According to the New York-based Access Markets International research, SME sector in India is planning to spend more than $2 million on ICT (Information & Communications Technology) in 2011 and this spending is estimated to grow 5 times by 2014.
According to the research, the cloud based ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solutions are used by only 8% of MEs (Medium size enterprises), while small enterprises use of this type of application is nil. The reason was unwillingness of Indian SMEs to house their data on servers of remote third-party locations. The other reasons are platform lock-in, worries about reliability/performance, data governance, integration and management. Due to these concerns, desire to implement these types of technology is lacking in SMEs.
The research suggests that, the cloud vendors should have effective sales strategies, so that they can convince these SMEs to adopt these solutions. It is noted that, even though these vendors are pushing the on demand option, India channel partners are less receptive to changes and are therefore sluggish in promoting the cloud option.
According to the AMI survey, credit tightening and revenues falling are compelling Indian SMEs to reduce their infrastructure costs and invest in areas that directly impact revenue, efficiency, and productivity. A cloud ERP solution is best suitable to these SMEs because it is easier to implement, deploy and maintain, reducing time and cost expenditures.
Further, about 13% of Indian SMEs stated that they plan to adopt some type of on demand ERP Solutions in the next 12 months. The new innovating trend in cloud ERP will insure maturity and dependability in the technology, which will bring better governance, seamless functionality, reliability and security.