There was a time when small businesses didn't need to collaborate in the same way that large businesses do. The last people I know to get e-mail on the job all worked for small businesses.
When EMC rolled out
its Insignia line of storage products for small business yesterday, it included an SMB version of the company's eRoom collaboration solution. EMC follows on the heels of WebEx, which expanded its enterprise collaboration offerings when
it purchased Intranets.com, re-branded it as WebOffice, and launched WebExOne.
Small businesses have always been a huge part of the American economy, so what changed in the past couple of years to bring enterprise software vendors into the small business collaboration market? (I used just two examples, there's many more, including Citrix and SiteScape.)
There's bandwidth for one. It's now available to small companies. Small companies themselves aren't what they used to be. They are increasingly spread out geographically, and taking advantage of home offices to keep costs down. Online collaboration also helps SMBs keep costs in check by reducing travel and making it easier to involve partners and customers.
Small collaboration vendors are getting in on the game too. David Coleman recently wrote a piece on
how companies sell collaboration software to SMBs, and found extensive use of marketing tools like Google AdWords.
Comment and Contribute
