business edition version of Office as an important feature for companies with five employees or less that helps them keep track of business contacts and accounts. The recently released small business version of Microsoft CRM can help to manage sales campaigns, marketing campaigns and to share valuable customer information. It also includes a campaign wizard that helps small businesses organise their marketing campaigns.
Looking further ahead, Ryan says the next version of Office, codenamed Office 12, will have a “lot of innovation” and allow the user to get to 80 per cent of the things they want to do in one click”. He claims the new user interface will make it possible to do a mail merge in two clicks of the mouse and there will also be enhancements to Business Content Manager.
Another company targeting small businesses is Mamut, which recently signed an agreement for Eircom Total ICT to resell its business applications, covering accounting, CRM, sales force automation, logistics and e-commerce. Alan Moody, UK & Ireland managing director at Mamut, claims that because it has only ever been focused on small businesses its products are a perfect fit for the majority of companies in Ireland. “Our products make life easier for small businesses,” he argues.
The self-professed market leader in the SMB accounting, payroll and CRM software market is Sage. General manager Glynis Elrington claims that for less than €250, an entry-level business can get CRM, payroll and accounting packages and one year’s free support with Instant Accounting or TAS Books 1, QuickPay and Act!. The company’s best-selling product is Line 50, an integrated accounting, payroll and CRM package. Elrington says it’s popular because it can grow with the business and users only have to buy an activation key to open up more modules on the package.
TAS Books 1, 2 and 3 “don’t have everything Line 50” offers, but the software has been around for 20 years and has 20,000 customers. Depending on whether a company with 50-99 users opts for Line 50 or TAS Books, the complete accounting, CRM and payroll package will cost either €1250 or €1450.
Dual core and fingerprints
At the hardware level, the shift from desktops towards notebooks is expected to continue this year. Gene Tierney, client systems marketing manager at Dell, says it’s happening because a lot of business is “being done on the fly” and the technology gap between PCs and notebooks is closing. For instance, notebooks with dual core processors are already on the market. Advances in connectivity, especially with broadband and wireless, have helped drive the shift towards mobility. He anticipates security will also become important with smart card readers and biometrics.
Noel Kelly, who heads HP’s sales and marketing operation targeting small business customers, agrees that security is important and reveals that from March all of HP’s enterprise notebooks will have a fingerprint reader as standard.
HP has definitely seen a shift, with more and more desktops being replaced with notebooks, he adds. One reason, Kelly says, may emerge from a Meta Group study in the US which claimed shifting from desktops to notebooks gained an extra six hours useful work a week from employees.
Adding a little colour
According to suppliers like Brother and HP, the shift from single function device to multifunction is definitely on, as is the move from mono to colour printing. Tony Jackson, fax and multifunction product manager at Brother, says it already has a colour laser multifunction device on the market (the MFC 9420CN, priced at €929 + VAT) and expects to have as many as 12 by the end of the year.
Kelly at HP agrees that multifunction and colour are the big trends. He says the adoption of colour printing is allowing companies to bring back work inhouse that they previously had to farm out to other organisations. HP already has several colour laser multifunction devices on the market, including the 4500 series.
Networking in a box?
Networking giant Cisco claims to have invested $2bn in producing a suite of products specifically tailored for the SMB market. Ivan Duggan, Cisco commercial, SMB and channel manager for Ireland, says its Integrated Services Router allows small businesses to layer other technologies, including security, wireless and LAN switching on top of it. “It takes the complexities out of building a network,” he claims. “We’ve collapsed a number of different technology solutions into one or two boxes at most.”
The quickest Cisco product to reach a $1bn runrate, ISR will fit happily with an existing switch, PBX and firewall. As the customer migrates, it’s a question of switching on the added functionality. “We’ve made it simple to deploy, easier to manage and increased security and productivity,” Duggan says.
All-in-one security?
The big buzzword in security, especially small business security, is unified threat management (UTM). This basically entails putting a number of security functions - content filtering, gateway anti virus, anti spyware, intrusion prevention and reporting into a single hardware appliance. According to market research company IDC, UTM appliances will account for 50 per cent of security appliance revenue in Western Europe by 2009.
Justin Owens, managing director of SonicWall distributor Commtech, says Sonic Wall’s total Secure 10 can provide UTM at an initial cost of €600 for the first year and an annual subscription of €200. UTM appliances are “self-contained, straightforward and easy to manage,” he claims. “No one can change them.” They also have automated updates and can be updated “on the fly” by the supplier if a new threat emerges. Owens argues that to buy separate products to handle all the functions in the UTM appliance would cost thousands.
A different approach is taken by CA, which is also integrating security products but at a software level rather than the hardware approach taken by most UTM suppliers. It’s SCM secure content management product includes anti-virus at the gateway, web filtering and spam filtering while the ITM integrated threat management package provides anti-spam and anti-virus at the desktop.
Whatever the merits of UTM, Owens at Commtech still recommends a desktop anti-virus package as part of a multi-layered approach and most others seem to agree. “Security is all about a multi-layered approach,” says Reflex Magnetics managing director Richard Foley.
He suggests people make sure they have anti-virus and anti-spyware software on the desktop. They should also consider a managed anti-spam service. “Productivity is an area an awful lot of people don’t think about. If you have the anti-spam inhouse, you’re losing bandwidth.”
Foley is sceptical of the UTM approach. “You’re putting all your eggs in one basket. It may be cost-effective, but it’s not security-effective - you’re better off with a layered approach.”
He also argues that most security should be automated. If an anti-virus package, for example, has to be intensively managed, there’s a problem. “It should be doing the updates automatically.”
It’s also important to undertake a security review. Have the company’s circumstances changed? Are they accounted for in the security policy? Does the security product still do the job it was bought for? “People get complacent,” he warns.
Take IT outside
Foley’s recommendation that small businesses get someone to manage their anti-spam externally illustrates a potentially huge trend towards external managed services. At one level, this can involve paying a company to handle your email. An example is Servecentric’s Emailcentric, a managed, outsourced email service aimed primarily at SMEs. The company claims it has a strict spam and virus filter, and uses a double layer backup system to ensure emails are stored in accordance with the latest Irish and EU legislation on the retention of electronic data. It costs €10 per user, per month.
Another service offered by Servecentric is online back-up and restore. Hosting 365 offers something similar at a cost of €8.95 a month for 2Gbs online storage. According to marketing manager Ed Byrne, the problem with tape and hard drive backup's is that you rely on your own hardware and off-site storage procedures. If you use an online backup service you can synchronise directories of files to a server in a secure data centre, making it easier and safer to do backups.
Hosting is a popular option. ServeCentric, Hosting 365,Host Ireland and Novara are among those offering hosting services. According to Byrne, “putting a server in a data-centre under a managed services contract, lets a company license hardware and software on a monthly basis and have professional engineers beside their server 24x7, saving money and getting better support (and faster) service”. Hosting365 will charge you from €79.79 a month to host your own machine pre-loaded.
Another interesting proposition is remote support and monitoring. The availability in broadband has helped enable companies like Netfocus to remotely monitor and support customer sites. The basic package from Netfocus - Proactive Assist - provides unlimited phone support, remote desktop support, a monthly report and a list of recommendations, a checklist on maintenance tasks and a monthly half-day site visit for €450 a month. The top level Proactive Complete “monitors every aspect of the network”, according to managing director John Logan.
He says many small businesses are not using their technology to its full potential. “We want to get customers to think about how to use technology to improve their business. A lot of the questions are starting to turn into business questions.”
Managed services, such as those offered by SureSkills, can wrap all the elements together. Head of managed services Alan Stock claims it can provide “ small to medium businesses with a service commensurate to that provided to our enterprise customers but at a fraction of the cost”.
The managed service can include remote management, helpdesk, protection of the network from viruses, spam and spyware, ensuring data is backed up and protected, regular reporting and help with developing internal security policies.
“What we feel differentiates our service from that offered by traditional maintenance companies is its proactive nature,” claims Stock. “Quite simply, we get paid to keep your systems up, while many companies get paid to fix your systems when they are down.”
Eircom has also got in on the act with its Total ICT business. Eircom Total ICT general manager Tadhg Foley says 45,000 of its broadband lines are installed in small businesses so it makes sense to “address the support requirements of SMEs”. The purpose of Total ICT is to “provide traditional IT support, Internet support and a helpdesk at a very affordable rate”. The entry-level package costs €260 and includes 20 support calls. Eircom ICT also offers remote back-up and can supply hardware, software, printers and LAN infrastructure.
Broadband and beyond
As has been noted, the growth in availability of broadband has helped drive the provision of remote and offsite services for small businesses. Eircom recently improved the speeds of all its business broadband products. The basic package saw an increase in speed from 2Mb to 3Mb. According to head of business marketing, Andy Fordham, the basic speed increased from 1Mb to 3Mb in a ten months at a price of €45 a month. The connection charge has also been lowered to €24 and Eircom, he claims, is one of the few providers in Europe to include a wireless modem with a basic firewall as standard.
BT is currently taking a closer look at VoIP. It has already launched a service in the UK and Leo O’Leary, head of business enterprise, reveals it is looking to launch a similar service in Ireland this year. “We see it as a key technology to drive costs down and increase efficiencies,” he says. BT also recently combined with Calyx to offer a ‘one stop’ communications package, called Exchange, for small and medium businesses. Exchange includes a VoIP-enabled telephone system; handsets; broadband; ISDN; line rental; voice service; software updates and a technical support and maintenance agreement. O’Leary describes it as “an office in a box”. The monthly price will range from €172 to €403, depending on the number of employees.
Further out on the horizon, ADSL 2, is predicted to offer speeds of up to 32Mbs across a standard copper telephone line, but it is not yet available and O’Leary says BT “doesn’t have an estimated time for delivery”.
There’s always the wireless option. A spokeswoman for Irish Broadband says the big advantage of wireless broadband is that upload and download speeds are exactly the same. “It’s as important to get information out as it is to get it in,” she claims. In addition, because wireless doesn’t need a phone line, users save on line rental and have “an extra level of security” because if the phone line goes down they still have broadband and if the broadband fails, they still have a phone line.
What about the Web?
Things are happening in cyberspace, especially in the area of Web domain registration. Irish companies seeking to register as a .ie business will find it easier and cheaper this year, according to Michelle Neylon, managing director of Blacknight Solutions, which can provide an .ie domain, space for a Web site and email for €65 plus VAT.
As little as two years ago, it could take up to two weeks to register an .ie domain and cost as much as €90.
Richard Tarr, general manager of Host Ireland, says its entry-level package with a .ie domain, 500Mb of space, 50 email addresses and 24/7 telephone support costs €126.99 inclusive. The cost for a .ie domain name is €9.95. “We’re heavily subsidising it and picking up an awful lot of business as a result,” he claims.
There are other domains coming down the pipe, including .EU and .mobi. The .EU registration is expected to be available from April. Neylon says that because it was set up by the EC there is “a lot of background bureaucracy, but it will be attractive for companies that wish to be identified with the EU as a market”.
As for .mobi, it’s designed for people who want to deliver mobile data services and to help customers identify Websites and applications designed specifically for mobile devices. The company behind .mobi, Mobile Top Level Domain Ltd (mTLD), recently opened its European headquarters in Dublin and general manager Neil Edwards says the domain should be available in the late summer and cost “around the same price as other domain names cost”.
He says small businesses should be interested because .mobi will “provide a new channel of content and services for small businesses so that they can reach customers around the world” and highlights the size of the potential market by pointing out that for every PC in the world, there are four mobile devices.