The Daily Network Monitor

I often debate with friends in the IT industry on the merits of chasing business in the SMB. Lots of friends agree that the growth in the SMB sector continues to be strong but they argue that re-designing existing products for SMB’s has proven to be less than a profitable venture. I disagree with the entire rationale for reasons that might not appear to be obvious.

The reason most ventures have been unprofitable has little to do with the market and more to do with the philosophy of 99.9% of companies who try to push down complexity to SMB’s with new packaging. SMB thrive on easy to use yet effective solutions for complex environments. Vendors who service that market with dedication are profitable. Those that just repackage complexity with a simple title end up failing and end up going back to the enterprise to sell.

When will the vendors learn?

I’ve written about this before and after reading this latest review by Denise Dubie of Network World I couldn’t resist.

If your currently a network and operations management customer of a Big 4 vendor, namely HP, BMC, CA or IBM your likely as upset as 640 of your colleagues and looking for a change in course and performance. After all, Denise stated that 40% of respondents gave the Big 4 a C grade and 30% gave the forbidden D grade. What is going on? You pay hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions and all you get is C & D grade performance, service and respect?

Denise notes a Gartner report that says, “”Continuing customer satisfaction issues, the emergence of new technology and service delivery approaches, and the rise of large technology infrastructure providers expanding their capabilities into management software all contribute to making these industry leaders vulnerable.”

For more years than we care to count at times, visionary vendors like Ipswitch and a host of other SMB management vendors have dedicated productive time and thought to designing products that are effective in resolving pain yet easy to use. For years, the Big 4 dismissed us all as point products while they continued to fatten their products with hard to use features. As markets have matured in knowledge and grown in frustration, I feel exhilarated to know that our plan to build usable products was not only the right plan – it will make a difference in thousands of networks across the globe.