Business Technology Roundtable

The healthcare and social services vertical marketplace is extensive. It includes companies that provide medical care and social assistance for individuals -- which includes ambulatory healthcare services, hospitals, nursing and residential care facilities, and social assistance services. Healthcare has been a growth vertical in U.S. business markets. According to the latest market study by In-Stat , research supports a forecast of continued growth, with healthcare spending $518 million on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) in 2015. Overall telecom spending by the healthcare and social services vertical was just under $16 billion in 2010. Wireless communications is the largest of the product categories, comprising about 40 percent of telecom spending in the healthcare and social services vertical. Cloud computing and managed services is the fasting growing component. Wireline data and wireline voice comprise the remainder of the telecom spend. Increased Demand for Man...

The cloud computing phenomenon now includes a set of services and technologies that enable the delivery of on-demand computing services over the Internet in real-time, allowing end-users instant access to data and applications from any device with online access. Although still in its infancy, gaining traction has not been a problem. According to the latest market study by In-Stat, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is set to grow to roughly $4 billion by 2015. "Growth is expected in all public cloud service segments," says Greg Potter, Analyst at In-Stat . Many Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications have been around for a long time, but now with the advent of entire platforms for these applications they're gaining the necessary visibility among businesses to reach renewed momentum in the marketplace. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (SaaS) is also gaining increased traction, especially in the small business market. In-Stat's latest market study includes ...

Gartner recently shared their top technology predictions. They said that increased transparency -- and the need to drive business value -- are bringing disruptive change to IT organizations in 2011 and beyond. One of their key findings: cloud computing will enable many organizations to exploit internal capabilities to establish new business service revenue streams. Other informed industry analysts share a similar point of view. Businesses are increasingly moving their computing and collaboration applications to the cloud, and their shift in IT spending reflects that change in behavior. A recent market study by In-Stat forecasts cloud computing and managed hosting spending by U.S. businesses will surpass $13 billion in 2014, up from less than 3 billion today. “Although spending across all sectors and size of business is projected to grow, there are some segments where growth will be staggering,” says Greg Potter, Research Analyst at In-Stat. Apparently, based on In-Stat’s ass...

The accelerating Organic IT phenomenon is being driven by executive frustration that today's business technology demands are not being fully met by their internal support organization. Some IT teams, however, have taken decisive action to free-up time to become more responsive to their savvy user's requests for new capabilities. Perhaps that's a key leading indicator why remote managed services have emerged as a rare growth area within this tough economic environment. Clearly, proactively increasing business process agility and cutting operational costs has never been more popular. As a result, annual spending on remote managed IT services by the North American Small and Medium Business (SMB) sector is expected to increase 3.3 times in the next five years. That represents a compounded annual growth rate of 28 percent, according to the latest market study by AMI-Partners . Extracting Value from Business Technology "While SMBs have been steadily increasing their relian...

Today could have been a really bad day for my one-year-old company, Nine Lives Media Inc. My New York office suffered a broadband outage. If our Web sites, network, email, phone and application systems were all centralized in that office we would have been dark all day. But our small business didn't skip a beat. Why's that? The three-word answer: Redundant managed services. Our New York office has a redundant managed broadband connection. Plus, we depend on a range of decentralized managed services and SaaS (software as a service) solutions to keep our business growing. Here's a look at the services we're leveraging today -- and a few that we hope to leverage in the next six months. Managed and SaaS services we're currently leveraging: Hosted Email : I don't know why any small business would consider an on-premise system these days. Hosted email is cheap (it's a commodity, in fact), reliable, fast and accessible from anywhere in the world. It's so cheap...

The fiscal fourth quarter has just started. But now is the time for small businesses owners and mid-size business managers to start looking ahead to 2009. "Cost cutting" is a popular topic during today's uncertain economic times. You can hide in fear and close your wallet. Or you can take these four steps to gain more predictable operating costs -- while driving your business forward. 1. Move to a managed services contract : If you're using an IT consulting firm or solutions provider to maintain your network and PC infrastructure, ask them about so-called "managed services." Many consulting firms now offer flat monthly fees to maintain, protect and optimize business desktops, servers, network infrastructure and applications. This flat-rate approach will eliminate those "surprise" emergency IT repairs that can throw off your company's monthly budget or hinder cash flow. If you're not familiar with the managed services, here are some key ques...