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"SMEs are currently spending about USD 12 billion on IT and is expected to go to about USD 24 billion in the near future". Narayana M, Head - Strategy & Mktg, Novell India

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PCQ Bureau
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What are the IT solutions that can be used to increase the production, efficiency and profitability of SMEs in India?



A prominent industry report in 2011 states that there are more than 100 lac SME units in India with an investment of above Rs 1 lac crore. This sector has recorded double digit growth during last four years. It contributes 40 % to industrial production and 6% to GDP. According to the data available, the SMEs are currently spending about USD 12 billion on IT and is expected to go to about USD 24 billion in the near future. The American firm KS & R in a recent survey conducted across 100 companies in India covering verticals such as retail, pharma, banking, wholesale and telecom highlighted that around 84% of the mid-market Indian enterprises expect to increase IT budgets in 2011, amongst which around 52 % companies is expected to hike their IT spend by 10% and 32% likely to increase their spending in IT by at least 1to 10 percent.





The above mentioned data is a clear cut indication as to the prominence of the SME segment as a growth driver in India & also how SMEs are actively turning to IT to scale their businesses to the next level. Now how IT could help is a question that would be quite individualistic to each organization depending on where they are in terms of growth cycle & also in terms of the IT roadmap the organization has set for themselves. Depending on these factors, SMEs have a choice to traverse the path that the enterprise segment has taken in terms of building up their datacenters or jump straight in to the hosted/cloud models of IT which could be more lucrative in terms of ROI.

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In my view, SMEs should take a proactive approach in planning their IT environment keeping in mind the various parameters of increasing production efficiency & profitability fuelling growth instead of a reactive approach that is quite predominant in the industry.

Do you have any IT products and services meant for SMEs?



We are now four brands united under a single holding company named "The Attachmate Group" and are one of the largest, privately-held enterprise software holding companies in the market today. Our principal holdings include Attachmate, NetIQ, Novell and SUSE. SMEs can build their IT environment on our open source based SUSE Linux platform trusted by over 14000 enterprises worldwide & certified for over 13500 h/w platforms & over 8500 s/w applications. Our Novell Open Work Group suite provides essential components like Libre office (open office), e-directory services , mailing & collaboration solutions etc which is a robust package to take care of all basic IT needs of the SME & stacks up as a strong alternative against other proprietary vendor offerings as a compelling robust, flexible & cost effective solution. Our best in breed & Gartner magic quadrant acknowledged Identity, access, security & compliance management solutions enable the SME to be secure & compliant to negate threats both internal as well as external to the organization while ensuring adherence to the various mandated compliance norms.

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