Arrow ECS: Still plenty of mid-market opportunities 25 June, 2009 By Chris Talbot

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The expected increases and decreases are also expected to more or less balance out, with the average decrease being 18 per cent and the average increase being 16 per cent. What this means for resellers is there are still plenty of opportunities in the mid-market, said Robert Spee, director of marketing for the mid-market and IBM groups at Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions.

"For the most part, this validated our thinking and validated our approach and investment in the mid-market and solutions area we're focusing on. We find our resellers need this kind of information, this validation, to have the confidence to move into new solution areas and expand their business in solution areas," Spee said.

The survey is a follow-up to a survey conducted in April 2008. Spee said it was decided that, considering the changes in the economy in the last year, it was important to do the survey again. The distributor now plans to run the survey annually.

"There were a number of shifts that we saw, and also we dove down a little bit further in the questions that we asked, particularly in the area of IT initiatives," he said.

Arrow's mid-market group focuses on five broad technology categories -- security, storage, data management, collaboration and virtualization. While last year's survey asked questions about initiatives planned in those broad categories, this year's survey broke the categories down into more specific areas.

The two top initiative areas were data management and security, which didn't change from last year, but when broken down into specific areas, information security rose to the top, followed by business intelligence (which Spee said has increased in importance within the mid-market).

"I was a little bit surprised by the high ranking of business intelligence," he said.

When asked about top technology issues, respondents cited the sharing of information as the most important issue. Companies are looking more into business intelligence and collaboration to assist them in the sharing of information, Spee said.

In terms of business issues, it should come as no surprise that reducing costs has jumped to number one (cited by 77 per cent), but number two is customer service. Those two have taken over as priorities from security and reducing risk (cited by 38 per cent), which Spee said was not surprising considering the economic downturn.

The survey shows that there are still good mid-market business opportunities out there, and that resellers should be confident in move into the five solution areas Arrow ECS's mid-market group supports, Spee said.

"We continue to see this as a very strong market with a lot of opportunities. It's just a question of understanding where those opportunities are," he said.

A new question on the survey this year asked IT executives about what they look for when it comes to their financial needs. Return on investment (ROI) is most important, followed by total cost of ownership (TCO). However, when it comes to ROI, the survey proved wrong a myth about expected ROI. Only 12 per cent of respondents said they require ROI for their investments in one year or less, even though anecdotal evidence has suggested a much higher percentage, Spee said.

"I think they're more reasonable in their requirements. They're just more demanding that the reseller provide that justification," he said.