BANGALORE, INDIA: While virtualization, Green IT, cloud computing, SaaS figured among top tech trends for SMBs this year, Sudarshan Boosupalli, Country Head, Ruckus Wireless talks about VoIP over Wi-Fi and WAN acceleration  to look for by SMBs. Excerpts:

CIOL:   In your view, what are the top tech trends for SMBs in 2009?  

Sudarshan Boosupalli: SMBs need to invest in technologies that reduce cost and improve their overall performance and getting them to be more competitive. VoIP over Wi-Fi will be of great interest. So will be technologies that allow them to save expensive bandwidth such as WAN acceleration devices.  The most promising technology looks to be the next generation of Wi-Fi: 802.11n

With respect to Wi-Fi, SMBs should look at deploying a affordable, secure, manageable and robust Wi-Fi that allows them to increase user productivity in more places but in a cost effective manner. They also need to look at deploying ‘no-fuss’ and easy to operate technology which does not require an IT investment leading to overheads.

CIOL: Do you see liberal spending by SMBs on IT in the times ahead?

SB: Indian SMBs will not be any more liberal or less liberal with their IT spends in recession times than any other region.  While money will continue to be spent on information technology, much more scrutiny and justification to the bottom line of the business will be placed on the capital expenditures.  IT purchases will have to be directly related to moving forward the mission or business of the company – otherwise they will be eliminated. Much more scrutiny will be placed on IT spend and more justification to the bottom line of the business will be required – like you would expect. That said, SMBs will be much more apt to ignore big brand names whose products come with a premium in favor of lesser known brands that offer the equivalent functionality at a much reduced cost or provide more value for money. Ultimately users don’t care about brands, they care about performance, reliability and features.

IT continues to play a very important role helping SMBs both grow quickly and cut inefficiencies. A recent AMI report states that Asia-Pacific SMBs to Spend US$153B on IT and Telecom in 2009. The report also states that Chinese, Korean, and Indian SMBs make up more than 50 percent of Asia Pacific spending.

CIOL: What are the new initiatives to tap the SMB sector this year?
SB: New technology initiatives for the SMB sector will focus on delivering greater functionality that is easier to use.  In the Wi-Fi space, great strides have been made to make Wi-Fi reach four to five times farther, four to five times faster and half the cost of traditional systems.  This is a big win for SMBs who are looking to use IT to enhance their business without jeopardizing their operating costs and budgets.

Ruckus Wireless' ZoneFlex Smart WLAN System is the first powerful, easy wireless LAN system developed specifically for SMBs. It’s ideal for SMBs that want to manage a secure wireless system for their employees, but don't want to have to hire a wireless networking experts to deploy and administer the WLAN.