SMEs look to IT investment to beat the downturn

New research has suggested that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are investing in IT to help them get through the economic downturn.

Microsoft polled more than 600 specialists in SME technology across the US, the UK, Canada, France and Brazil and found that over half of respondents thought SMEs are looking to maintain or up IT spending this year.

About 50 per cent said that they thought they would be most likely to cut operating costs by implementing virtualisation or IT consolidation through a small or midsize server.

Meanwhile, usage of software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies - such as web hosting - was predicted to grow by 20 per cent among SMEs this year.

"Historically, we have seen that SMEs have responded to economic contractions by intensifying their use of IT, both to cut costs and to defend and enhance their customer relationships," remarked Steve Reynolds, managing director of Access Markets International-Partners.

About 74 per cent of UK firms use SaaS for web hosting purposes, according to a report published by Econsultancy and Convera earlier this year.

Written by Dipika Patel