E-business investment among SMEs continues to grow

May 2, 2007

Small and medium sized enterprises' (SMEs) investment in e-business continues to grow, according to a recent survey report by the Institute for the Information Industry's Market Intelligence Center (MIC).

The report forecasts that investment by SMEs in e-business infrastructure increase by 0.7% this year, with manpower and hardware still accounting for the highest proportion of investment.

Demand for IT technologies has grown as e-business investment increases, according to the MIC report. IT manpower and infrastructure comprise a comparatively higher proportion of spending by SMEs. In addition, IT outsourcing and security issues are considered priorities in discussions among companies and enterprises, said the MIC.

According to the MIC survey, manpower accounts for 48% of IT investment by SMEs, the highest proportion. The report also projects that IT hardware purchases from 2007 to 2009 will mainly consist of Network Attached Storage (NAS) technology and disk arrays. IT outsourcing will cover application systems design and development, application systems maintenance, and website design and construction. In addition, SMEs will continue to invest in Customer Resource Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The MIC report also predicted a continued favored outlook for networking equipment such as Virtual Protocol Networks (VPN) and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies.

According to the report, SMEs place a great deal importance on name brand recognition when purchasing IT software and hardware, as Taiwan SMEs are more likely to rely on the top IT equipment manufacturers. The top four manufacturers are comprised of two foreign and two Taiwan companies.

The report projects that the top four IT technology investment items for Taiwan SMEs will be: integrated applications software, security improvement, software upgrades, and IT hardware equipment and maintenance.

(Economic Daily News)

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