On Wednesday morning here at VoiceCon, Siemens and IBM announced a new OEM agreement that lets IBM license Siemens’ unified communications (UC) application, OpenScape. IBM plans to use OpenScape to improve upon its own Lotus UC offering, called Unified Telephony. 

After the announcement, I sat down with Andy Chew, Siemens senior VP for unified communications, and James Lawton, Siemens VP of strategic system integration. We talked a little about the IBM OEM, but what interested me more were their thoughts on the state of the UC market and Siemens’ approach to SMBs. 

Chew, who’s based in the U.K., told me that he thinks the UC market is still “immature,” but that migrating to UC should nonetheless be a priority for SMBs. In addition to improving communication capabilities and lowering costs, SMBs can adopt UC with little risk if they opt for the hosted services or SaaS route, he said. 

Siemens currently offers hosted versions of its UC offerings, which SMBs can purchase on a monthly basis. If a customer decides Siemens’ OpenScape is not for them, for example, it can simply drop it without having to worry about breaking any long-term contract. 

As for security, Lawton assured me that at Siemens “security is at the base of everything.” While I can’t verify that independently (at least not from the floor of VoiceCon), it’s encouraging at least that a major UC vendor like Siemens seems to recognize the importance of security, especially for SMBs that might not have the resources to withstand a devastating cyberattack.  

Security, Lawton said, “is a mantra for us.” Amen to that.

Forrester Research is advising telecoms to offer SMBs everything under the sun.OK, that’s an exaggeration, but in a new research note, senior analyst Michele Pelino advised telecoms to start offering value-added services in order to grow their SMB business. In a recent survey, Forrester found that about 77% of 793 SMBs surveyed buy bundled telecommunications services from their providers. Twenty-three percent purchase local and long-distance voice bundles; 35% buy local, long-distance and broadband Internet access bundles; and 19% bundle local, long-distance, broadband and wireless voice.  Once a provider reaches the point of selling a so-called “quad-play” bundle (a combination of local and long-distance voice, broadband Internet and wireless voice) to an SMB customer, how does it grow its revenue from that SMB? The answer is value-added services. 

Pelino is predicting that telecoms will begin offering Web site hosting, email services, security services and general Software as a Service (SaaS) technology. To some extent, this is already happening. For instance, I reported two weeks ago that XO Communications will offer a variety of SaaS technology to its telecom customers. Forrester’s survey found that 13% of SMBs that buy bundled telecom services are interested in value-added offerings, but Pelino said the potential market for them is even bigger. 

“I think the thing is with SMBs, if you say, ‘Do you need X, Y and Z services,’ they say no,” Pelino said. “But do they know the value that potential service would bring to the table? This snapshot of SMBs that already subscribe to bundles shows that some SMBs recognize this and are interested in value-added services. But it also shows that there is an education process that needs to happen.” 

Yes, vendors need to educate SMBs. But SMBs should also educate themselves. If they’re going to buy mission-critical IT functions as services from their telecom provider, they need to know how to assess the quality of those services. When XO Communications announced its SaaS strategy, it partnered with Jamcracker, an aggregator of SaaS technology that analysts told me was a quality player in the market.  

Pelino’s research also found that price isn’t the only reason SMBs prefer to buy bundled telecom services — although it remains a top issue. While 87% of SMBs that use bundled services said that price benefit is important or very important, accountability from one company was a close second, with 81% saying it was important. And the convenience of dealing with only one carrier was important to 75% of them.  

“The accountability issue hits on the fact that SMBs oftentimes when they use multiple vendors without the bundled scenario — it’s very difficult for them to know who to call and figure out what the problem might be,” Pelino said. “There might be four different points of contact, and then who do you call? With the bundled scenario, there is one point of accountability. Then behind the scenes, it’s the vendor’s job to figure out what to do.” 

So making things simple seems to be a driver for SMBs to get everything from one provider. But sometimes that convenience can come with a cost. An SMB’s telecom provider won’t typically be a trusted brand for information security. Who will these telecoms partner with to deliver these value-added services? SMBs need to educate themselves about this technology before they commit to expanding their relationships with their telecom provider.    

Free online office productivity suites would seem to be perfect for small businesses. Why do so few of them even know they exist? 

A new survey (PDF) from AMI-Partners found that 38% of small businesses (companies with one to 99 employees) don’t know that free online alternatives to Microsoft Office exist. 

Small businesses outside theUnited States were even more unaware. In the U.K., 50% of small businesses were unaware, and in India 53 percent of businesses weren’t clued in. 

AMI said that vendors need to boost awareness of their Office alternatives and demonstrate the value of these tools for collaboration. 

Of course, one of the most famous companies in the world offers a fairly robust suite of office productivity tools: Google Apps. Have hundreds of thousands of small businesses truly not heard of Gmail, which is an integral part of Google Apps? I suppose it’s possible.  

There are some other online productivity applications out there that are fairly less well known. Their user communities are smaller but very devoted to the technology. There is ThinkFree, which I wrote about earlier this year, and Zoho. 

All of these services offer free versions of their technology and some interoperability with Microsoft Office. The companies I’ve talked to like the collaborative nature of online office productivity technology, but they aren’t read to rip and replace their installed Microsoft Office just yet. Still, small businesses could benefit from these technologies, especially since they’re free.

Now is definitely a good time to be an IT pro at an SMB in Indonesia, Malaysia or Singapore. According to a study by AMI-Partners, SMBs in the 10 countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will invest $12.5 billion (U.S.) in IT infrastructure this year, a 17% increase over 2006 spending. 

In particular, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore will see the highest gains in their SMB IT spending in 2007, with increases over last year’s budgets of 19%, 14% and 8%, respectively. 

In a press release, AMI-Partners analyst Balaji Sreedhar broke down the specifics, saying, “The bulk of the IT spending for SMBs in Indonesia will be on computing, Internet, security and storage. In Malaysia and Singapore the bulk of the spending will be on computing, Internet and IT services.” 

Unfortunately, the 2007 IT budget forecast for North American SMBs is not as rosy. In February, Forrester Research reported that SMBs there will see “an average budget increase of just 2% over actual spend in 2006,” nearly half of which will go towards hardware and staffing concerns.  

The numbers, however, are somewhat misleading. The IT infrastructure in Southeast Asia is considerably less mature and robust than in North America, greatly increasing the region’s SMB IT spending growth potential. Even so, if AMI’s forecast proves correct, 2007 should see dramatic improvements in ASEAN’s IT infrastructure.