The New IT for Small Businesses: The Costs and Benefits of Utilizing Emerging Technologies to Drive Competitive Advantage

Featured article by Suaad Sait, EVP, Products & Markets at Solarwinds

The practice of IT is in a constant state of change – from the birth of the mainframe to the personal computer explosion to the data center boom. We are now in an era where IT is a part of every business, not just big business or those placed squarely in the tech industry. Every company is truly an IT company – and those that can successfully use technology as a competitive differentiator are the ones that have successfully placed IT at the heart of their business. As such, IT practitioners must be constantly on top of new technologies and how the pace of change affects the delivery of technology services to an organization.

However, we are now in a state where this rate of change is happening at a staggering pace; the advent of virtualization and cloud computing combined with the consumerization of IT and availability of consumer devices in the workplace further complicate an already complex IT infrastructure. Add to this the increased security risks due to the digitization of sensitive information and the growth of sophisticated hacking, and small- to medium-sized businesses can’t help but feel the squeeze when looking to prioritize where they need to focus time, personnel and capital resources.

According to a recent SolarWinds survey of 298 IT practitioners, managers and directors, this new era of IT is driven by a few key technologies, including cloud and SaaS, virtual networks and end user-driven, self-service automation. This is true for the enterprise and SMBs alike. The survey also found that 39 percent of SMB IT pros think the impact of infrastructure complexity has greatly affected their role and responsibilities, and another 56 percent say it has at least somewhat affected their role and responsibilities.

However, this rapid rate of technological change also means IT is absolutely integral to overall business strategy; executive leadership looks to IT to guide decisions around technology investments that have enormous impact on an organization’s ability to provide services and/or goods, acquire customers, manage operations and ultimately drive profit. In fact, according to the survey, more than 50 percent of small business IT pros are given the opportunity to regularly provide guidance for strategic business decisions with regard to emerging technologies, and another 42 percent are given the opportunity to do so occasionally. However, just 29 percent of these small business IT pros are completely confident in their ability to do so.

Contrary to popular thought, SMBs may actually be at an advantage over the enterprise because their size allows a certain level of agility in adopting technologies and changing course on business strategy to remain competitive. However, SMBs are at a disadvantage for obvious reasons: they often face limited resources and personnel to research, purchase and implement new technologies. So, it is important for SMBs to carefully prioritize cost versus benefit when confronted with new and emerging technologies.

Cloud Computing: Evolving the Role of IT

According to the survey, small business IT pros view cloud computing as one of the top three technologies most disruptive to business. Vendors such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Rackspace and Microsoft Azure are making waves in the marketplace and quickly becoming go-to solutions for businesses of all sizes. The survey also found that cloud or SaaS skills will be those in highest demand for SMB IT pros over the next three to five years.

Cloud resonates with SMBs because of its typically low introductory cost and its ability to reduce pressure on internal IT resources to manage existing functions. Line-of-business managers also turn to the cloud on their own when pressed for available in-house resources (this may also explain why small business IT pros ranked BYOx – including BYOA – as the second most disruptive technology to business).

However, cloud may not be the perfect solution for SMBs. The total cost of ownership may be higher than originally budgeted, and vendor relationships can prove to be more difficult than originally anticipated. Additionally, many IT pros face a lack of insight into the services that line-of-business managers are using until an issue arises.

When it comes to cloud computing, IT pros should get comfortable with and’s, not or’s. Cloud is not a separate function of IT, but rather a technology used to complement the existing infrastructure. This hybrid approach is what will make SMBs successful when managing the cloud.

SMB IT pros should consider the following to make sure they get the most out of the cloud without straining resources, technical or otherwise:

1. Communicate with line-of-business managers often to determine their technological needs and work with them to determine how best to fill them given existing resources and budgets. External cloud-based applications can often be purchased via departmental budgets rather than touching the IT budget, but note that management and the vendor relationship will often still fall to IT.
2. Specifically for the private cloud, take advantage of low-cost cloud management and monitoring tools to troubleshoot performance issues.

Mobility: The Golden Goose and the Rotten Egg  

Mobility allows for work to be done from anywhere at any time – which often proves to be both a blessing and a curse for IT. According to the survey, small business IT pros view mobility as the number one-ranked technology most disruptive to business. This is likely because almost all of an organization’s customers and employees have expectations around using mobile technologies. Customers expect to be able to use mobile technologies to research products, ask questions, engage directly with a brand and make purchases. Employees expect to be able to access the network and business applications via mobile devices. Small businesses also view mobility as the emerging technology investment most needed to remain competitive over the next three to five years.

As mentioned above, mobility’s cousin, BYOx, ranked as the second most disruptive technology by small business IT pros. IT is now expected to manage a mobile workforce, proliferated by employees using their own mobile devices in order to work. This brings about a whole slew of additional management and security issues.

Mobility inside the workplace has a drastic effect on a network and its systems. The catch is the while the influx of tablets and mobile smartphones forces the network, systems and likely the IT pro to work harder, the workforce as a whole becomes more productive and efficient. Because of this, it can be difficult to justify an anti-BYOD position to leadership when they themselves are often the ones reaping the benefits of mobility.

SMBs do have several options when it comes to mobile device management (MDM), though; vendors such as AirWatch and Good are well-known. CYOD – or choose your own device – is another solution in which IT can offer up popular options for end users to choose from, while still maintaining the necessary insight into the kind of devices accessing the network.

Virtualization and the SMB

Small business IT pros ranked virtualization as the third technology most disruptive to business. In contrast, mid-size and enterprise companies ranked virtualization first. This is likely because small businesses typically lack the resources to implement virtual solutions; virtual desktop infrastructure and server, storage and network virtualization all require an extensive amount of capital and personnel resources, in addition the amount of complexity it can add to IT infrastructure.

However, small business IT pros did rank virtualization as the second most important technology investment needed today to remain competitive in the next three to five years. So, while small businesses may not have extensively invested virtual technologies until now, that is about to change. Virtualization solutions from VMware and Microsoft and other vendors have proven to ease IT management, automate procedures and reduce physical infrastructure – all of which benefit the time, capital and space constrained small business IT department.

SMB IT departments don’t have to go all in with virtualization to start; consider implementing VDI to specific teams that would benefit most to start, or implement virtual storage solutions for just part of your network.

Embracing the New IT

For SMBs to stay competitive, it’s imperative that they are able to take advantage of emerging technologies – but only if they’re able to put those technologies to good use for the purpose of driving business. Not surprisingly, then, IT practitioners who participated in the survey overwhelmingly expressed the need for more training to feel empowered in the era of the new IT, followed by the desire to better understand the business. Beyond simply implementing technologies, this will allow IT professionals to effectively communicate the benefits of various emerging technologies to business leaders.

Suaad Sait, EVP, Products & Markets

Suaad Sait is the Executive Vice President of Products and Markets at SolarWinds, an IT management software provider based in Austin, Texas. With more than 20 years of leadership experience in the technology industry, Sait leads the company’s global product and market strategy with responsibility for the performance of the SolarWinds’ product portfolio. Most recently, Sait served as Chief Marketing Officer of Rackspace, the open cloud company. Prior to Rackspace, he was founder and Chief Executive Officer of ReachForce, a venture-backed B2B marketing-data services startup, where he continues to serve as chairman of the board. He was also vice president and general manager of products and marketing at Pervasive Software, Inc., Chief Marketing Officer for Liaison Technology (acquired by Forest Express), founding vice president of marketing at Ventix Systems Inc. (acquired by Motive), and head of Internet product marketing for Dazel Corp. (acquired by Hewlett Packard). Sait earned a Master of Science from The William E. Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester and a B.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo.