The latest research by Symantec has found that top-tier SMBs spend roughly seven percent less on IT than the bottom tier.
Symantec‘s Global SMB IT Confidence Index report attributed this trend to companies investing in advanced yet cost-effective initiatives such as mobility and cloud.
“These top-tier SMBs are investing in IT actively and strategically, yet paradoxically they are spending less,” Symantec endpoint management business pre-sales consultant, Mark Shaw, said.
The report also uncovered that these top-tier companies are more successful in achieving high-level business goals by leveraging IT.
Shaw said this is because these SMBs look at IT “more strategically than technically”.
“We saw 81 percent of the top tier SMBs are telling that using computing to strategically drive their business goals was somewhat to extremely important way to increase market share,” he said.
“In comparison, 35 percent of the bottom tier said the same time.
Top tier SMBs were also found to be more secure, with 78 percent saying they were somewhat to extremely secure compared to 39 percent in the bottom tier.
“From a security perspective, the top tier fared a bit better due to a push to minimise monetary losses from potential cyber-attacks,” Shaw said.
Not so complicated
Another key finding from the survey was that computing complexity is a much smaller issue for top-tier SMBs than for the lower tier.
Shaw attributes it to the top-tier investing strategically, which in turn leads to fewer problems with storage management, back-up and disaster preparedness.
“Those are the areas that are handling much better, yet as was alluded to earlier, they are spending less at the same time,” he said.
