Finding the Growth Markets

Looking for a growth market? More IT vendors these days are targeting the small business and midsize business space because those markets are forecast to have a higher growth rate than enterprises. It’s not just the existing small businesses, but it’s also the small businesses that may be just starting up as their founders become layoff victims and decide to strike out on their own.

How to target small and midsize businesses – also known as SMBs – was featured on the agenda of HP’s recent HP Executive Think partner event which gathered 60 of the company’s “best” partners together with HP executives including CEO Mark Hurd to talk about strategies and new technologies and the future. Other topics included cloud computing and green computing and targeting the public sector and other verticals.

“It’s not just the top revenue partners,” says HP’s channel chief Adrian Jones about who was invited to the event. “It’s the right partners in different segments of the market. The event is designed to help those partners get more profitable growth.”

Surprisingly, there was not much talk about the economy, according to Jones. But there was some buzz about the stimulus package.

“I don’t think anyone would say the dollars are flowing yet,” he says. But HP advised partners to establish relationships with the right people at customer sites because those dollars will begin to flow soon, and certainly by 2010.