Smb News & Articles

Once upon a time, SMB customers ran their businesses on little more than the IT equivalent of duct tape and bailing wire. Today, however, they are more likely to lightweight mirror larger enterprises in software adoption trends. (Tech marketers, you might want to set aside some time to review your SMB market value propositions.)

A couple of disruptive surveys regarding social media usage have been making their way around the Web over the last few weeks. Among the most surprising findings is the fact that small businesses are giving social media the cold shoulder. Can you say detrimental? 

When your business, from a mom-and-pop outfit to a local store, starts using social media, things can be confusing as you move from a personal-use mindset to a sales, marketing or support style of use.

 Skype and the like saw a bit trouble this week with the announcement of a new Web-conferencing package for SMBs. WebEx 8 offers online meetings for US$ 19 per month, enabling Cisco (news, site) to better compete for business among smaller companies.

The University of Phoenix and Institute for the Future recently combined forces in order to produce the Future Work Skills 2020 report, examining what exactly propel's change and which skills we'll have to fine tune if we want to keep up. 

 Today Optify (news, site) gave a hat tip to the littler guys with the announcement of a new Basic Edition of its marketing software for SMBs.

After all the hype, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer finally unveiled Office 365 in New York. For those who were expecting, or even hoping, for something new, it would have been a disappointment. If, however, you were to count the number of times he used the words "collaboration" and "SMB," you get a clear idea of where Microsoft is hoping to go with it.

If you’ve ever wanted to combine the power of a Tweet with the inspiration of a photo, without having to rely on a third-party photo application, we’d like to introduce you to MarketMeSuite.

This week, MarketLive has announced that it is offering its eCommerce Platform-as-a-Service on Facebook, Google Docs adds new functionality -- again, Microsoft research shows SMBs offer more mobile functionality than large enterprises and SMB channel partners need vendor support.

This week, mediafeedia introduced a social media management tool exclusively for Facebook and free at least initially, IDC predicts a massive jump in IT spending by SMBs, Kerio releases v7.2 of its collaboration tool and Pardot upgrades its cloud-based marketing automation platform.

Pardot, providers of cloud marketing automation software for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), announced the latest release of their cloud-based marketing automation platform. The Spring 2011 update focuses on offering more flexibility and holistic integration for customer relationship management to make SMB marketers more efficient.

This week Intel is chasing SMBs with new targeted, cloud services, social media use continues to rise in the SMB space with Facebook still the most popular application, Citrix bought desktop virtualization startup Kaviza and KnowledgeTree offers mobile document management.

This week, following research from IBM that shows enterprises will be moving en masse to the cloud, AMI-Partners research shows SMBs are heading there too. New figures from RingCentral suggest tablets may be on the way to replacing PCs, while Avaya offers better collaboration and unified communications. Sage, too, has been busy and has released Peachtree 2012.

This week, in what may be a response to Microsoft’s recent moves to integrate its products, Google Apps and NetSuite team up and the result is definitely good for SMB. Xerox and Cisco have also partnered, CA offers data protection on Azure, while TrendMicro offers backup for very small businesses.

There were a number of good things released recently in the SMB space including news from Zoho that it has made its Meetings tool Mac-friendly, while WorkSimple has released a free version of its social goals management app. Blue Tie through Breeze Social helps SMBs start effective social marketing campaigns, while HP offers enterprise print management to SMBs. Research also shows that SMBs are turning their back on the desktop.