Graffiti - Sample Web Development Company Business Plan

According to the AMI study, U.S. SBs expanded their workforce by more than 5% over the last 12 months, adding 382,000 new employees. As a natural outcome to the employee expansion, SBs opened new sites in order to cater to this growth. "The economy's impact on the SB market during the last 12 months has been mixed," said Arjun Mehra, analyst at AMI ‐ Partners. Approximately half of all U.S. SBs experienced an increase in their annual revenues during the last twelve months, with one in five reflecting an annualized revenue growth rate exceeding 10%. However, more than a quarter witnessed declining sales. "Much of the past 12 months' growth, be it IT spending or hiring of employees, has largely been driven by SBs that weathered the economic storm," observed Mr. Mehra. If the economic turnaround takes hold, the impact will spread to a broader segment of the SB market resulting in substantial growth. Mr. Mehra added, "AMI's survey indicates that SB expectations for 2004 are exuberant  ‐  perhaps too optimistic!" 74% of SBs expect an increase in revenues over the next 12 months. Albeit, there may be an element of wishful thinking. Security ‐ solution providers covering anti ‐ virus, firewalls, intrusion detection and managed security have benefited significantly from a growing awareness among SBs relating to the importance of such solutions for their operations. In order to address their security concerns, nearly 60% of SBs with LANs currently use on ‐ site data backup and recovery solutions, while 20% of them are currently able to check for systems/power redundancy for disaster recovery. SBs favor software ‐ based firewalls running on PCs and/or LAN servers, as well as firewalls that are embedded in networking hardware such as routers and switches, etc. Roughly 228,000 SBs currently have remote management capabilities of their networks for security monitoring, which is expected to double over the next 12 months. AMI ‐ Partners' studies reveal that the number of businesses deploying SAN/NAS storage solutions increased by a staggering 36% over last year, an indication that the drop in SAN/NAS prices coupled by enhancements in infrastructure ‐ friendly IP ‐ based SAN solutions were welcomed by the IT savvy segment of the SB market. The SB market clearly represents a lucrative opportunity for storage solution providers who are re ‐ modeling their products in order to cater to the needs of this segment. The growing use of media intensive applications, such as imaging and document management, and streaming video lead to the accumulation of massive amounts of digitized media that require storage facilities. AMI estimates SBs spent roughly $0.48 billion on network storage solutions, a significant 27% increase from 2002. SBs are looking to implement solutions that will enhance the intelligence and scalability of their network in the most cost effective way. Burgeoning interest in wireless LANs and the increasing need for VPNs have caused SBs to refocus their investments in networking ‐ related spending, which reached a high of $15.06 billion in 2003. © BPLANEXPERTS.COM P a g e | 32