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Indian SMBs to invest USD 134 Mln in 2006: AMI

Small and medium businesses in India are on track to cross USD 133.6 million on beefing up their IT security solutions this year, buoyed by their adoption of sophisticated enterprise applications and advanced storage solutions, said New-York based AMI partners in a report. According to the study, that’s a jump of 53 percent over last year, which in turn saw infotech security spending leap 63 percent over 2004.

As India’s SMBs (with employee sizes between 1 and 999) reap the benefits of Internet access, the need for network connectivity, increased storage capacity, IT security have also amplified. "Many SMBs have seen the loss in productivity and have experienced the damage that online viruses can inflict," says Neha Jalan, Kolkata-based Analyst at AMI-Partners. "With the explosive growth of the Internet, the advent of broadband ‘always-on’ technology, and the increased prevalence of viruses and malicious worms, data security has assumed greater significance."

Due to lack of awareness, the use of security solutions was limited. However, with the upsurge in security solutions adoption is the result of pressure from both internal and external factors. Jalan said the factors include deployment of broadband connectivity, integration of various business applications, usage of hosted applications and increased interaction with global business partners. "More than a third of SBs and 42% of MBs rated the need to enhance enterprise IT security as important and very important," the report stated.

"India SMBs are gradually progressing from the first stage of security solutions adoption to deploying sophisticated bundled offerings" commented Jalan.

AMI’s latest studies show that 83 percent of SMBs have installed anti-virus software on their PCs and 30 percent of medium businesses also deploy anti-spam software. Additionally, the majority of LAN small and medium businesses have deployed a software based firewall on their PCs or LAN servers.

The earlier trend of deploying stand-alone security solutions has now been replaced with integrated security solutions.

"India SMBs prefer to manage their security deployment internally, and as most are still investing in basic security products, this strategy has been effective" remarks Ms. Jalan. “Nevertheless, as businesses progress towards deploying firewalls, VPNs and IDS, managed security services offer the twin benefits of convenience and cost-effectiveness."

Less than a tenth of medium businesses currently invest in managed security services, but this service is anticipated to grow much faster than other traditional security solutions in the near future.


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