This morning’s presentation by Stephen Felice, President, of Dell’s Small and Medium Business Division, (as part of Dublin Chamber of Commerce’s business breakfast series) coincided nicely with this week’s publication of Gartner’s Hype Cycle Report for 2009.  Stephen Felice’s presented his view on three key technology trends relevant to the SME sector.

Earlier this week, Gartner was busy tweeting about its latest Hype Cycle Report.  Gartner is one of the world’s leading analysts on the IT industry, commenting on trends, issues, and technology.  Its annual Hype Cycle Report is a good way of getting up to date on what’s hot, what’s not and what’s real.  More eloquently, Gartner describe it as “the typical progression of an emerging technology, from over enthusiasm through a period of disillusionment to an eventual understanding of the technology's relevance and role in a market or domain.”

There was a broad convergence of views.

Felice is based in Singapore, travelling all over the world in his role as President of Dell’s SME division.  In that capacity, he dialogues at a governmental and country level as much as with the heads of SMEs.  He has clear and early insight into emerging and enabling technologies, business drivers and economic cycles.  Dell was already aware of an impending global economic crisis in the Spring of 2008.  He visits Ireland once or twice a year.

As we all know by know, SMEs will usually face the downturn before the big corporate or multinational: likewise, they will benefit from the upswing earlier.  Small means being agile.  There are 75 millions SMEs around the globe.  Growth and innovation will come through this sector.  However, Felice cautions for stability in the current environment.  He suggests:

Stay Competitive
Focus on Profitability
Focus on Cashflow

In addition he suggests three key technology trends that are becoming more relevant to SMEs – to achieve competitiveness and efficiencies and future growth:

1. Virtualisation
2. Cloud Computing
3. Managed Services

In addition he advocated embracing social technologies and community networking as a powerful means of marketing and selling for the SME.

Garnter’s Hype Cycle Report suggests that technologies at the Peak of Inflated Expectations during 2009 include cloud computing, e-books (such as from Amazon and Sony) and Internet TV (for example, Hulu), while social software and microblogging sites (such as Twitter) have tipped over the peak and will soon experience disillusionment among enterprise users,” said Jackie Fenn, vice president and Gartner Fellow, and co-author of the book “Mastering the Hype Cycle” (published by Harvard Business Press).

However, they go on to say “Looking at real benefit, rather than the hyped expectations, we see a number of potentially transformational technologies that will hit the mainstream in less than five years, including Web 2.0, cloud computing, Internet TV, virtual worlds and service-oriented architecture (SOA),”

Gartner delivers a separate report on the Hype Cycle for Virtualisation which it defines as “the process of decoupling layers of IT function so the configuration of the layers becomes more independent of each other. Virtualization changes the way enterprises package and deliver computing. It is disruptive to both IT users and providers, leading to significant levels of hype.”

Both Felice and Garnter’s report mention the impact of power (and power consumption) on technology – a factor of enormous consequences but not yet fully understood.  The growing cost and scarcity of power, and the move toward a greener environment are driving technology change (high-density IT equipment - servers, storage and communication demands on power).

With respect to social technologies and the role social media and social networking plays in the marketing mix there is some divergence of opinion.  The Dell case study around usage of social technology is well known.  While Twitter doesn’t yet make any money Dell generates several million through its @DellOutlet twitter account.  It actively manages its brand and client conversations online.  While Felice says he’s no Facebook fan, preferring to leave that to his daughter, he encourages SMEs to embrace the power of the technology and spend time learning how it can help build brand and revenue.

A very worthwhile presentation thanks to Dublin Chamber and Stephen Felice.  Long may we continue to retain and attract the multi-national presence in Ireland.

Click here to obtain a copy of Gartner’s report.

Click here to learn more from Mark Raskino who introduces the 2009 Gartner Hype Cycle Special Report.