Take pains to be relevant, you masters of IT, says SME

You, masters of IT, take pains to be relevant..

This bold statement came from an Indian SME owner expressing terrible misfit of the solutions offered by IT industry to SME sector. I have no doubt that it is representing most of the Indian SMEs.

Let us read in his own words…

Where is cloud? Can it rain?

Most of us use broadband connection in offices / factories shared among 5 to 50 users.

In India, Internet is revolutionized at personal level, definitely not at enterprise level.

Broadband internet is unreliable on uptime as well as speed. Why do you expect us to move to cloud in this situation? Your cloud products are irrelevant because state of internet infrastructure is prohibitive.

Mistaken Targets, do you realize?

All the products you design are targeted to be used by qualified IT professionals.

Do you know, we SMEs can’t attract or retain IT talent. IT talent aspires to work with IT biggies in cozy offices. We are always the last choice to work with.

If you wish to realize the huge potential of our SME market, you ought to simplify your products.

We SMEs, the Victims of sales driven advice…

Our inability to retain IT talent makes us dependent on System Integrators. To my surprise, even micro-networks of 5 to 25 computers have setup servers and domain controllers without the knowledge of its license implication. We are advised to buy servers even if we don’t need them.

Such sales driven advice leads us to agony of embarrassing software licence defaults and painful procurement of licenses which we never needed. When will ENOUGH be ENOUGH?

Spam, Virus and Ransom-ware,

Guys, in last 2 years, my time is pitifully wasted on annoying / fraudulent spam, locky viruses, and old school email systems which has limited email space, literally does not have antispam solution and bottleneck of multi-device support. IT industry has failed to provide us affordable and effective solution.

Above expression signals very critical trends.

1. Large segment of SMEs is ignored by product development teams of IT biggies,
2. Products are pushed for sales regardless of actual requirements,
3. SMEs end up over-investing in IT and under-realizing the returns.

I Invite comments from my SME readers as well as IT professionals on this post.

Best Regards,
Vishal Shah
Founder and CEO – Synersoft Technologies Pvt Ltd