The Register looks at what constitutes the mid-market for software:
When evaluating IT products to buy, customers should look very carefully at how a vendor is defining the mid-market in order to ascertain whether or not the products are suitable for the needs of their particular size of organisation. For firms at the higher range of the market, vendors are producing scaled-down versions of their products – essentially lighter versions of the products designed for less complex requirements. Customers should also look at the delivery options since hosted solutions have fewer implementation requirements and hence less up-front cost. Many of the former ERP vendors, as well as some pure-play technology vendors, are taking this route.
At the lower end of the market, many small companies have found recently that they are being forced to hook into whatever technology system their business partners are using – and this can multiply fast if those business partners are using a range of divergent technologies.
Smaller companies should be looking for technology solutions that provide them with a unified platform that handles seamlessly a range of communication protocols on their behalf. This is the route that companies like Microsoft are taking with the development of a platform for smaller companies that allows them to perform simpler business requirements, such as order communication and processing, without needing to train users to handle the variety of business technologies that its partners are using.
