巴西中小企业IT投入$300亿

Small and medium businesses (SMBs, or companies with up to 999 employees) in Brazil are on track to spend up to US$30 billion on IT and telecom this year, up some 11% over last year. The bulk (43%) of all IT and telecom spending will be toward telecom, according to the latest study by New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc. Brazil remains the leading IT and telecom market in Latin America, accounting for approximately half of all dollars spent in the region. Within Brazil, “new business formation and PC acquisitions, plans for opening branches, new hires and increased remote and mobile workers are driving SMBs’ usage of communications and networking resources to enhance competitiveness in a global economy,” says Maria Carolina Guedes Smith, New York-based Senior Consultant at AMI-Partners. “Brazil’s SMBs present a promising and untapped market opportunity for IT vendors, telecom equipment manufacturers, telecom service providers and other technology vendors.” There are roughly 10.6 million SMBs in the Latin America region, with 40% located in Brazil. About 81% of Brazil’s MBs (medium businesses, or companies between 100 and 999 employees) and 76% of Brazil’s SBs (small businesses, or companies between 1 and 99 employees) are currently using mobile phones. “The usage of mobile devices to access email, calendaring and contact information is on the rise, particularly among MBs,” Ms. Guedes Smith says. “Inexpensive mobile technology is a major driver of increased mobile telephony penetration among Brazil SMBs.” As such, Brazil's cell phone services market by SMBs is the fourth largest in the world, behind the United States, Japan and Germany. It leads the Latin America region, and accounts for up to 41% of the total cell phone spending by SMBs in the region. “As real-time communication and data needs increase for SMBs, their need for technologies that enable them to connect with their internal and external world also increase,” Ms. Guedes Smith says. “In this scenario, networking environments are the basic infrastructure required to assist SMBs in adopting more advanced solutions such as hosted/premise-based IP communications”. Although the current adoption of IP-based technologies is at an embryonic stage, SMBs in Brazil are gradually becoming aware of the benefits of IP-based communications. This shift toward wireless communications and IP-based networking platforms is spurred by the fixed mobile convergence (FMC) which integrates mobile infrastructure and applications into a fixed IP networking platform. Although technical and regulatory hurdles are being removed, there still remain a variety of business issues that need to be addressed in the SMB space. Brazilian SMBs also lack internal staff to assist in managing advanced IT operations, particularly among SBs. Controlling costs is another important issue to overcome increased competition. Vendors interested in catering to SMBs in Brazil must do their homework and refine their approach by offering solutions that are designed and packaged specifically for SB and MB needs. Moreover, Brazil’s SMB market is highly fragmented, and a successful vendor needs to also understand the preferred channels that SMBs turn to for their IT and telecom needs.