The 45 Best Midmarket Products

Everybody's looking for that perfect fit: the pair of jeans that sits just right on the hips or the jacket tailored to hang with comfort and flair. It's no different for IT products and solutions. A solution that works in a Fortune 500 corporation doesn't necessarily fly in a 200-person shop. The midmarket is a particularly tricky segment, including companies with as few as 100 employees and those with close to 1,000. But when it comes to technology, they all do want some of the same things.

"With the midmarket, there's cost and affordability to consider," says Justin Wright, vice president of worldwide field operations at Progress Software, Bedford, Mass. "They want to solve a business problem, and they're much more interested in speed of deployment and practicality."

That means no midmarket company wants to hear a solution provider wax on about the benefits of implementing a services-oriented architecture, Wright says. They will respond, however, to a pitch about reducing inventory in their supply chain with a preintegrated software suite.

That's why VARBusiness has identified 45 products in nine technology categories that cater to midmarket requirements quite swimmingly. Our 2006 Best of the Midmarket roundup spans the gamut, from security and business software to VoIP and storage.

VARBusiness asked vendors and solution providers to nominate noteworthy products they sell, resell or recommend to midmarket end users. For the purposes of this project, midmarket customers were defined as companies with 100 to 999 employees. More than 150 vendors submitted 350-plus nominations, collected by way of an online entry form on the VARBusiness Web site.

Many of the choices highlight the special needs and concerns of the midmarket. Consider Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Server 2003, which VARs can use to create myriad customized solutions for the midmarket at a reasonably affordable price. The software enables collaboration among customers, employees and partners in a way heretofore available only to enterprises.

What's key to understanding the midmarket is that these companies often have the exact same business processes as their enterprise brethren in the same markets--and often want the same superior level of technology sophistication. The challenge is figuring out how to give them everything they want at a price they can afford, and at which they can make some money.

KBMS, a VAR in Montreal, uses the midmarket-focused SAP All-in-One platform to create solutions for the food and beverage industries.

What's worked for KBMS is designing solutions that are as intuitive and complete as possible for midmarket clients, says Moodi Mahmoudi, KBMS COO. That means lots of preconfiguration and, with respect to the selling process, demonstrating a proof-of-concept early on to speed the time to decision for the customer.

"Truth be told, between a $300 million bottler and a Fortune 500 Coca-Cola there is no difference in business processes," Mahmoudi says. "The requirements are the same, but on a smaller scale. The challenge is that they can't and won't pay the same price."

By creating a solution as out-of-the-box as possible, building it ready to scale as a customer's business grows and eliminating fear of risk with a proof-of-concept, solution providers can make a serious impact in the midmarket space. FrontRange, for example, has developed a new version of its GoldMine CRM product that is architecturally ready to be integrated with its help-desk and telephony products whenever the customer wants to scale.

Many of the products on the VARBusiness list, in fact, aren't much to behold until a solution provider incorporates its special touch, whether vertical expertise, customization or some other value-added service. The midmarket, perhaps more than any other space, needs VARs to get them that right fit with their technology.

Read on to find out about some of the best tools you can use to help you get there.