AMI-Partners: SMBs in France to Spend US$1.7B on Security and Storage.

-France is a technologically advanced nation, and its medium businesses have reached the "Wave III of technology adoption", says AMI study-

NEW YORK -- Small and medium businesses (1-999 employees) are set to spend US$1.7 billion on beefing up their security and storage solutions this year, up 16 over 2006. Small businesses (1-99 employees) will show a higher growth rate of 17, followed by medium businesses (100-999 employees) at 14.

These findings come from recent surveys conducted by New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc. In 2006, French SMBs spent more than US$32 billion on IT and telecommunications. This is forecasted to grow 5 in 2007 as SMBs, especially those in the other services sectors, beef up their IT products and solutions.

France is a technologically advanced nation, and its medium businesses have reached what is called the "Wave III of technology adoption" where they are already leveraging their network. More than 70 of France MBs have deployed a VPN and almost 60 already use a Corporate Intranet. In contrast, due to their limited resources, only 85 of small businesses own PCs, leaving room for growth in building basic infrastructure and connecting the enterprise.

With increasing access to open systems, SMBs understand the need to be more careful with data flow, and hence favor investment in IT security and storage. Security-conscious MBs have already moved beyond basic Internet security solutions (anti-virus/spam/spyware) to network firewall and VPN in order to protect their Internet gateways from viruses and hackers. As a result, IT security spending has increased rapidly - from 2005 to 2006, IT security spending grew 36 for SBs and 15 for MBs - the highest among IT and telecom categories.

"While SMBs unanimously have a preference for onsite data back-up, SBs select desktop PC-based external storage, while MBs opt for LAN server data back-up on tape," says Pauline Courtiau, New York-based analyst at AMI. "Historically PC-based external storage has been the most relied upon tool to back-up data. However new trends are emerging where MBs especially are planning to invest in more modern data storage methods. About 33 of SMBs currently using servers already use DAS (Direct Attached Storage) solutions which also have the highest planned adoption rate for the next 12 months."

Overall, SMBs agree that deploying SCM (Supply Chain Management) and improving connectivity are of the highest strategic importance for 2007. "In order to finance and achieve these goals and many others, SMBs will generally count on internal funds and will prioritize understanding of the total cost of ownership before any purchase," Ms. Courtiau says. "However, the direction of French economic policies over the next five years will depend on the outcome of the presidential elections to be held at the end of April. SMBs are closely watching the elections to know up to what extent the future government will help foster SMB growth and their future expansion plans."

About the Study

AMI's 2006-2007 France Small Business Market Overview and Comprehensive Market Opportunity Assessment and 2006-2007 France Medium Business Market Overview and Comprehensive Market Opportunity Assessment studies highlight these and other major trends in the context of current/planned IT, Internet and communications usage and spending. Products and services covered include established and emerging hardware, software, applications and business process solutions. Based on AMI's annual surveys of SMBs across France, the study track a broad spectrum of issues pertaining to budgets, purchase behaviors, decision influencers, channel preferences, outsourcing, service and support. Also covered are detailed firmographics and critically important technology attitudes and strategic planning priorities. This data points to key opportunities and messaging hot buttons for vendors and service providers seeking to match their offerings to SMB market requirements.

For more information about this study, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, please call 212-944-5100, e-mail ask_ami@ami-partners.com, or visit the AMI Web site at www.ami-partners.com.

About AMI-Partners

AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence -- with a strong focus on global small and medium businesses (SMBs), and extending into large enterprises and home-based businesses. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business strategy perspectives and "go-to-market" solutions. Led by Andy Bose, the firm has built a world-class management team with deep experience cutting across IT, telecommunications and business services sectors in established and emerging markets.

AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services companies over the last ten years. The firm is well known for its IT and Internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets; its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 25 countries; and its proprietary database of SMBs and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey-based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.