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March 10, 2010
Why SMBs need better data integration software
The small-to-medium size (SMB) market is much larger than you and I might have thought. If you look at the entire SMB market, there are millions of small and medium-size businesses worldwide. In North America alone, there are more than a million small businesses with 20 to 99 employees and more than 250,000 mid-size companies with 100 to 1,000 employees and annual revenues between $100M and $1B.
If you talk to Gartner analysts, they will segment SMBs into small companies less than $100M, lower mid-size companies between $100M and $500M, and upper mid-size companies between $500M and $1B. They define G2000 as $2B or more in annual revenue, and describe any company between $1B and $2B as either or.
They will also point out to you that the buying behaviors of upper mid-size companies ($500M and above) tend to differ from those in the $100M to $500M range. Why so? Because companies in the lower mid-size SMB market are just too IT resource constrained around capital, people, and expertise. Companies in this segment of the market have very limited IT staff - usually no more than 15 people - which limits their ability to take on any significant data integration or data warehousing projects.
Once you go beyond the $500M barrier, you'll find companies building data warehouses and doing serious BI, because they have sufficient IT staff to take on these and other types of data integration projects.
All said, there are around 250,000 mid-size companies ($100M to $1B) in North America and the number of these companies worldwide is two to three times larger. In our estimate, the number of upper mid-size companies is around 10 percent of the overall mid-size market.
Exciting news for expressor! We are very much focused on mid-size and larger SMBs - a market that is dominated by Microsoft. Did you know that 70% of all SMBs use SQL Server in some form in North America and that this trend is consistent in other geographies?
So what it boils down to is very simple. If you are a mid-size SMB and are looking for an enterprise-class ETL/DI/data warehousing/BI solution, you have a few choices:
- Develop a hand-coded data integration solution
- Use a tool like Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services for basic ETL tasks
- Use expressor as an affordable, enterprise-class ETL tool to complement or replace tools like SSIS
- Use a high-priced, enterprise-class ETL tool like Informatica that won't give you any additional benefits compared to expressor but will cost you up to 80 percent more.
So the choice is clear. For basic tasks, use the ETL tool that comes with the DBMS. For anything else, take a serious look at all other independent ETL vendor tools. What you'll find is that expressor might be exactly what you are looking for!
Dr Michael Waclawiczek
VP Marketing
expressor software
Posted by expressor software at March 10, 2010 3:45 PM
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