I think every big company in the world has entered the IT services for small businesses ring in the last few months!
Here is AT&T’s latest offering.
Here is Staples’. They been providing services through Thrive for some time now, but apparently they are now getting more serious about it.
And of course, we all know about Dell offering services in NYC and Texas.
I’ve also seen competitive proposals recently from Verizon, and I know of at least one other major telecom getting into the game soon.
Phew! That’s a lot of new competition. The telecom companies are definitely going after the SOHO market; I think if you are one of the companies going after this niche, you should be afraid of these offerings. It’s probably only a few months before they are doing hosted applications and desktop virtualization as well, which could really cut a chunk out of your business.
If you are going further upstream, I don’t think these are much of a threat. However, Dell and Staples are definitely going after larger small businesses, and they have a lot of muscle to throw around. How much will that impact our business providing IT services for small businesses?
Time will tell!
MRC
